Women’s award is the only positive spin for ECB chiefs

ENGLAND’s World Cup-winning women cricketers being crowned Team of the Year at the BBC’s sports Personality awards only papers over the cracks at the ECB.

The humiliating surrender of the Ashes following three successive Test defeats in Australia has exposed a lack of planning, with the ruling body seemingly focused too much on white-ball cricket and their flagship Twenty20 tournament starting in 2020.

In contrast, Australia all-rounder Mitchell Marsh (right), who made a century in his side’s third Test victory in Perth, will turn down Indian Premier League offers to take up a contract with surrey next summer that will give him great experience of English conditions ahead of the 2019 Ashes.

Sports Agenda revealed last week that 10 counties have written to ECB chairman Colin Graves complaining at being marginalised by the way the eight- city T20 competition which is being set up. And the expectation among the already disgruntled counties is that the next ECB financial report in May will reveal between £7million and £9m spent on the recreational game, a huge increase with little obvious result. This will only ramp up the pressure on Graves, who is staying on in Australia until February rather than fighting the fires burning on the home front. The counties believe that the pressure on ECB finances will lead to a number of jobs being lost within the ruling body. An ECB spokesman said: ‘Money spent on the recreational game is always money well spent. Those who play the game are more likely to watch it.’