My belief is that the counties should play only ten or 12 four-day games, as 16 is just too many. The basic aim has to be to allow players more time to work on their skills.

This would help us produce players who can do things when we come across flat wickets, which is the environment in which England players always seem to struggle. We need guys who can come up with something different to make things happen in places such as the sub-continent.

Speaking of which, I would like us to have a look at allowing every county to play two four-day games per year in India around March and April. It would expose every player, not just the elite 15 who get into a national performance squad, a chance to experience those conditions and learn some of the methods required to take wickets there. It would encourage spin and real pace and the kind of skills needed at the highest level. It would be a test of the guys’ characters and I am sure there must be commercial opportunities in it as well.

You would find out about mediocre players because if you don’t have much in your armoury it gets completely exposed out there.

The county chairmen are the most powerful people in the game and until that changes they are always going to look after their own interests, so I think that there are always going to be 18 counties. We should remember that ours is a superior domestic system to most in the cricketing world, but we should not be satisfied with anything less than the best.

In Australia, there are six professional teams and, although we have superiority in numbers (less than we might because of the number of foreigners), the end product is generally not as strong. If we had fewer teams, we would weed out our mediocre players, but as I say, it ain’t going to happen. The aim must be to beat Australia consistently, not just on an occasional basis.

The need to have excellence built into our cricket is all the more urgent because of the nature of the general sporting culture in our country compared with the likes of Australia and South Africa. They have much more of an outdoor lifestyle and are more driven to succeed at sport and prove themselves on the world stage.

If you excel in sport there, it seems you get glorified, whereas we still have a tendency to be suspicious of people who have an absolute desperation to be the best they can be, such as Nick Faldo, Jonny Wilkinson and Andy Murray. I do think it is changing for the better, and the 2008 Olympics certainly helped, but there is still some cultural resistance towards doing everything you can to win.

India are certain to produce more outstanding cricketers as the country develops and more people get access to the game. They are finally bringing 21st-century marketing techniques to the sport and the impact the Indian Premier League makes is bound to draw in more talent.

In my view, a major opportunity was missed when it came to setting up an EPL (English Premier League) to capitalise on the boom in Twenty20 cricket. The proposal to have nine franchises for three weeks per season was an excellent one and I do not accept that it would have been to the disadvantage of the established counties, as there could have been a profit-sharing system. Sadly, the vision to implement it was lacking and fear of the unknown got in the way.

Another benefit of fewer games would be to allow more of the counties’ contracted players to feature in the best of the local leagues. The professional game needs to reach out more to the grass roots of the sport and I think everyone who plays county cricket would benefit from playing four or five Saturdays per summer in the top leagues. The grassroots aspect of the sport can easily be overlooked by people in my position, but I have not forgotten that had it not been for my dad playing for Worsley, and me coming along to watch, I would probably have ended up in another sport.

That is where kids and parents often enter the sport, particularly if they are not at an independent school, where cricket is usually more readily available. While there is no question that the Sky television deal has brought much-needed money into the game — and their coverage is excellent — it is a worry that some children, as well as adults, may not be watching it in the way I did as a youngster simply because they do not have access. It is absolutely essential that we have cricket talked about in playgrounds throughout the country, and much of that springs from what they have seen on television. I just hope we are not missing out on talented kids when there are so many other sports competing for them, so we have to have decent grassroots facilities.

When I was in Western Australia in late 2006 with the England performance squad, coming back from injury, we practised at a public park cricket facility opposite the local zoo in Perth.

We were messing about and all these club players started arriving in immaculate gear into the dressing rooms, which had a huge plastic board with all sorts of tactics being planned. I thought it was the WA state team, but in fact they were club players in a league side, although later they were joined by Mike Hussey, Justin Langer and Adam Gilchrist, all training alongside these league players.

I do not think the odd outing in the leagues would do international players much harm, either, and the participation of county pros would raise the profile and standards among the better clubs. Going back to the leagues would remind possibly pampered pros of how much the game means to the postman or builder, for whom it may be the highlight of the week, and how much enjoyment they get out of it. There would also be exposure to a particular type of pressure to perform because that is what would be expected of you.

Good young players need to be attached to counties, but academies cannot be a substitute for the great lessons of life and cricket that you learn playing in the leagues. Yorkshire’s academy play as a team in the Yorkshire Premier League, but it would be much better if the players were individually allowed to play for clubs. As a teenager I learnt so much by sitting in dressing rooms with hardened club cricketers, and not just about the game of cricket! You sit there with a 40-year-old who has been at work all week and you cannot talk or act like an idiot, as you might do with your contemporaries; you have to be able to communicate.

Another objective of having fewer matches is that by July players are not just thinking, “Here we go again. Where’s the bus headed for now?” and instead are really up for what they are doing. No matter how deeply you love the game, it is hard to compete with the necessary intensity when you are playing too much.

There are many good things about county cricket, and I genuinely believe that we have no shortage of talent to challenge the likes of Australia, South Africa and, increasingly, India.

We can all agree on that. But it is a fast-moving world with shifting habits and tastes in which we can no longer even be sure of the primacy of Test cricket. A little streamlining and innovation from the 18 men who hold the real power in the English game — the county chairmen — would not go amiss.