I wonder if the market might find an equilibrium. I might be misremembering but didn’t ITV Digital go under after splurging a load of cash on the Football League? Then reality set in that there wasn’t an appetite for just any old football. As you say I imagine some of theses leagues will struggle to find an audience and quietly fold.

Currently there are very few players who play for multiple franchises in the same ownership groups. The main example is probably Narine with Kolkata and Trinbago, and this season he’s been joined by Russell at Trinbago. Otherwise Obed McCoy plays for the Royals of Rajasthan and Barbados and David Miller played for both until he was picked up by the Gujarat Titans. I’ve seen talk that Buttler has been signed up by the new SA Royals franchise so that would be another.

The IPL would have to abandon the auction before group players becomes widespread. At the moment the number of group players is effectively limited by the number of retentions IPL franchises can use on overseas players (as Indian players don’t really play overseas).

It’s just whether this is sustainable. That’s why we’re highlighting the likely quality and appeal of the tournaments. They promise a lot, but what will they deliver? Will fans stick around? Will TV deals make sense?

Case in point, Moeen Ali was supposedly a marquee player in the UAE league but has just been confirmed for the South Africa one. There’s a lot of talk and then there’s the reality.

National bodies trump franchises for any player whose commitments clash, so players have to hang up their national boots if they wish to be free to play franchise cricket untrammelled. Arguably Eoin has just recently made this call early but equally arguably he recognises that his effectiveness at international level is now diminished but he can still make match/tournament winning contributions for franchises. I have no problem with this.

I agree with KC that all these additional franchise tournaments feel like overkill – although they might have merit within their various domestic set-ups. If that helps cricket to thrive in places such as South Africa and Bangladesh that surely would be a good thing. Like KC I have my doubts about that.

As for these new franchise-based tournaments marking the end of cricketing civilisation as we know it…don’t be daft.

This is definitely the arrangement, but not sure that makes the second tier tournament any more interesting for anyone. Hard to see any colossally beneficial advantage with regards to recruitment for the ‘main’ franchise either.

Although, to be fair, I spent more time thinking about whether to call the made up team in the previous sentence the ‘Gujurat Globetrotters’ (because of the alliteration) or the ‘Hyderabad Globetrotters’ (because ‘Hyderabad’ begins with the same letter as ‘Harlem’) than I have so far spent thinking about the long-term implications of cross-ownership in franchise-based T20 leagues.