ECB offering what the audience wants

Writing for the Guardian, Mike Selvey talks about the merits of rescheduling the English domestic season, but lists down the roadblocks the ECB might face when trying to launch a city-based T20 league, like the IPL or BBL.

By 2020 (appropriately) we should see a city-based competition blocked into the middle of the summer, closer to the Australian Big Bash model in which Cricket Australia has overall control, rather than the Indian franchise system. This will not be straightforward: our grounds are not large enough to accommodate the sort of numbers that the Big Bash has seen, and in Australia the expansion has been from six state sides to eight, with Melbourne and Sydney sustaining two each. Here, it would be necessary to shrink it down, and almost forget the county divisions.

But herein comes the real problem. A city-based competition would preclude home games for those counties - Essex and Somerset in particular - who rely on a few days' T20 a year for a large proportion of their income.