For your convenience - Chris Grant's blueprint on the blog

For a whole host of reasons, I believe it is crucial that the club formally adopt this strategy. From a financial perspective, it makes massive sense.


The ECB actively encourages counties through its Performance Related Fee Payment (PRFP) structure to develop and play young England qualified players. If we play two under-22s who are qualified to play for England in a County Championship game, we receive £2,000 for each of them in every game they play.

On the basis of our current likely first choice 11 for both the Championship and CB40 competition, we are losing out on roughly £100,000 a season in PFRP payments, which is not that different to the total amount we generate from our entire membership subscriptions.

Added to this, there is the kudos and pride to be derived when one of our own players progresses to the England Lions or on to the full national side, as I am confident in time they will.

Overall, I believe that it is a "no brainer" to adopt this as the key plank of our future cricket strategy.

We need to let our members know that we are confident enough to back our youngsters and then give the young players the time and support to succeed, though they will, of course, need to earn their places in the side on merit.

Playing them for one game and dropping them if they fail is a definite no.

The message to the outside world needs to be to encourage support for this "Busby Babes" strategy. Clearly, some of the youngsters will not make it but I'm sure that more will than won't.

It will be the club's policy to field nine England qualified players in every game in 2013 but I must underline that this would not preclude us retaining the services of some of our best current players, like Chesney Hughes, Wayne Madsen and Greg Smith, as they are all likely to be England qualified by that time.

A defined young player pathway

At present, when an academy player graduates and is offered his first professional contract, there is no structured career development plan at Derbyshire for the individual concerned.

He joins the professional staff and, in essence, he sinks or swims on his own.

While the world of professional sport is a tough one, there needs to be a "route map" with support for the young professional, both within cricket and beyond it.

The Professional Cricketers Association has recently established courses for new professionals that deal with all aspects of becoming a professional cricketer. We need to embrace these.

It is absolutely crucial to ensure that our youngsters feel that by playing for Derbyshire, they are part of something special, where they are rewarded on a par with their peers at the other counties and have a greater level of support and opportunity.

PCA/ECB recommended minimum salaries

THREE-YEAR contracts for young players – where deemed appropriate – will become the norm but with strong safeguards against complacency built in through the use of an annual performance appraisal process.

We need to properly reward our young players and this doesn't happen now. The PCA and ECB have agreed recommended minimum salary scales and I am embarrassed to say that we currently pay a number of our young players considerably below these levels.

The PCA scales will form the basis of our new salary structure for younger players but there will also be scope through annual player appraisals for young players to earn more than these levels of pay as they break into the first team, as Chesney Hughes and Jon Clare both have, for example.

It is also crucial to ensure that our players develop off the field and in return for issuing new contracts to young players with, in some cases, reasonably significant uplifts to salaries, it is also intended to require all our young players to study for their cricket coaching qualifications.

It is also going to be written into new contracts that the players are required to spend a minimum of 20 hours of coaching time a year working with the mini academy and full academy players.

It will have a hugely positive impact on the members of the academy to think that they are being helped by current professionals and will also help build a "one club" ethos.

Karl Krikken and Luke Sutton's roles

Clearly, the departure of John and Andy means that we have the opportunity to replace one or both of them and we have already received a host of enquiries from individuals interested in taking on the role, both from this country and overseas.

In essence, it's a question of where to allocate scarce financial resources from our combined playing and coaching budget to generate the maximum return for Derbyshire CCC on the pitch.

I firmly believe that we should formalise Karl Krikken's appointment as the club's head coach for the next three years. Karl is a one-county man with 25 years of service at Derbyshire, is very well respected throughout the game and is an excellent coach, who already possesses his level four badge.

Karl has also worked with all of our young Academy graduates and is therefore uniquely placed to assess their development.

I think he and Luke Sutton are an excellent combination. Luke is an intelligent club captain and is well respected as a leader in the dressing room, with extensive connections throughout the game.

All the indications suggest that the combination is working well so far and, having spoken to both individuals, each is happy with the other's role. From a financial perspective, this is also a sensible option as both individuals are already on the payroll.

The role of Academy Director

I would like to formalise Howard Dytham's role as academy director.

Howard is a level four coach currently employed as executive manager at the Derbyshire Cricket Board, has worked for the DCB for over 12 years and is responsible, along with the other professional members of staff and key volunteers, for the delivery of the plan for recreational cricket across Derbyshire.

Coaching interaction

WHILE Karl, as head coach, would clearly spend the majority of his time with the first team, the coaches would interchange between the teams.

For example, from time to time, Howard Dytham would accompany the first team and Steffan Jones would work with the academy, with the aim of developing a more seamless and consistent approach across the club.

This would mean warm-up drills and the like could be consistent and should make for an easier transition for the players from mini academy to academy to second team and on to the first team.

Establish a specialist coaching fund

To augment the three key coaches, we intend to establish a dedicated pot of £25,000, managed by Karl Krikken, to fund specialist coaching where required.

David Houghton has an excellent reputation as a batting coach and has signalled his intention to do some coaching work for us, while if there is a chance to bring in someone like Allan Donald to work with our bowlers, we should take it.

The fund could also be used to send players abroad in the English winter, as was the case with Tom Poynton's attendance at the Darren Lehmann Academy in Adelaide this year.

Hugh Morris from the ECB has also indicated that the National Cricket Performance Centre at Loughborough is a resource that we can utilise more extensively.

New contracts for key players

While the main thrust of Derbyshire's future cricket strategy is to back our young home grown players, clearly this is a long-term plan.

It needs to be tempered by the fact that the club have some excellent established players whose presence is crucial both for their contribution on the field and their role in bringing on the younger players.

I will be sitting down with every player on the senior staff after the Twenty20 group stages and new contracts on enhanced terms will be offered to those key individuals where their financial demands accord with the club's evaluation of their worth.

But I will not endorse chasing players to retain them where I believe the market price is wrong and would lead to resentment and instability amongst the other players.

Landmark player signing

Implementing all our key recommendations will still leave Derbyshire with virtually double the budget of recent years with which to sign a landmark player for 2012 and beyond.

Making the right signing and someone who will buy into the club's overall strategy will be crucial but the resources will be available for a landmark recruit.

It is surely not a coincidence that the recruitment of the likes of Eddie Barlow and Dean Jones in the past led to success on the field for Derbyshire.