Counties condemn Illingworth

A year that began badly for Ray Illingworth is gradually getting worse as England's counties yesterday united in condemning him for his claims that not enough Test standard players are being produced from the ranks.

The counties, whose structure within the Britannic Assurance Championship has long been blamed for failing to provide the competitiveness necessary to groom future Test players, rejected the England team manager's assertion that they should "look at themselves".

Illingworth believes a talent drain is the major factor in England's Test and one-day international defeats in South Africa, saying: "The bottom line is that we are at a pretty low ebb for talent at the moment in England. The counties are just not producing young players of the calibre of, say, Shaun Pollock."

But the former England batsman Dennis Amiss, now Warwickshire's chief executive, insisted: "It's disappointing to hear comments like that because we don't feel we could be doing more to produce good cricketers for Warwickshire and England."

Illingworth found little support either at Lancashire, who provided captain Michael Atherton, Peter Martin, John Crawley, Mike Watkinson, Neil Fairbrother and Jason Gallian for England duty this winter.

Geoff Ogden, the chairman of Lancashire's cricket committee, said: "You only have to look at the likes of Michael Atherton and John Crawley, to see where our priorities lie."

The former England paceman Graham Dilley, now the bowling coach at Surrey, stressed: "If Ray Illingworth feels like that, I would have thought he is in the ideal position to do something about it."