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Scyld Berry chairs a debate on county cricket with Mike Atherton, Angus Fraser and Steve James

Scyld Berry: Have standards improved as the England and Wales Cricket Board set out to do in Raising The Standard?

Angus Fraser: Over the last 10 years the standard has dropped but not in the last two or three years.

Steve James: The way Glamorgan have been playing this season the standard hasn't improved! But overall it's not as bad as some suggest.

Mike Atherton: There are good cricketers around but there's too much poor cricket played. There's a lack of real pace and unorthodox spin in the game.

AF: A lot of the overseas players used to be quick bowlers but now they tend to be opening batsmen, which doesn't make my life any easier [Chorus of 'Aaaaah']. I went and watched our Second XI the other day . . .

MA: You boring so and so.

AF: At least some of us take an interest in our younger players! Anyway, everybody seemed to be in a hurry. Batsmen weren't prepared to bat boringly all day for 170 [Atherton stood 176 not out against Glamorgan at stumps on Wednesday], and bowlers were trying to bowl three wicket-taking balls an over.

MA: The idea of four-day cricket was to stop the game being rushed. But if you're playing on bad wickets the attitude can be that you want to make hay before a ball with your name on it comes along.

SB: Has the ball been swinging more this season - as much as the white ball in the World Cup?

SJ: Yes, I think it has been.

AF: I think . . .

MA: What do you know about swing bowling? You've never swung a ball in your life.

AF: I was going to say the moment a bowler swings it, it's an excuse for getting out. You say to a batsman, why did you get out, and he says, oh it's swinging, as if it never swung in the past.

SB: Your game last week between Middlesex and Northamptonshire sounds like it was an archetypal championship match of this season, very low-scoring and played at too fast a tempo until an Australian batsman got stuck in [Justin Langer].

AF: The batting was awful: no patience, none of that over-my-dead-body sort of stuff. Bowl a few dot balls, the batsman has a big booming drive and thank you very much. Look at Athers, he's got through a career with two shots and one of them's to third man.

SJ (defensively): Nothing wrong with that!

AF: Then we come down to Southend to play Essex, and Nasser and Stuart Law showed how to do it. They block the good balls, bat through three or four maidens in a row if needs be, and play each ball on its merits.

MA: There have definitely been more sub-standard wickets this season. It's surprising nobody has been docked 25 points.

AF: Has it been deliberate, to help counties get in the top nine for next season?

MA: I don't know. You'd have to talk to chairmen and groundsmen.

SJ: We played on a bad wicket at Worcester, but it looked good and well-prepared on the surface. I'm sure that wasn't deliberate.

AF: You wonder what's going to happen at the end of the season if some county threatened with relegation are docked 25 points - they could take legal action. I think the standard of one-day cricket, though, has gone up throughout my career. The fielding's better and there's more variety in the bowling and batting.

SB: So the more one-day cricket we have, the better it becomes - and the worse first-class cricket becomes.

SJ: Yes, Duncan Fletcher mentioned that to us the other day. He said our batters were taking their one-day mentality into the four-day game where you've got to play straighter and not look to work the ball around.

AF: I don't think it's valid to blame too much one-day cricket. The best players are able to adapt from one pitch to another and it should be the same from one sort of game to another.

MA: If they introduce this 25-over idea, there are going to be four one-day competitions next season and one four-day competition. The balance is wrong.

SB: Steve, you played in an experimental 25-over match between Glamorgan and Worcestershire. What was it like?

SJ: I thought it was terrible. It was virtually a slog, not proper cricket, and it didn't seem to attract any more spectators.

MA: Our lads think floodlit cricket is the way forward. It attracts a new and younger audience, it's a family night out and even if you hate cricket there's plenty to do with a fun-fair and music and so on.

SJ: We're in favour of floodlit cricket too. Glamorgan have only had one game of it, last season, but it gets the players excited.

SB: And with ever more one-day cricket there must be even less prospect of producing a match-winning spinner as counties presumably won't play a couple of leg-spinners in 25-over games.

MA: Certainly there will be less attacking spin. Some counties are going to say, 'We can't win the championship this year but we could win a one-dayer' and they are going to keep a bits-and-pieces type of player on their staff rather than a leg-spinner who might need three years to develop.

AF: People play spin better now.

MA: Not unorthodox spin. We don't tour the sub-continent and the less spin you see, the fewer captains learn how to use it and set fields for it. It's a vicious circle, and 85 per cent of bowlers in county cricket are the sort of medium-pacers who don't affect Test cricket. Even our high-quality finger-spinners are much fewer than they used to be.

AF: Tuffers and Suchie [Phil Tufnell and Peter Such] are well into their thirties, Crofty's 29. Who else is there?

SJ: Dean Cosker's good, he's 21.

MA: What's going to happen to county cricket next season, with seven Tests and 10 one-dayers?

SB: Play the championship on out-grounds like Blackpool and Southend where you say you've had good crowds this week. The ECB should be arranging and subsidising regional pools of mobile scoreboards, tents and portaloos or whatever to encourage the counties to spread the game.

AF: You're always going on about regional cricket, Athers.

MA: There are a lot of good players in county cricket but the talent is spread too thinly. If four-day cricket is about developing your best players, then regional cricket would have your four strongest teams playing each other.

SJ: From my two appearances for England last season I'd say there's too big a gap between Test and county cricket and there should be something in between.

AF: But regional teams would have no identity. Spectators support Lancashire or Middlesex, not North-West or South-East, and the players would just be looking after themselves.

SJ: Perhaps it would be a good start to try regional sides against touring teams?