The England & Wales Cricket Board has "recruited one of the leading figures" involved in setting up two major franchise cricket tournaments as it "contemplates the restructuring" of county Twenty20 cricket, according to Nick Hoult of the London TELEGRAPH. IMG VP Mike Fordham is "joining the ECB next month after helping launch" the Indian Premier League in '08 and the Caribbean Premier League in '13. Fordham was also involved in the secret Project Victoria proposal produced by IMG in '11, a model of how franchise cricket "could work in England and be worth" more than £1B ($1.5B). The ECB has targeted the summer of '17 to "launch its new Twenty20 competition and is bolstering its commercial team to modernise English cricket’s business plans." There remains "strong resistance from some sections of county cricket to the prospect of franchise cricket," with Surrey one of "several opponents." Surrey is the "commercial giants of county cricket and believe the current competition needs streamlining rather than scrapping and reinventing." It is still to be decided whether a franchise model would work in England and some ECB insiders "believe that a better plan would be to allow counties that struggle to sell Twenty20 matches to merge rather than completely reinvent teams." However, the ECB is aware that it has to "reach out to a new audience and act fast" (TELEGRAPH, 4/30).
