Now Allan Stanford seems to be involved in our 2020 competition, cricinfo is reporting that English Criicket wil be split into 6 regions, namely:-
North Yorkshire, Lancashire, Durham
London Surrey, Middlesex, Essex
South Hampshire, Kent, Sussex
Wales and West Glamorgan, Gloucestershire, Somerset
West Midlands Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Northants
East Midlands Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire

Looking at that there's the potential for some very strong sides, but the talent is still clustered in 3 major areas, the north, south and to a lesser extent London.

For my money its all very well doing this, but a combined Lancs/Yorks/Durham side would be so strong (assuming all internationals are available which would surely be true), potentially looking like this:
Mustard, Loye, Law, Collingwood, Flintoff, McGrath, Rashid, Bresnan, Chapple, Anderson, Harmison
with no overseas players used yet, and the likes of Hoggard, Plunkett, Onions, Sutton, Vaughan, Coetzer, Cork, Killeen, Keedy, Mahmood, Cross all waiting in the wings or not playing at all.

The real point is, given these players, how much need will there be for the international superstars? That 10 of that side have played international cricket and Rashid surely will, the England captain hasn't made the team and 3 recent test bowlers also miss out. Indian domestic cricket doesn't have the depth to do this, so they pull in overseas players to drag up the standard, but by merging 3 counties at a time the sides are very strong as a starting point. As a quick draft I'll try to knock together 6 teams to see how they look, just using England Qualified players.

North Mustard+, Loye, Law, Collingwood*, Flintoff, McGrath, Rashid, Bresnan, Chapple, Anderson, Harmison
South Carberry, Denly, Wright, Pietersen, Prior+, C Adams*, Yardy, Mascharenhas, Martin-Jenkins, Tremlett, Bruce
London Brown, Strauss*, Benning, Shah, Ramprakash, Bopara, Butcher, Batty+, Middlebrook, Ormond, Finn
Wales & South West Trescothick*, Powell, Hildreth, Blackwell, Taylor, Dalrymple, Gidman, Keiswetter+, Wharf, Croft, Caddick
West Midlands Carter, Maddy*, Bell, Solanki, Sales, Trott, Smith, Davies+, Batty, Kabir Ali, Panesar
East Midlands Jefferson, Nixon, Clarke*, Patel, Allenby, Read+, Swann, Franks, Broad, Lungley, Sidebottom

None of those are sides which require panic buying of people with different coloured passports to make them decent sides. The overseas players already here would strengthen the sides further and we shouldn't have to spend millions getting more players in.

I expect the most sensible way to do this would be a MVP type system to get the best players from the consituent counties, that way performances in county cricket would almost be a "trial" to get a contract for the 2020s and it should push up the level of intensity in county cricket.

That said, I'm quite happy to watch 18 counties play cricket myself.