Visiting captains will again be given the option of bowling first without a toss in the Specsavers County Championship in 2017, the England and Wales Cricket Board has announced.

The measure was introduced for this year's Championship in a bid to ensure more matches lasted the maximum of four days, thereby preparing players for the step up to five-day Tests.

It is also designed to promote spin bowling and improve batting against spin.

The idea is that host counties will be less inclined to produce pitches that favour seam bowlers and therefore shorter games, with the result being more matches lasting the maximum of four days.

Spin bowling is generally more prevalent and effective the longer a game lasts.

The ECB argues that a difference is already being made, such as 85 per cent of 2016 matches going into a fourth day compared to 74 per cent in 2015 and 843 Championship wickets being taken by spin in 2016 - up from 752 in 2015.

All 16 of Hampshire's Championship matches went into a fourth day this year, as opposed to 13 in 2015. Despite the loss of Danny Briggs, Hampshire's spinners took a combined 60 wickets in 2016, up from 54 in 2015, including 31 by Mason Crane.

Hampshire took the option to bowl first in only two of their eight away games (the draws away to Yorkshire and Surrey in April and September). Under the new rule, four teams decided to bowl first at the Ageas Bowl last season.

The first three visitors - Warwickshire, Middlesex and Nottinghamshire - and Durham in the final week of the season decided no toss was necessary.

The decision to retain the playing condition for a second year was ratified by the ECB Board on Tuesday after a recommendation from the governing body's Cricket Committee.

Chairman of the committee Peter Wright said on the ECB's website: "In many ways the statistics merely reinforced the feeling we had been picking up around the game throughout the summer, that the experiment was working in beginning to rebalance the game."