The County Championship looks increasingly likely to be cut from 14 matches to 12 per team from 2026 after another review of the domestic structure which is likely to illicit anger among some leaders.
The 2025 season begins on Friday but could be the last to feature 14 matches per team as a review is held into how to improve the domestic schedule, with Rob Andrew, the England and Wales Cricket Board’s managing director, saying all three county competitions “can be improved”.
The schedule was last cut from 16 to 14 matches ahead of the 2017 season, but there has been a looming threat in recent seasons that further reductions could come. Andrew promised this review would be more collaborative than the 2022 high-performance review, which was led by Sir Andrew Strauss following another Ashes debacle Down Under. The review recommended a radical reduction to 10 Championship matches and was thrown out by the county chairs, who require a two-thirds majority to enact any change.
Andrew believes there is more of an appetite for change among county leaders three years on, with the global landscape of the game changing rapidly and the Professional Cricketers’ Association regularly calling for a reduction in the overall volume of cricket.
ECB officials say there is little interest in reducing the Championship to 10 matches – the number played in Australia’s Sheffield Shield – but there is much discussion about dropping to 12. In addition, the 14 matches played in the Vitality Blast is in line for a cut to 12 – some will push for 10. Andrew said “there’s a feeling the Blast needs a refresh, to give it that renewed energy lost a little bit through the Hundred in recent years”. Meanwhile, it is understood that there is a desire to see a portion of the Metro Bank One-Day Cup played at the start of the season, not entirely under the Hundred.
“Nothing is on the table and nothing is off the table,” Andrew said. “It’s very different to what happened in the high-performance review. This is a county-led review. As the ECB we will work with our stakeholders, including the players. Everyone recognises the schedule is not perfect or optimal. The difficult thing is finding a solution.
“[Volume of cricket] is at the heart of the debate. The PCA have made clear how men’s players feel. We have heard from the directors of cricket. How can we provide an improved narrative for competitions, as well as performance? The high-performance review was very much focused on performance only, performance of the England team. We are looking at this is in a slightly different way.
‘The Championship is the blue ribbon of red-ball cricket’
“We have 18 counties that agree that it’s not right but 19 different versions of what the answer is. Our job is to pull those views together and get to a schedule that protects all three domestic competitions. The Championship is the blue ribbon of red-ball cricket in the world. We need to protect, grow and strengthen it because we want that to continue long into the future. What that looks like in terms of the number of games that are played will come out in the wash.
“This decision lies with the counties and their chairs, and if we cannot get sufficient agreement, there is no change to domestic cricket. That is written in the articles of the ECB. There’s a feeling that we can improve all three competitions for all parties and set that out for a number of years so there is certainty, security and consistency.”
The starting gun was fired on the review at a meeting of all 18 first-class counties at Lord’s on Tuesday, and Andrew hoped a consultation period could have a solution within “two to three months”, to be implemented for the 2026 season, which is also likely to be the first with a full bells-and-whistles Hundred tournament, following the sale of stakes in the eight teams earlier this year. Andrew promised that fans and county members would be consulted on the matter.
Chief executives from six counties, the PCA and the ECB have been working in a “steering group” on potential domestic structures. The review itself will be managed by the ECB’s Professional Game Committee, which is led by Mark McCafferty, the Warwickshire chair.
Meanwhile, Richard Gould, the ECB chief executive, says there is not “any risk” of any of the eight Hundred sales collapsing, and expects them all to proceed at the price agreed at auctions, despite wrangling with investors that has led the period of exclusivity on the negotiations extended. Gould, who travelled to India this week to meet investors, with Hundred MD Vikram Banerjee (who is still there) admitting that negotiations could take another month.
