Gone Batty

News from the Battrick site... And not an April Fools joke this time either.

New Countries
We will introduce 10 new countries:
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- Zimbabwe
- Bangladesh
- Afghanistan
- Canada
- Ireland
- Kenya
- Netherlands
- Scotland
- USA
- PNG

These countries will play only OD & BT20 competitions: BT20 on the global stage, and OD within the country in league and Sunday cup structure. The BCC will pay a subsidy to these countries that will be determined as approximately one third of the lowest gate intake at FC level in participating countries. This subsidy will vary level by level and be set and announced at the start of each season.

Any team can move at end of season to bottom division in a new country to be replaced by bot in current position. All players go with you but lose 30% of supporters and get new ground at default newbie size. No change in BT20. Cost of moving is 4 x week's salary at time of move or 10% of current bank balance, whichever is greater. This will be open to a pilot group in Season 16 before being fully open in Season 17.

These new countries will not be eligible for International cricket in Season 16. In the very near future (likely Season 17), there will be the ability to move to a non-FC version of your current country as well.

More information on how to apply to move to a new country will be supplied by the end of the season.

Been waiting for some time for this to happen, was an advocate of Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Scotland and Ireland joining but this is way more than expected and I'm not sure there's the player base to expand this much without some very lonely divisions being setup.

Also I think having parallel non-FC leagues in the same country was daft. If you want to give up on First Class you can just play a team of scrubs. Fortunately they've backed down on the idea, which shows that they do listen to the people who play the game as it caused a bit of a storm on the Sledging message boards.

Might of been tempted to switch countries if they had FC as well but doubt if I'll bother despite being stuck in my present leagues. And I don't think Ray, who started in the game just before me, would be interested either.

Apparently there is more news on the way as well.
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