This looks like a good film to watch: glad to see someone is asking the right questions about cricket administration
http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/903855.html?CMP=NLC-DLY
This makes a lot of sense (although as Mikey points out, you do Derby a disservice, they were in Div 1 not long ago). The trouble is no-one really knows the point of the current structure: is it to provide a decent test team? Is it to make money? Is to provide an outlet for talented players to...
Yes, that's the proposal. As someone says, it's to smash up the counties. The trouble is, the counties hold the bulk of the voting rights so there'd have to be big money heading their way for this to be a goer. £40m sounds a lot but a good part of that has to filter back to cricket as a whole...
That's what I mean. The Sky proposal is not based around counties so there'd be something like the Birmingham Barons playing in one competition and the Birmingham Bears playing in another - Warwickshire would be very unhappy about it
This was tried a few years ago and was soundly rejected: can't see many counties going for this. There was a fans survey on whether the CC should be cut for more T20 and that wasn't too popular an idea either.
There's also considerable disquiet at the moment that there's no free-to-air cricket...