I hate these types of articles. Saying you hate white ball cricket over and over again isn't journalism. To quibble some specific points
England have recently endured one of the most epic thrashings imaginable by a not especially good Australian team
The batting performance and result was pretty unacceptable, but where has this narrative about Australia being a rubbish team come from? Because they played baldy in a couple of games against India a year earlier? Before the start of the series Warner, Smith, Labuschagne, Khwaja and Head had test averages in Australia of 63, 68, 73, 53 and 47. Smith and Labuschage also happen to be competing to have the top two best batting averages since Bradman, and Warner happens to be statistically one of the best openers in Australia of all time. Then there's Cummins, Hazlewood, Starc, and Lyon with home bowling averages of 21, 25, 27, and 33 (which isn't impressive on it's own but he has been the only spinner to have consistent success in the conditions), and pretty much the perfect attack for Australia, spearheaded by the best fast bowler in the World.
The ECB need people of genuine vision and strategic ability to act as chairman and chief executive, and to support those officers
How about the bloke you just mentioned who had the vision and strategic ability to help win an away Ashes and become the best white ball team in the World? The guy you just trashed for no reason
That England won (by the skin of their teeth) the last World Cup was partly down to [Strauss]. But in directing energies towards that aim, first-class cricket started to descend into irrelevance. That was obvious to me, to other cricket writers, and to hundreds of thousands who follow the game. It was apparently not obvious to the ECB, whose luminaries appeared to be taken by surprise when, as a direct consequence of this policy, the debacle occurred in Australia a few weeks ago
Utter bollocks. England have a huge dearth of red and white ball batting talent born between 92 and 97. I even made a post about it. The only international quality batter England produced between those years is Livingstone. That didn't come to bite the white ball side very hard because they basically got lucky with a generation of amazing white ball batters born between about 1986 and 1991 (Bairstow, Roy, Root, Morgan, Stokes, Buttler, Hales, Malan, Ali etc) who are still going strong. On the other hand that dearth of players perfectly coincided with an entire generation of English red ball batters that were all a few years older retiring from tests (Bell, KP, Strauss, Cook, Trott, Prior) and not getting replaced.
In terms of individuals, the only players who might have actually been good test players you can look at and say were adversely affected in their red ball batting by the white ball focus from 2015 onwards are YJB (who had by far his best red ball year in 2016) and Moeen. Buttler, Roy, Hales, and Morgan were white ball specialists before the shift, and Root and Stokes have excelled in both formats.
The 2022 fixture list emphasises the fact that someone, somewhere, just doesn’t get it. Seven rounds of the Championship will be completed by May 22. While this will allow the selector(s) to have a decent look at players before the first Test series starts on June 2, they will mostly have been playing in conditions that do little to help our batsmen or to breed that other commodity of which the national side is short, slow bowlers. There are just two rounds in June and three in July; but no first-class cricket will be played in the county championship between July 28 and September 5, so that players may prostitute themselves in The Hundred.
You can't have your cake and eat it. If the players don't play a good chunk of red ball cricket before the test summer people will complain they're underdone and unprepared for tests. The fact of the matter is climatic conditions in England will never be like they are in Australia, South Africa, the West Indies, or anywhere in Asia. To give an example, the hottest and driest month in Leeds is colder and wetter than the coldest and wettest month in winter in Brisbane.
That doesn't mean I'm happy with how the schedule is or that it doesn't need to change. But realistically people like Heffer will complain whatever happens.