Richard Gould hits back at ‘totally mad conspiracies’ over 18 counties future

Richard Gould has hit out at ‘totally mad conspiracy theories’ regarding the future of county cricket and dismissed claims “Luddite” members are holding them back.

The ECB chief executive has fought back against claims it had any desire to reduce the number of first-class counties from 18, the number it has been since Durham joined the County Championship in 1992.

“It’s a totally mad conspiracy theory,” Gould said, noting how football and rugby had lost professional clubs in recent years. “We’re the one professional sport that hasn’t lost a club.

“You look at rugby and football, we’ve done extremely well as a sport to maintain that 100 per cent record and that’s where our intent lies.” He added that in five years’ time, “I really do think we will have 18 first-class counties.”

Durham’s chief executive Tim Bostock made the “Luddite” claim in Batting for Time: The Fight to Keep English Cricket Alive; a new book about the current state of the county game by Ben Bloom. Durham are one of three privately owned counties who are not answerable to members, of which there are around 60,000 across the country.

“There are not comments that I would recognise or agree with,” said Gould. “This is not our feeling, not our perception. So no, they’re not helpful comments. I think the Luddite comment was from about 18 months ago.”

Gould said that representatives from Durham were on the phone within 30 minutes of the comments being published and that the size of the professional structure should be seen as a strength of the English game.

“The depth of our talent pool, both in terms of men and women, is our superpower at the moment,” he said. “You can see that having more teams and more players and more depth to our talent pool is ideal.

“It’s where we want to be. It increases competition. It provides more opportunity for talent to come through, so I don’t see any backward step in terms of 18 first-class counties.”

Research by the ECB found that 75 England-qualified players featured in overseas franchise tournaments over the winter. Pakistan, who have the next most players in overseas leagues, had 45 players who feature in foreign leagues.

“We want to see the very best players playing in all of our domestic competitions, both men and women, county and franchise. And so the more talent the better if it increases the quality that we’ve got,” Gould said.

Gould also confirmed, as Telegraph Sport revealed, the ECB hope to get private investment in the Hundred, with funding around clubs rather than leagues.

“There is a strong consensus that we would like to see private investment come in through and into the Hundred,” he said.

“There’s a very strong consensus that that should be through investment into the teams rather than the central competition. And now we’re working through the options of what that could potentially look like in terms of how control revenue capital is shared.”

Indian players remain unavailable for the Hundred

Gould said discussions remain ongoing about the proportion of clubs that could be up for sale. He said interest in teams has come from the US, as well as India.

“We will work that one through - our interests won’t just be with IPL franchises,” Gould said. “We have got a lot of interesting sports owners from the States and from this country. So we’ll be looking at all those options.”

Gould said that no timeframe had been put on the next stages, adding: “We’re not putting huge deadlines on it, no, because I think the game has suffered from divisions over the last five or six years.

“We would rather take a bit of time in order to get to the conclusions that we think the game is seeking rather than rush people because we think in doing that we can frankly create more value with a game that is operating as one.”

Gould said he had no indication that Indian players could be permitted to play in the Hundred. “It’s not something that we are working into our proceedings,” he said, admitting that the absence of Indian players impacted how much the ECB could earn from Indian broadcasters. “I think Indian broadcast money generally follows Indian players.”

Gould added he did not envisage the eight tier one women’s sides, who will be professional, being the same as the eight Hundred teams.

“I don’t think that would be the case necessarily,” he added. “I don’t see a world in which the same six clubs or the same eight clubs are the ones that are constantly getting those opportunities.”