Tales of the not entirely unexpected...

News today that Somerset have persuaded Chris Gayle to come to England for this season's T20. The player, probably the best batsman in the format at present, will doubtless strengthen a side shorn of Kieron Pollard, who will be touring with the West Indies at the time.

Doubtless he will find Taunton's short boundaries and perfect strip to his liking, undoubtedly a factor in his decision. I understand that another county made a very good offer for the player's services but Gayle and his agent presumably plumped for the one that they thought offered the best chance of lifting the trophy. I guess they didn't check the competitions that Somerset have lost at the final hurdle thus far, but the assumption is that the addition of the dynamic West Indian will be the missing link. We'll have to see about that one, though the inescapable feeling is that with their line up they should do so sooner, rather than later. If not, questions should be asked.

Its funny how everyone sees things differently. I know that if I was a top international star, my combative personality would, assuming the money was right, make me want to play for a lesser team - a bit like Eddie Barlow did - and take it as a challenge as to how I could improve things. Others prefer to go where the medals potentially are, which is of course their prerogative. At the end of a career, medals are important, but there's those that relish a challenge more than others and I'd sooner have played for Derbyshire, Leicestershire or Northamptonshire than Somerset, Surrey and Lancashire.

At the other end of the scale, the decision by the local Council to reject a planned development at Bristol may see Gloucestershire leave the town and will also see Hamish Marshall on a reduced terms contract, something built in when he was re-signed. Such is the lot of modern county cricket, when the rich seem to get richer and some of the poor are getting poorer. Having said that, I eagerly await Derbyshire's financial statement in the next couple of months and hope that it reflects the massive amount of work done at the County Ground in recent months.

Finally tonight, a comment from me on the plans for county cricket from 2014. In short, I'm not impressed.

With England currently the best team in the world at Test and T20 cricket, surely that is proof that we're doing something right? The teams I have watched in the Australian Big Bash are not in the same league and I just feel our administrators like to justify their existence by change for change sake. Why 14 championship matches, not 16? A team could win the league by dint of a favourable fixture list, one that means they only play the better sides once. Why go back to 50-over games when most fans prefer the shorter, 40-over versions - or would if they could work out when and where they were being played.

Why, for that matter, prune eight days from the championship programme to give players a rest, then fill most of them with additional T20 games that, in their intensity, probably take more out of them? This, of course, two years after deciding to prune the smack and giggle game for the attention deficit generation. It is, quite frankly, bizarre.

I have to laugh (in a hollow way) at the way we pander to Indian cricket, allowing players to miss the start of the season for the IPL and then ending ours early so one team can go and play in the Champions Trophy there. I'm happy to go on record in saying that there's more chance of a sex change for me by midnight tonight than the English team winning this. Why? Because it's out of our season, in a totally strange environment, with the star overseas players that won the competition in England playing for the more lucrative overseas franchises. Not only that, last year the Mumbai Indians could select five overseas players, with most of the rest having just the two. I'm reminded of the Eurovision Song Contest, a competition so parochially fixed that the UK wouldn't win if everyone else boycotted it.

It is all a bit of a mess and I feel sorry for county chairmen and coaches. You can only play under 26's for ECB money, can hardly sign a worthwhile overseas player, lose players to England, the Lions and training camps and are still expected to create a competitive squad. If things carry on, we'll be restricting selection to only those who have scored ten centuries by their 20th birthday or taken 200 wickets by the same time. There will be three teams and we'll play a season's T20 in a day, before getting on a plane to play the rest of the year in India, because people ceased to care.

It's a crying shame. My old Dad has always told me that cricket is the greatest game in the world "ruined by them buggers at Lords that run it".

The older I get, the more convinced I am that he's been right all this time.