Too much county cricket - Cumbes

Lancashire chief executive Jim Cumbes has said counties are being asked to play too much cricket.

They will play at least 10 Twenty20 Cup ties this season, plus their FP Trophy, County Championship and Pro 40 games.

The fixture list will become even more crowded next year when two new Twenty20 competitions are introduced.

"There's only so much cricket you can play," he told BBC Radio Lancashire. "It's an extremely crowded calendar and there's only so much people can watch."

Cumbes added: "We don't seem to be learning the lessons at all. I don't know whether it's this continual dash for cash that the ECB seems to have engineered over the last few years.

"I fully appreciate that TV wants its schedules filling, but first of all we need to get our cricket right and if the cricket's right and the cricket's good, people will want to broadcast it."

Wherever you look there are fixtures on the calendar... I think there's far too much cricket

Lancashire chief executive Jim Cumbes

Cumbes, who also holds the role of chairman of the County Chief Executives, agrees with Hampshire's Nick Pothas and Somerset's Andrew Caddick who have both said in the past week that they feel too much domestic cricket is being played.

"Wherever you look there are fixtures on the calendar," added Cumbes.

"We've now got warm-up matches this week for the World Twenty20, we've got our (Lancashire's) own crowded fixture list which we're trying to squeeze matches in to, we've got a split Twenty20 competition, a Pro40 competition to come yet and the 16-match County Championship, so I think there's far too much cricket."