Warwickshire hope to have a new pavilion in place by the start of the 2011 cricket season after unveiling ambitious plans for the redevelopment of Edgbaston.

The club aim to ensure the future of international cricket at Edgbaston by increasing the ground's capacity to 25,000, making it the sport's second biggest in the UK.

A detailed planning application is expected to be made by Christmas and the club hope to start work in September 2009. If all goes well, the redeveloped Edgbaston should be completed in time for the 2011 season.

The project, which is provisionally expected to cost around #21 million, will be financed by a mixed-use development on the land that boarders the Pershore Road and Edgbaston Road. The club also hope to retain the freehold to the land and gain revenue from the new non-cricket developments.

Key to the scheme is the retention of international cricket at the ground. The revenue from such games is vital to the continuing health of the club but with new stadiums in Durham, Cardiff and Southampton, Warwickshire know that the competition has never been tougher.

"If we didn't have international cricket it would be a total disaster," the club's honorary treasurer Steven Mills told the meeting. "With ten venues competing to host a maximum of seven Tests a year, bold decisions are necessary to preserve our status."

Cardiff and Hampshire were denounced as "headline grabbers" by Mills, who urged the ECB to resist their lure.

"Look who perform year in, year out," he urged the ECB. "Not just headline grabbers."

Mills also reprimanded those clubs — such as Worcestershire — that complain that Warwickshire should share the profits from hosting particularly successful Tests such as the one against Australia in 2005. Despite income of around #8 million in 2006, Warwickshire declared a profit of just over #3,000.

"Those that bleat in the provinces should note that we need to make #8 million just to keep our heads above water," he said.

"As an international the pressure is on us," the club's chief executive Colin Povey agreed. "Newcomers are trying to muscle in".

Crucially, Povey praised the support of the city council and stated that they "want to the club to do things bigger and faster,"

Mills also hit out at the England and Wales Cricket Board policy over staging agreements. Complaining that they no longer offered more than three-year deals, Mills stated that the insecurity of such short-term assurances "inhibited banker, developers and financiers" from getting involved in large scale capital projects.

"It is not a sensible position," he said in typically forthright fashion. "One wonders how the people who made such decisions got to such positions."