Counties face losses of up to 85 million pounds if the season is cancelled due to COVID-19.
Former England captain-turned-commentator Michael Vaughan has suggested that the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) should consider a shortened County Championship season without overseas players for two years to balance the financial state impacted by the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
The ECB has recently announced that there will be no cricket in England or Wales before at least 1 July due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis – which means nine rounds of 2020 County Championship fixtures will be lost while a report from a financial advisory firm revealed the county teams face a loss of £85m if the entire season is canceled due to the pandemic.
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Even several counties including Yorkshire and Essex, have canceled or deferred contracts of their overseas players due to the financial impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, which has impacted the sports globally besides infecting three million people and causing more than 205,000 deaths globally so far.
Vaughan told the BBC, “You have to look at every area where you can save a few quid. Traditionalists will go mad at this, but these are unprecedented times. In the next two years, could you look at not having overseas players for the four-day game?”
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He believes that there is lesser harm in reducing the number of fixtures in the County Championship from 14 to 10 for the next couple of years especially given the current situations.
Vaughan signed off by saying, “Four-day cricket costs the game ... it is a cost that could, just for a couple of years, be worth reducing. If you reduced it from 14 to 10 games, you'd miss the games but I don't think it would be a huge problem for a couple of years.”
(With BBC Inputs)