Joe Root claimed any success English cricketers have on the international stage is "in spite of county cricket, not because of it" as he demanded chances to the way the system works.
The England skipper was speaking in the aftermath of his team's drubbing in the latest Ashes series Down Under.
Australia were by far the superior side over the course of the tour as they secured a 4-0 victory, denied a whitewash only by rain delays which helped the tourists force a draw in Sydney.
While there are a number of factors behind England's poor performances over the past six weeks, the current country cricket structure has been mentioned by several pundits as something which needs work.
And now the England captain has joined those calls for changes to the domestic game.
"What incentives in county cricket right now are there to open the batting?" Root asked. "What incentives are there to be a spinner? And what incentives are there to bowl fast?
"There don't seem to be many, whether you look at the first-innings average scores of 250 or whatever they are, how short the games last.
"I'm not going to make excuses for a performance like that, because that’s not good enough for Test cricket. It doesn’t matter how inexperienced you are.
"Even on that surface, which did help the seamers, we’re a better team than that and we’ve got to give a better account of ourselves.
"But what I will say is, anyone that’s coming into this Test team at the minute is doing it in spite of county cricket, not because of county cricket
"There are definitely things that need to change. You look at some of the young batters – when have they had the opportunity to go out with 450, 500 on the board and deal with scoreboard pressure?
"You don’t practice it in county cricket. The only time they’re exposed to it is in this environment.
"When have they had to go out to save a game against a turning ball in spinning conditions?
"They’ve never been exposed to it. And yet we’re expected to go to the subcontinent and win games against the best spinners in the world."
Not content with just identifying the problems, Root was happy to offer some potential solutions which he believes might have a positive impact on the international side's fortunes in the future.
"We need to produce better wickets," he began. "How are we going to do that? Hopefully by playing at a better time of the year. By flattening the seam on the ball. Maybe giving our seamers the opportunity to bowl with a Kookaburra ball.
"We could double the batting bonus points, too. There are a number of things that I think we can do quite quickly to give our guys a better opportunity to ready themselves for this environment.
"And obviously it will nullify running in and bowling at 70mph. It will encourage guys to try and create new angles, be either more consistent or find a different way of taking wickets, and it will give spinners an opportunity to bowl in the first half of the season."
