Last summer Tom Harrison, the ECB chief executive, attended the Women’s World Cup final at Lord’s, and was startled by the spectacle that greeted him. Long queues for the ladies’ toilets. Bars virtually deserted, while coffee sales were going through the roof. A novel, almost discomfitingly salubrious atmosphere. As Harrison left the ground, he realised he had just glimpsed a blueprint of the future.

“What it gave me,” he later said, “was a sense that we can really nail this new T20 challenge, if we’re prepared to do things differently. Market it completely differently. To completely different audiences. In completely different places.”

Last month, the ECB announced the eight base venues for their new T20 franchise competition: Lord’s, The Oval, Edgbaston, Trent Bridge, Old Trafford, Headingley, Cardiff and the Ageas Bowl. Introducing English cricket’s brave new frontier: taking the game to completely different places, by keeping it in exactly the same places.

Not that there was a great deal of surprise at the decision. Desperate for the new competition to start turning a profit as soon as possible, the ECB simply turned to their eight biggest grounds in an attempt to maximise gate receipts. The real question is what all this means for the domestic game as a whole, and for its clearest faultline: between those counties with Test match grounds, and those without.

For all the division and rancour generated by the new competition, it also offered a golden opportunity. To build bridges. Spread the growth. Close the gulf between the wealthiest and the rest. Instead, an unapologetically regressive ECB have chosen at the first opportunity to entrench and exacerbate it. There are still two years to go, of course. But even at this early stage, the ECB have left us in no doubt about their intended direction of travel.