The 17 counties of the time played each other in a league format on Sunday afternoons throughout the season.

In 1988 they introduced an end-of-season play-off competition known as the Refuge Assurance Cup.

[2] The National League was launched in 1999 with the 18 first-class counties split into two divisions with three teams promoted and relegated from each.

The counties incorporated nicknames into their official names for the National League, from 2002.

The C & G Trophy was restructured, in 2006, from a knock-out competition to a round-robin league format, which took up the early part of the season.

In July 2009, the ECB unveiled plans for a revamped county structure involving three competitions, one of which would replace both the Pro40 and the Friends Provident Trophy.