ROD BRANSGROVE, the chairman of Hampshire, has endorsed Lord MacLaurin’s gloomy view of the financial state of English cricket by warning that some counties may have to turn semi- professional in the next few years to survive.

Bransgrove said the English game could not expect the next television deal, to be negotiated next year, to be as rich as the current one, which is worth £49m a year.

“Cricket is not very good at planning for the future, and I think we should prepare for the worst-case scenario,” he said. “If the next television deal is down, then the clubs might be looking at a handout of £800,000 each rather than £1.3m, and that would have a severe effect on some clubs.

“We should look at dividing the counties into three divisions, with the top two containing seven professional teams and the third acting as a feeder division of seven semi-pro clubs who can win promotion but cannot call on overseas players and are encouraged to produce good pitches and new talent.

“This would be a better

way to go than simply axe a few clubs, as Ian MacLaurin suggested. There would be more clubs this way, and we could encourage some minor counties to turn semi- professional.”

Bransgrove, who made his fortune out of pharmaceuticals, is one of a new breed of executives trying to run clubs on more businesslike lines and make them viable in their own right rather than relying on an annual subsidy from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). “Counties need to change their mindsets,” he added.

Bransgrove’s plan has the added advantage of giving the counties 12 championship matches a season rather than 16, allowing more preparation time, as Michael Vaughan, the England captain, has called for.

The central problem with the way English cricket is structured is that there are too many professional clubs, which spreads the talent and money too thin. The less successful clubs would have gone to the wall years ago but for the fact that the ECB chooses to distribute its revenues evenly among the 18 counties regardless of how well they perform as cricket teams or businesses.

Ideally, some clubs would be merged or close. Derbyshire, who have not produced a worthwhile England cricketer in a generation (Dominic Cork came from Staffordshire), would go, while Somerset would merge with Gloucester- shire, Sussex with Hampshire, and Leicestershire with Notts.

“I have never understood why counties — and I would include Hampshire — should receive the same handouts from the ECB as clubs like Surrey and Yorkshire, who produce a lot of Test players,” Bransgrove said.

Last week MacLaurin, who stood down as chairman of the ECB in January, said that English cricket was in danger of becoming a marginal summer sport — “like croquet” — unless it addressed its financial problems. Not for the first time, he argued that fewer clubs would alleviate the situation.

But, as Bransgrove appreciates, this is never going to happen, which is why he is arguing for a semi- professional tier.

Bransgrove fought shy of identifying which clubs might be forced to turn semi-professional, but the future of the policy of equal distribution lies at the heart of the issue. If that principle is abandoned, the writing is surely on the wall for some counties.

“I think there is some support for my ideas, but it can be frustrating, because there is also a lot of antagonism,” he said. “I am looking for concepts that will benefit cricket as a whole.”

Bransgrove may find a crucial ally in the new chairman of the ECB’s marketing advisory committee. Des Wilson, a former senior vice-chairman of Sport England and an experienced communications adviser, has not been appointed to maintain the status quo, and can be expected to oppose any tired thinking among marketing executives.