Well I tried posting something like this on the Beeb county board but I think it's best to come here for intelligent discussion.

The point that I hope to make is this.
Cricket at a decent level must be accessable right across the country to gain and maintain a large enough fan base to be truely viable.
At present that is not the case. Outside of the 18 first class counties access is severely limited, (If you live in Cornwall, Cumbria or Norfolk what oportunity do you have to watch county cricket much less test cricket?)
The England team for all the rather packed itinerary that we have these days still only plays a very limited amount of cricket in any one region of the UK.
The Willis suggestion of compressing everything into the top 6 or so county sides will alienate the majority of current cricket supporters, and decrease the amount of cricket available, not to mention creating vast cricketing desert areas within the UK.

My suggestion is this.

Introduce an additional regional layer in English cricket, rather like international level this would be open only to English qualified players. As each regional team would play only a max of 10 games a year 5 home 5 away and the home games would move around the region this should not overly impact on county home attendances (not that those are huge at the best of times) It would however I believe bring in extra sponsorship and probably TV income and would bring a decent quality of cricket to areas of the country that currently do not see the national team.
In addition those supporters of the game from area's outside of the 18 Major Counties have something they can truely get behind.

At this point I believe that the current minor counties could be added to the CC as divisions 3 and 4 without the potential problem of a very good player who plays for say Norfolk or Devon having no chance of ever getting into the England side.

Some people I am sure will hate this idea but does anyone have any reasoned arguments why it would be bad for English cricket?


Introduce an extra layer of cricket into the English game at Regional level. 5 or 6 regions.