I may be missing the point, but...

This England Lions side...

Given that we are now looking at selecting two players in every county side who are under the age of 22 and a further three under 26 you would expect the make up of this side, the natural conduit into the Test side, to be made up of young guns, lads who have years ahead of them in the game.

So why does it include Michael Carberry at 29? Or Sajid Mahmood at 28, Michael Lumb at 29 or Peter Trego at 28? There's James Tredwell at 27, the same age as Ian Bell (who I'd have thought they would have known enough about by now) and Steve "Perennial Lion" Kirby at 32.

Now I'm not disputing the ability of any of these players, all of whom have given excellent service to their counties in the last couple of years. Yet in doing so, they prove a point.

Some of them are late developers.

Take Carberry as a prime example. He has kicked around the county scene for Surrey and more recently Hampshire since 2001, and it was only when he moved to the latter that he came to terms with his game and county cricket to emerge as someone called into the England setup as a first reserve, had Paul Collingwood failed a fitness test.

Would he have got that opportunity with the new quota system? Might he not, at 26, have ended up on the "good, but not good enough" pile? That is the problem with the system. ladies and gentlemen. A lot of players who develop at their own pace which may well not be accelerated by the new system, whether the ECB like it or not.

I would agree with the sender of a recent e mail that most batsmen are at their peak by the time they are 30. If you look at the great players, their really prolific years have come between 30 and 35. Some have extended that to 40. Yet are we not consigning some, perhaps future international players, to the scrapheap by saying that only 6 over the age of 26 can appear in a county side without penalty?

It is very worrying for a small club like Derbyshire, Leicestershire or Worcestershire, all of whom depend on their ECB handout to keep the wolf from the door. Irrespective of how well run we are as a county, Derbyshire simply cannot afford to put two fingers up at the ECB and say we will pick whoever we like, whenever we like.

That Paul Borrington and Dan Redfern will be in our first choice side in the Championship this season is highly likely. The problem will come if one or both hit a bad run of form. Does John Morris continue to pick them and hope they work it out, or does he do the sensible thing and pull them from the firing line to rediscover their mojo in the Seconds?

If any one thing has highlighted the frailties of the new quota system it is this Lions selection. Had it been made up of under 26's awash with talent I could have understood it more and would have held up my hands accordingly to say "well done."

As it is, the selection has made it a bit of a joke. The presence of young guns such as Rashid, Woakes, Finn, Kieswetter and Taylor is encouraging. Yet when a 32 year old seamer is in there alongside another good, near England player who is 28 (Mahmood), it smacks of shooting oneself in the foot, does it not? As it does when the best spinner in the country, on figures is, 27.

Similarly, the first three in the order are likely to be Carberry, Lumb and Bell - or 29, 29, 27 respectively. It is no great surprise of course. How many under 26 players currently hold together, or even appear regularly in their county side? Outside of Leicestershire, not many is my guess.

So, to cut a long story short - I just hope we bin the Memorandum of Understanding as soon as possible.

There's a big danger that it is being misunderstood.