The ECB has announced new formats for the Friends Provident and Twenty20 Cup for 2008.
For the FP, teams will now play in 4 groups of 5 teams (The 18 1st class plus Scotland and Ireland). Each team will play the others in the group home and away, unlike the current format where you play only once but against more teams. The top 2 teams from each group will then go forward to Quarter finals.
For Twenty20, the group stages have been tidied up a bit, the 3 regional groups remain but teams will now play 5 home and 5 away games.
Teams will now play much more "regional" cricket, I'm not sure if this a good thing, while it is good to watch a local derby and it is of course cheaper and easier to attend away matches, the teams will now play a less varied opposition unless they progress past the group stages of course!
Also interesting is no announcement has been made concerning the Pro40, the competition that is expected to suffer most after the Scofield report.