‘Bold and ambitious’ – hopes are high for County Championship revamp

Introduction of a 10-team first division and an eight-team second tier is the start of a blueprint to improve English cricket

County cricket is no stranger to rumours of its imminent reorganisation. There lives in every top honcho a desire to tinker with the settings, like a 1970s teenager idly flicking from dreary western to Songs of Praise on a Sunday afternoon.

Sometimes these changes are genuinely huge – the switch to two divisions in 2000, the expansion from nine counties to 14 in 1895, the admission of Durham in 1992, the switch to four-day cricket in 1993; sometimes less so, like the move to 10 teams in the first division, eight in the second, which comes into place on Thursday with the start of the season.