Surrey chairman Richard Thompson has called for the ECB’s new chairman to make the staging of some Indian Premier League (IPL) matches in England one of their main aims – and thinks Ben Stokes should be used as a bargaining chip to achieve it.

Thompson believes the first priority of the ECB’s incoming chairman – set to be appointed later this year – should be to capture the interest of Britain’s Indian and south Asian communities, and having Indian stars such as Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma play in England would play a part in doing that.

The BCCI currently forbids its players from participating in foreign short-form tournaments such as the T20 Blast or The Hundred but are believed to be contemplating establishing a ‘mini’ overseas IPL tournament which Thompson thinks the ECB should use Stokes’ profile to secure the hosting of.

“Ben Stokes is one of the biggest bargaining chips English cricket has ever had,” Thompson told The Times.

“Ben Stokes not playing in the IPL would be like LeBron James not playing in the NBA. He is one of the biggest global cricket stars there has ever been and I believe that we should say to the BCCI, ‘If you want Stokes in your tournament, what are we going to get back for that?’ And use that as a starting point for negotiations.

“We are told there are around nine million people in this country who are interested in cricket but don’t currently go to watch it. Hopefully a good proportion of them will find their way to The Hundred and we can celebrate that. But I think we have missed a trick. The only way we are going to reach vast swathes of the Indian or south Asian communities is to bring the IPL over here.”

Thompson believes regardless of who is appointed, the new ECB chairman will face considerable challenges, in particular the need to repair damage done to its relationship with the counties.

“I don’t think the counties have ever felt more distant from the ECB and ultimately the ECB is the counties,” said Thompson. “The counties are the ECB’s members. It should be a partnership and I don’t think it is and one of the first jobs of the new chairman has to be to rebuild that trust.

“The game needs someone who is far less about command and control than in recent times and far more about being collegiate rather than divide and conquer. The new chairman needs to understand the challenges for the game in the coming years and allow counties to have be involved in the decision making without fear of retribution or withholding of funding.”