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But since he was Yorks' overseas why not keep his options open and see what NSW come up with in the autumn? Or did Yorks give him a longer contract as non-overseas?

When are his four years up. Replacement for Strauss 

Certainly, no decisions on the future of cricket should be made based one the attendances at this year's BBL. Impossible to say whether these will be maintained, but real possibility that they won't.

Yes, that's my take on it, SPSL. I don't know the answer (and my 18 Middlesexes was ignored by our expert so is clearly worthless) but what I do know is that the solution, whilst possibly contructive as you put it, S&F, is only constructive to English cricket which, financially, means the TMGs. The moment you put all your eggs into the TMG basket the smaller counties become irrelevant. The focus will shift. No-one will want to come to Hove because we won't be playing the big games there anymore. So it might be a solution, but a terrible one for Sussex, Somerset, Worcestershire and others that are benefitting not only local fans but delivering players to England. And the idea of a smaller 20-20 league for the small counties is a classic case of a second division, soon to be non-first-class as the likes of Hove are sold and Sussex become a minor county.

Is this being a dinosaur? Is it being an elite fan wanting the small counties to stay afloat? I don't think so.

I tell you what, this is another thing about the whole mess - the TMG counties should be dwarfing us little ones in production of England players, right? Quite the opposite is happening. Us smallies are wiping the floor on this one.

S&F, your franchise solution is short-term craziness. Have you ever thought of standing for Parliament?

How about this: why not mirror the Lord's model at all TMGs, or something like it. Counties can't possibly cope and are putting themselves into a complete mess trying to do so. ECB (or someone else - who?) take ownership of all the big grounds, and we have 18 Middlesexes, with about half of them playing in big grounds but making ends meet happily at a smaller scale, playing fabulous cricket that has a long term future and people actually want to watch over a sustained period, not the 'oh what's this - 20-20 - great fun - oh yawn - a bit samey isn't - crowds dwindle after two years etc etc'.

I know little about how Lord's works, but could something like that work nationwide?

Coming late to this so doubtless already said, but in the end you are proposing ways to get English cricket out of its financial mess which have a huge cost to all the things that we actually want out of the game. I can't imagine a more depressing situation a couple of decades from now where CC county cricket is dead, franchises playing 20-20 rule the scene, and they are on a firm financial footing. What is it you are fighting for here, S&F? Is it financial security, or cricketers playing cricket we want to watch. You've plumped for the former only, but the true solution is both, and the way to do that is unpick this absurd situation TMGs have got themselves into - it's their over-stretching that has really got us into this mess, and turning cricket into something we really don't want to solve this mess is a bizarre solution.

Thanks for link to George Dobell's article. Quite a roll call of top class players back then.

Who knows, perhaps the number of test matches will decline significantly with the focus on the 'big', well attended matches. If England consolidate their home form and continue to be very hard to beat at home, then there could be large gaps in the summer calendar for overseas stars to come and learn to play in English conditions, encouraged by their bosses wanting to reverse the trend of losses on English soil. It would be like the old days of Garner and Greenidge gracing county grounds.

Ugly stuff from Vaughan.

Two seamers, Monty and Beer? I thought it, but was too yellow-livered to suggest it.

Re-reading P's N's:

At the risk of stirring up a hornet's nest, we would need to be sure that Beer was ready to take on 25% of the workload.

A model for Sussex, maybe, since we're always worrying about our batting? When we don't have Luke we struggle to know what to do with the last spot, and have regularly picked a fourth seamer that hardly bowls. Could go with three seamers and Monty.

Two dropped catches in the first two overs... one a dolly (Matty top edge).

Monty in! FANTASTIC news. Congrats - richly deserved.

But as part of a four man attack?? Smacks of lack of confidence in our batting after one poor game. We should have dropped Morgan and brought in Monty and a seamer. Quite extraordinary.