WINNING the County Championship has made it a dream summer for David Byas and his team who have brought back the Championship pennant to Yorkshire after an absence of 33 years.

But the summer went sour for six players with first team experience who were all released as part of cost-cutting measures.

Paul Hutchison, James Middlebrook, Ian Fisher, Simon Widdup, Tom Baker and Greg Lambert will have felt very isolated from the celebrations although four of them contributed in some part to the Championship success.

With the club's finance committee demanding further reductions in the playing staff budget, the list of departures may not yet be complete.

Like any other business, Yorkshire cannot exist beyond their means but is the pruning of the playing staff the wisest way forward for what is, after all, a cricket club?

One of the problems now is whether players will feel secure in the future or whether they will always be looking over their shoulders to see if the axe is going to fall on them.

And is the excellent work which is being done at the Academy in some way devalued and made meaningless if graduates are released before being given adequate time to show whether they are up to the standard demanded at first team level?

Certainly, Widdup, Baker and Lambert all have some justification for feeling that they have been disposed of without getting a reasonable crack of the whip.

If young players are going to be dispensed with almost before they have graduated then the Academy will be seen to be benefiting other counties far more than it is Yorkshire.

Thousands of pounds are spent on taking a player through the Academy and grooming him to first team standard but if he then moves on almost immediately, Yorkshire are forking out the cash and someone else is reaping the reward.

The Academy has been an outstanding success since it was started up at Bradford Park Avenue almost 12 years ago and virtually all of the younger home-grown players have come through its doors.

But many others have also been forced to move on elsewhere either through lack of opportunities with Yorkshire or because they were surplus to requirements.

If that number is to increase still further because of financial constraints then one wonders if the Academy will be able to continue in its present form.

England have been slow to recognise the superb work that has been done at the Yorkshire Academy and to cash in on it.

Instead of now attempting to set up county academies in various parts of the country from scratch, it would have made more sense to look more closely at the Yorkshire set-up and try to take it forward as a regional academy.

If the very best of young cricketers from four or five of the more northerly counties came under its umbrella the cost would be spread - and Yorkshire would not find they were producing more cricketers than they can really cope with in the present financial climate.