Proposed new English franchise tournament

No point asking a dying breed to decide the long term future.

As Sir Winston Churchill said: "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
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Your expression, not mine. For the avoidance of doubt, I don't have any level of contempt (utter or otherwise) for any cricket supporters. I just believe that the older generation of county members (and I'm one of them) tend to want to preserve the status quo, for their own short term benefit. We are a dying breed, IMO!

How do you think that the new CBT will jeopardise the future of county cricket? The aim is to provide the funds to subsidise its continued existence, not to destroy it. 

PS as someone else has said, there will be no franchises. And, Alec Stewart has accepted that Surrey have lost the argument, and should now support the new tournament. Surrey's protests weren't for the good of county cricket - they were for the good of Surrey CCC.

I was talking about county members. I don't think it makes sense to ask everyone who's ever been to a T20 match to vote on the future of county cricket!

That's OK in principle; it wouldn't be difficult to conduct a 'referendum' using the membership database, but how do you identify and contact all the Carls.

No surprise Luke Wright is enthusiastic about the CBT.

www.theargus.co.uk/sport/cricket/generalcricket/15212186.Sussex_skipper_says_new_Twenty20_competition_could_be_a__game_changer_/

Today it is the turn of Essex, whose statement herewww.essexcricket.org.uk/2017/04/19/essex-vote-against-proposed-new-t20-competition/is interesting, even audacious.

"...the First Class game will be diminished, in contradiction to the ECB’s objective which is to grow the game in this country – an objective that is unlikely to be advanced by a competition which would exclude large areas of the country from any involvement in it.”

Lovely quote, almost worth taking seriously if so many counties and major towns in the UK weren't already excluded from any serious participation, either because of the archaic locations of the county championship, fiercely preserved in despite of any logic or marketing sense, or the bungling amateurishness of the county authorities who have found their little kingdoms dwindling like sandcastles, vainly resising the tides of time and economy. The waves lap against the castles of Essex...gone are Ilford, Romford, Leyton, Southend, Brentwood, Westcliff, Colchester, leaving only Chelmsford. The story is true of most of the other first-class counties, all retreated to one bastion pleading the same story of lack of interest and rising costs. And yet, when a well-researched proposal is made that both promises to increase interest by opening up the game to the whole of the nation, and to give these seneschals of the shrinking shoreline money they don't deserve as a lifeline to keep them going they plead "exclusion" as a justification for their implacable hostility to change. The object of this exercise is not to keep afloat the artificial constructs of the famous 18, but to keep cricket alive and vibrant. The names and identities of the participants are less important than what they represent. The defenders of the glorious traditions of the County Championship, the fondly remembered shire tussles of yesterday, are at fault if they put the preservation of the status quo ahead of the chance to reinvent the game and to keep its spirit alive.

In the 19th century the game grew through the successful commercial operations of non-locational teams, such as The All-England XI and its rivals. The game prospered until opposition led by the MCC, who bitterly resented the encroachment on its monopoly, led to the organisation of a few large counties who set up a championship to win back players and crowds from this upstart. The new oligarchy was jealously guarded and kept select, ignoring opportunities to expand to other parts of the country deemed to be "Minor", crushing the last attempt at an independent popularisation in Grace's London County venture by denying them fixtures, and only selectively expanded for the next hundred years, and only then very grudgingly. There has never been a time when those involved in the highest form of the game sought to "involve" larger areas of the country at that level. Their every concern has been a narrow protectionism that has resisted change. In the 60s the International Cavaliers - a team without local allegiances - drew huge crowds, and the response was to set up the John Player League and kill off the upstarts. Ten years later Packer bought his way into commercial exploitation of media rights by successfully setting up a team without national allegiances and the response of the counties was to try to cancel the contracts of successful players performing for him. Plus ca change.