The rise of Twenty20 and of India's power are challenging English cricket's ability to function independently

What sort of team composition does a successful county side need?

The rain has ravaged the season, but there are still chances of a good finish to the County Championship

The standards of player conduct have slipped in the county game, and umpires and captains are content to turn a blind eye

The players, certainly; the fans, to an extent; but the media hardly do; and on the evidence of it, the selectors aren't considering performances on the circuit either

England are gravely short of depth, and the debate over qualification criteria is making the issue more vexed

Why the new proposal for an English Premier League will benefit the big counties and grounds and leave the rest vulnerable

England's top six don't seem to be making the switch to the longer version quickly enough

The drawing power of Twenty20 offers the ECB an opportunity to streamline the number of English domestic competitions

The ECB and the counties may be keen on a midsummer Twenty20 competition, but there's merit in having one that runs across the season instead

Leicestershire's avowed strategy is to build a core group of senior overseas pros as mentors for young English talent

The idea of foreign players in county cricket is not intrinsically bad, but surely there have to be limits to the influx

England's top six could do worse than get their heads down and churn out the hard yards rather than dream of IPL cash

In the first instalment of his new fortnightly column on Cricinfo, Christopher Martin-Jenkins looks at how the ECB has to decide whether it wants to react to the IPL with a franchise-based Twenty20 league of its own