The Telegraph has a better coverage of the forthcoming county season today although it clutches at straws a little bit to nominate a player from each second division county who may get an Ashes call up - Chris Jordan, James Harris, Graeme Wagg, David Sales, Josh Cobb and Jon Lewis among others.
However the more interesting article alongside this refers to Div 2 games using new Tiflex balls and Div 1 using Dukes. Apparently there is a big difference between the two if you listen to Paul Grayson and Tim Boon and Mark Rapmrakash - perhaps Tiflex balls are square and bigger?
As usual Angus Fraser puts it into perspective by saying in his day there were 3 types of manufactured balls so they have nowt to moan about today!
I'm all for letting the bowlers have more of a level playing field but I'd imagine it means that no bowler from division two can possibly get a call-up for England because whatever success he has, it will be impossible to judge whether he or the ball did the real work and there's no way of knowing if he could do it with a test match ball.
It's okay for Fraser to say in his day they used three types of balls, all the bowlers of that day did. Now we have half the bowlers using a different ball.
Beginning of the end of an equal two division championship. If that's the aim then very successful.