Hampshire chairman Rod Bransgrove insists it is not too late to introduce a new-look T20 competition.

The success of the Indian Premier League and Australia’s Big Bash has led to fresh calls for a city-based franchise competition to supplement the 18-county T20 Blast.

And with Colin Graves set to replace Giles Clarke as chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, hopes have been raised that English cricket will one day have a tournament of its own to be proud of.

“I like to think we’ll have a competition that gives the market what it wants as opposed to what we want to give the market, which tends to be what has happened in the past,” said Bransgrove, who first called for such a competition several years ago.

“I can’t see it happening until at least 2017 but we don’t want to be held back by the past. I envisage the current T20 tournament staying and reducing the amount of County Championship matches, perhaps by replacing the two divisions with three pools of seven to include qualifying minor counties, as I first suggested a few years ago, to give us a more symmetrical fixture list.”

Like many cricket fans, Bransgrove has been an avid viewer of the Big Bash.

“It’s difficult not to be excited when you see something like the BBL,” he said. “Some say it’s not making too much money but it’s difficult to know how you can average crowds of 23,000 and not make a profit!

“What’s been really noticeable in Australia is the people are buying into the teams, which are attached to cities rather than states.

“That’s how I would perceive it working over here, it’s the model that has also worked well at the IPL, with all the counties sharing in the wealth that a properly conducted T20 tournament would achieve.”

Bransgrove admits to being big fan of Yorkshire chairman Graves.

“I think he’s going to be fantastic for the English game, he’s a very bright bloke with a great deal of experience,” he said.

“I do feel reasonably confident he and Tom Harrison (the ECB’s new CEO) will have a thorough review of the ECB which is a good thing because the English game needs a new set of eyes. It feels unified at the moment, which is a nice feeling.”