Counties vote for new 8 team, city based T20 competition.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/37365637

Voted through by 16 votes to 3 (not sure who had the 19th vote). Surrey, Kent and Sussex were reported to be the three votes against the move, though I had hear that Yorkshire and Surrey were both refusing to sanction/host a tournament that would mean losing their name (so no Leeds Tykes or London Lions at Headingley and Oval). Guess the truth will come out at some point.

Tournament will be in addition to the current 18 county T20 and expected to start in 2018. Not sure when in the calendar it would fit, and it now needs to be presented to the individual county memberships for voting on.

Fantastic, even more cricket... If they wanted to create a viable tournament to rival the IPL/BBL they had to do away with the Blast for me. Just going to be overkill now.

How are these 8 new teams going to be made up and where will their supporters come from?

Unlike quite a few Surrey supporters (I'm referring to people at the Oval, not on this forum), I have no great dislike of Middlesex and wouldn't deliberately boycott a game because, say, the London Llamas fielded a side of players from both clubs. However, persuading me to traipse up to town to watch it is another matter and unlikely to be successful. I guess the usual City suits - more interested in the drinks - would attend after work but will their numbers be enough?

Also, with only 8 teams taking part, what are all the players not involved (who come from 18 county sides) going to be doing?

It'll be just like the IPL where the Bombay Bashers (featuring four Indians, two New Zealanders, a South African and sundry others) take on the Delhi Dashers (with an equal number of players from far-flung parts).
This sort of thing brings in huge crowds in India where they leap up and down every time a boundary is hit, but look as if they have no idea what's going on.
Doubt if there'll be anything like the interest in England, if you strip the "county" element from T20.

It'll be just like the IPL where the Bombay Bashers (featuring four Indians, two New Zealanders, a South African and sundry others) take on the Delhi Dashers (with an equal number of players from far-flung parts).
  This sort of thing brings in huge crowds in India where they leap up and down every time a boundary is hit, but look as if they have no idea what's going on.
  Doubt if there'll be anything like the interest in England, if you strip the "county" element from T20.

I am baffled by this and have no idea who the new league will be aimed at. If the Blast had been chopped then I could just about understand it i.e. aiming to create a smaller, better quality tournament and anyone wanting to watch some T20 would be left with no alternative

This just seems to be trying to please everyone whilst achieving nothing

The current Blast is liked by trhe smaller counties for giving regular Friday night income - however it is a pretty poor competition - excepting the spectacle of finals Day of copurse. ECB (and more importantly Sky) wanted a major T20 competition that could be done and dusted in a couple of weeks with the best players in the world coming over.

Have to say I loved Alec Swann's suggestion when pondering how the Blast would market itself: "we've lost the best, now see the rest".

Brexit seems to have created folks who pull up the drawbridge and live in denial. In the rest of the world, T20 cricket is what gets the crowds, like it or not. India have IPL, Australia Big Bash, Caribbean have CPL, even Pakistan, South Africa and Bangladesh have their own T20 leagues, and they also hire foreign players. If you don't like it, don't watch it, but lots of youngsters will watch it.

"It will be a two-to-three week tournament"

The Caribbean Premier League ran from June 29 to Aug 7 this year. If this competition is to survive, it cannot clash with the CPL, or it will lose. Gayle, Russell, Bravo and Pollard are the stars that will sell the tournament, and they will always choose the CPL first. Indians would rather watch them than Morgan and Jordan.

Will Stokes, etc play? Without England players like Stokes, Hales, Buttler, etc, it will struggle....

I highly doubt most people who fill grounds like Taunton or Chelmsford for T20s will care what their names are. If think if there were that many people who cared about the name of the County to boycott T20, there would be a lot more people watching the CC - if they love their county that much.

But as mentioned, not binning the Blast is just asking for trouble. You are trying to sell tickets to even more cricket, when there is already too much cricket!

And at least with this new tournament every game will be on TV. And we avoid the ludicrous situations that have arisen where we have had played like Gayle or McCullum making 50 ball hundreds that are only seen by one camera angle on Youtube highlights.

shivfan wrote:
The Caribbean Premier League ran from June 29 to Aug 7 this year. If this competition is to survive, it cannot clash with the CPL, or it will lose. Gayle, Russell, Bravo and Pollard are the stars that will sell the tournament, and they will always choose the CPL first.

You may be right - but for a number of those players money is king rather than any form of patriotism, and an EPL would be able to pay a lot more than the CPL can.

If they were going to do this they needed to go all in and make it instead of the Blast

Making it alongside the Blast is just idiotic and a half measure

Why is cricket so shockingly run from top down? Just awful

Well it seems it has been given the go ahead today. Those who don't like T20 won't have gone to what exists now and won't go to this new competition either.
The problem will come if the loss of the county flavour which is being replaced by a regional/international feel will be popular with enough existing T20 fans. Or are the powers-that-be hopeful of attracting a brand new audience?