Chief Executive Jamie Clifford believes counties including Kent should resist the temptation of franchising cricket after a disappointing World Cup.

With England having returned after the group stages and with just the two wins under their belts against Scotland and Afghanistan, calls were quickly made to scrap the existing system in the country and to adopt a more Australian approach such as the Big Bash League.

The cricketing hierarchy will no doubt look at England’s approach ahead of the next World Cup and how our game can be improved in white ball cricket, but for Clifford, it shouldn’t be at the expense of the current framework:

“There seems to be an obsession with this, normally starting on Boxing Day having watched Big Bash.”

“I’m a firm believer that eighteen counties delivering the domestic game in this country and achieving everything that Big Bash can and more.”

“If there is a structure that creates a cricketing model that works for all, then I think there is a commitment from the eighteen counties to do that.”

“What I don’t like the idea of is a structure that is imposed on the county game with ten teams or whatever it would be. I just don’t think it is necessary.”

“If the eighteen counties can’t work it out, I think it would be a sad day. To create a mid summer tournament involving all eighteen counties, over two divisions if necessary would be the way to go.”

“We would need to be creative as to how it would look and if we could attract high profile players for a short period of time, that would probably create a product with much greater commercial value.”

“The population spread in the UK is very different to that in Australia with the eighteen counties having fantastic reach and we’d be mad to throw that away.”

“I’ve been hearing things coming out of the Big Bash that they are looking at increasing the amount of teams.”

“I welcome any discussion, but let’s focus it on how we as eighteen counties can make it work.”

“I think if we went down a franchising route, it would be worrying for all counties and we would be playing second fiddle to a high profile competition.”

There is still much debate around the current cricketing schedule with County Championship games generally starting on a Sunday with Twenty 20 matches played on largely on a Friday night.

With the Royal London Cup 50 over games now played from the middle of the summer onwards, cricketing administrators have the unenviable task of trying to shoehorn in all three formats into a five month window.

This summer Kent will be playing around ninety days worth of cricket in the space of around 150 days, giving the players little time to rest, prepare and travel to matches.

With so much cricket to squeeze into a packed summer, Clifford is hoping the schedule isn’t moved too much in the future as fans get to grips with when games are likely to be played:

“I think it’s fine as it is. If you want to re-engineer it and create a block of T20 then we could look at that, but Friday nights throughout the summer has been good and we have seen crowds increase, and we’re not alone with that.”

“We have only given it one season so far to see how it works and aggregate crowds across the country have been similar to the that of the Big Bash League across the whole competition.”

“I think sometimes there is some hystreia and what you see through your TV screens isn’t always the whole story.”

Kent kick off their new season with a Tour match against Loughborough MCCU at Canterbury on Sunday 12th April with their County Championship opener against Essex at Chelmsford a week later.