Strauss off key as he seeks to strike the right chord for English cricket

It’s the design that hits you first. The soft, translucent swatches. Teal for the soothing, explanatory stuff. Bold navy blue for the action points. Coloured boxes with clean, bevelled corners and arrows directing you to the next coloured box, like signs in an airport terminal. The cover design incorporating hundreds of dotted lines, evoking the seam on a cricket ball, but also – eureka! – the road markings on a superhighway to the future.

Yes, I read Andrew Strauss’s high-performance review so you didn’t have to. Although as ever, interpreting the gist of these documents is not so much an exercise in reading as cryptography. We are told that a High-Performance NED and a PCC will be set up, advised by a PAG, in collaboration with FCC leadership, to improve our shared understanding of WITTW. (Non‑Executive Director, Performance Cricket Committee, Performance Advisory Group, First-Class Counties, What It Takes To Win. Come on, guys. Do the work.)

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Strauss’s manifesto here. There is plenty in it that is urgent and reasonable, benign and enlightened. It leans a little heavily on historical data, particularly when the overarching premise is that the sport is rapidly shifting beyond all recognition. Above all, given the wild uncertainty of the terrain, it seems terribly sure of itself. But I struggle to get exercised either way on the detail.

In fact, I’m going to level with you: I genuinely couldn’t give a flying FCC what ball they use in the County Championship, whether they play the One-Day Cup in April, August or on Thursdays when the moon is in Pisces. This probably makes me a Bad Cricket Citizen (BCC). But I didn’t get into cricket to have arguments on scheduling and nor