Stop Graves and the ECB destroying summer's crown

Rarely does a Yorkshireman feel he has had value for money. Parking the car at Canterbury, a glass of beer at Lord's, a cup-cake at the Ageas Bowl - these will all bring forth the plaintiff cry: "How much," you'll hear us say, "it's HOW much?"

By contrast, Stephen Chalke's book Summer's Crown is more than good value at a modest £20.

It is the story of cricket's County Championship (which is indeed its subtitle) and what a wonderfully quirky, mad, English story! How lovely that something so illogically crazy ever started, evolved, survived, and for many of us became the centrepiece of every summer.

My earliest cricketing memories are of watching the great Yorkshire XI of the 1950s. Now the circle of my life has…..er….circled, and I'm an old man watching another great Yorkshire side. Never in my life have I enjoyed watching cricket so much as in this second decade of the 21st Century.

Since retirement, I've been all round the world supporting England. Test Cricket is great. But it is county cricket that I chiefly love. Four-day Championship matches, three-day 2nd XI cricket..

It was, therefore, with horror that I read the proposals of Colin Graves. Go back to three-day Championship matches? Awful. That has had its day, and was changed because it was no longer working. Or reduce the number of four-day games to 12? A betrayal, an act of mindless vandalism against the best and most perfect thing that cricket has to offer.

All this coming from a Yorkshireman of similar age to myself.

To me, the County Championship provides the rich cake mix of an English summer. It is solid and tasty and thoroughly satisfying. You might be attracted to the cake in the shop window for its icing, and its decoration, but ultimately you won't buy from there again if the actual cake is rubbish.

I'm not going to take this analogy too far, but Test Cricket is the icing, the top layer that sells the cake, Twenty20 is the decoration and the little coloured balls and candles, but ultimately it's the cake itself that really matters: the county game, including the 2s and the Academy; the clubs and the schools below that.

It would be silly to claim that the County Championship is hugely well attended, although crowds are better than some would have you believe. If you were charged with devising a system to keep spectators away, you might begin:

(i) Play the games April/May and September, when the weather is cold and football and rugby are being played. (ii) Try to avoid weekends, Bank Holidays, and the school holiday season generally. (iii) Prevent the best and most attractive players from turning out for their Counties.

Yet still the punters turn up. Not everywhere, it is true: some counties are much better supported than others. When someone slipped up and scheduled a County Championship match at Taunton for a Bank Holiday, about 6,000 turned up, that being the estimate of one of the ground stewards I spoke to. There were decent numbers in the nice weather on the next two days, also.

When Middlesex came to Headingley last week, all three days drew respectable crowds, especially the workday Monday, when the weather was best. The cricketers of both teams responded with a level of performance that will bring people back time and again.

Cricket is lucky in that it has found - in Twenty20 - a way of funding itself by a cricket activity. Doubly lucky, in that this version of the game has freed up the imagination of the professional player, to the benefit of the traditional form, which is now played with a joy - yes, joy - that would have been inconceivable in the miserable post-war era of sixty years ago.

The mistake would be to make T20 the staple diet, and to marginalize the Championship even further. Nobody wants to see the players on a treadmill, but 64 days, 16 working weeks, out of a season of over 5 months is not excessive. To date, this season, between its opening on April 7 up to June 14, Yorkshire have played one 3-day University game, six 4-day Championship matches, and five games in the T20 Blast.

I make that 32 days of cricket - actually 30, because two of the games failed to go into their final day - out of 69. Plenty of time to practise, to rest, and to travel (by luxury coach). A treadmill it is not.

There is much love for the County Championship; it really is not just Stephen Chalke and myself. Even those unfortunates who find they have to go to work, or to school, still follow the progress of their teams avidly. By all means discuss ways of popularising the game, whether to play T20 in a block or on Fridays, but at all costs the County Championship must be preserved in its present form.

To end on a positive note, there was a Members' Forum held at Headingley on the first day of the Middlesex game. I was not present, but one person who was reports:

"The first item raised," you will note. Perhaps all is not yet lost. We cannot let the accountants win; the crocodiles in suits. The soul of cricket is at stake.