Stewart, who has been Surrey’s director of cricket since 2014, criticised the decision to schedule a one-day international series against Ireland that affected availability for the final two rounds of the Championship. He also complained about the mooted 2024 schedule, which will further marginalise the first-class game, urging the governing body to better support the counties.
With England resting their World Cup squad for the Ireland series, Surrey were without Gus Atkinson and Sam Curran for the run-in, and then had to do without Will Jacks and Jamie Smith as both were included in a second-string squad for those matches. Jacks and Smith missed the penultimate fixture against Northamptonshire, with Surrey struggling in their absence, before joining the final match against Hampshire at the Ageas Bowl on day two (Wednesday) after Ireland series ended in Bristol on Tuesday.
“I have a bit of a moan here at the ECB,” Stewart said after Surrey had been confirmed as champions for the 21st time in their history. “They still need to respect the County Championship. We all like the Championship, have played in it, worked with it.
“Take these Ireland games – England didn’t pick their first team, which was understandable because of the World Cup. But also to say that there was one game during round 13, then a game in between and then one game on the first day of this game. That to me is disrespectful to the county game.
“Could they have staged it better so that you only missed one game and had all three games during that penultimate game and perhaps on that first rest day so that everyone is then available?”
With the 2024 T20 World Cup in June and July, domestic competitions will be squeezed further to the periphery next summer. The ECB has discussed billing the season’s climax as “Super September”, with the latter stages of the T20 Blast, finals of the Metro Bank One-Day Cup and Rachel Heyhoe Flint Trophy, along with the climax of the County Championship season.
The men’s competitions will be shorn of personnel given the international fixtures running concurrently, with the third Test against Sri Lanka, and three T20Is and five ODIs against Australia crammed into 23 days from September 6. Stewart, who has seen the early plans, regards the situation as unworkable.
“Even next year, what the probable schedule looks like next year, the ECB are going to try and call it Super September. It’s anything but. When the quarter-final of the T20 is on, there’s a Test match. When the finals of the T20 is on, England are playing Australia in T20s on the Friday and the Sunday. When the 50-over final is on, England are playing Australia.
“You have to work with the national team, and I always want England to be the best. But also trying to find a way of being more respectful to the county game because that is where your players are made to go on to England. That’s what we’re up against.”
Stewart also called for a return to an eight-team top division to ensure greater integrity in the competition. The ECB shifted to a 10-team Division One in 2021, along with a leaner fixture list with each team playing 14 matches. It meant not everyone in the top-flight plays each other twice, leading to Surrey facing second-place Essex just once this season, after only playing closest challengers Hampshire at the Kia Oval in their successful 2022 campaign.
Stewart also regarded the experimental use of the Kookaburra ball for two rounds in June and July as another impediment to a balanced league structure.
“If there is symmetry to it, it is so much better. We only played Essex once this year, and the fact that we brought the Kookaburra in for two games – why? We had two home games, others had two away games, others had one at home and one away. So, the integrity of the tournament, you still want to try and keep. We don’t want to be talking about [whether] it is right or fair that we’ve only played Essex once.
“It is not easy – I do have sympathy with the people who have to put the schedule together – but my role is director of cricket at Surrey so I care about county cricket a lot. I just want to see that it’s not diluted or put on the backburner and everything is just looked at, internationally or franchise.”
Vithushan Ehantharajah is an associate editor at ESPNcricinfo
