Hold the press! The ECB has a new competition in the offing that will revolutionize the game...featuring all the counties and then some more playing Twenty20. Who would have thought that the county boards could have thought of something just so exciting and revolutionary.

Or was that self-serving and stultifying? I forget. The actually interesting Stewart/Bradshaw proposal is out and we have this instead:

The EPL will have two divisions of 10 teams featuring the 18 existing counties plus two overseas teams.

There will also be a Twenty20 League to replace the existing Twenty20 Cup.

The England and Wales Cricket Board has yet to confirm which foreign teams will play in the EPL but the winners of the Indian Premier League and a Sir Allen Stanford XI are rumoured to be the ones that will be chosen.

Andrew Miller is quite scathing,  and Jonathan Liew compares it to the Premiership:

What the EPL vision reminds me of most is not its Indian counterpart, but its footballing equivalent: the bloated, joyless Premiership. A middle-class preserve, a place where corporate fools will go to show how ‘down with it’ they are, the domain of Sky or Setanta subscribers alone. We will be told, patronisingly, that this is the price you pay for higher standards.

Finally, Q has the run down on Pakistan's probables squad for the Champions Trophy, including an introduction to the 5 unknowns in the squad.