Strauss review urges counties not to fumble chance to transform cricket

Andrew Strauss has implored the first-class counties not to fumble the chance to transform elite cricket when they vote on implementing the recommendations of his High Performance Review, which was published on Thursday after weeks of fevered speculation about its contents.

Strauss, the former England captain and chair of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s performance cricket committee, has produced a list of 17 recommendations, all but two of which can be approved and imposed by the ECB.

He believes “the ECB board and executive are unanimous in their support”, but the final two proposals, which deal with the reorganisation of the schedule, must be accepted by the counties.

Strauss conceded that his proposals include “elements that certain people [will] feel are not in their interest” but encouraged the game’s stakeholders to embrace them. “We can do a lot of good without those final two [recommendations], but those final two are a good demonstration of the hard decisions we need to make as a game and how serious we are in trying to achieve this ambition,” he said.

“We need high-quality cricket, everyone knows that the current schedule doesn’t work, so we need to make those decisions now.”

Among the changes is a complete overhaul of central contracts – though Strauss has not decided what this will look like – and the transformation of county funding to make it less equal. “We’re very keen on making sure counties are rewarded and incentivised for producing great things on the pitch and producing great players who go on to play Under-19, Lions or England level cricket,” he said.

“That’s very much one of the central recommendations of this review – that counties that play their part should be well rewarded for doing