Newton is sceptical of the potential Twenty20 proposal

Worcestershire's chief executive Mark Newton has criticised plans for a breakaway Twenty20 competition.

Newton told BBC Hereford and Worcester there was no mention of the idea at a recent meeting of chief executives.

"The nine counties involved would still want to use their county names, so it wouldn't be Manchester versus London," he said.

"I think it's disenfranchising a lot of supporters, so I am very surprised," Newton added.

The BBC understands that the nine counties that stage Test and one-day international matches plan to run their own competition in June and July of 2010.

The 57-match tournament reportedly has the backing of the MCC, Lancashire, Hampshire and Surrey, and is seen by them as being an event to rival the Indian Premier League.

Newton says it is important that the game's governing bodies acknowledge the strength of the 18-team domestic structure in this country.

"It's county cricket that drove the one-day revolution back in the sixties which became the worldwide norm and it was the counties that drove through Twenty20 cricket in 2003 which has led to this escalation," he said.

"So I would argue very strongly that the counties know what they are doing as far as domestic cricket is concerned."

The great joy of English cricket is that we already have 18 franchises - the counties Worcestershire's chief executive Mark Newton

While he had not had the time to read the full proposals, it is clear that Newton feels that there is a danger of these proposals being highly divisive.

He found it odd that nothing of these proposals had been mentioned at the recent meeting of the counties, especially when a large part of the meeting was given over to the short form of the game.

"We had a deep discussion about the future of Twenty20 cricket and nothing like this came out," said Newton.

"We were also told by the ECB that the TV companies are not interested in city franchises in terms of the value of broadcast rights.

"The great joy of English cricket is that we already have 18 franchises - the counties - and we don't have to artificially create anything to already have a huge affinity base," he added.