Updated Cricket news : PCA for "qualified support" to review

The Professional Cricketers' Association has urged fellow stakeholders to make certain they safeguard the sport's honesty when their chance comes to discuss the Morgan Review.


The key recommendation of the appraisal, undertake by former ECB chairman and ICC president David Morgan, comprise a reform of championship cricket to 14 matches per county each season and an enlarge from 40 to 50 over’s in the domestic one-day competition.

The PCA has spoken "qualified support" for the review, but with misgivings they hope county legislature will take note of when they get together the ECB on January 23.

PCA chief decision-making Angus Porter said: "The ECB board has said the recommendation of the Morgan Review should be established in whole or not at all.

"Notwithstanding that, we urge the ECB and the county to ask whether we can have enough money the loss of honesty to our domestic competitions, and to consider the enhancements we are proposing."

Those enhancements include an alternative method of devising a fair 14-match fixture list for the county championship from 2014 onwards, with one first division of eight and two second-division 'conferences' of five, rather than two tiers each containing nine teams.

The PCA believe their suggestion would "maximize the truthfulness of the competition" and "eliminate the element of chance understood in the structure recommended in the Morgan report".

The players' union also takes issue with the suggestion to increase the minimum number of Twenty20 group matches to 14, believing the move would be "openly for commercial reasons" and would stop the winners from on behalf of England in the lucrative Champions League in India each September.

The PCA statement nonetheless added: "We welcome the decrease in the volume of first-class cricket and support the goal of ensuring the counties are monetarily strong and well-managed."