MCC president Mike Brearley has distanced the club from the plans for a multimillion pound Twenty20 league that were leaked to the British media.
Keith Bradshaw, the secretary and chief executive of the Marylebone Cricket Club, drew up the plans alongside Surrey chairman David Stewart, but Brearley - a former England captain much respected in the game - has reiterated that the idea for creation of a nine-team league had not originated with the influential club.
"Any proposal coming from him is liable to be seen as an MCC initiative, and, as such, to have been discussed within the MCC and in particular on its committee," Brearley wrote in his column in Sunday's edition of The Observer newspaper.
"This proposal has not been discussed there, so it has no backing, as things stand, from the MCC. It might of course agree with and support the views expressed in the plan, but so far there has not been the chance either to do so or to disagree."
The MCC was formerly cricket's ruling body. Although it has been superseded by the International Cricket Council, it still oversees the laws of the game.
The league has been dubbed the "New T20" and is based upon the lucrative Indian Premier League, with county teams participating in a 25-day competition to be held in the middle of the domestic season.
Teams would be based at the nine international venues in England, with "icon players" such as Hampshire's Kevin Pietersen allocated to each side.
Bradshaw and Stewart claim the competition could generate up to £85 million ($NZ224.92 million) per year through television rights, corporate sponsorship and match-day revenue. An unspecified amount of this money would be used to compensate the excluded county sides.
But those nine sides have reacted angrily to their exclusion and the lack of consultation over the plans, which, according to Brearley, were rushed to completion over the past 10 days because Bradshaw and Stewart learned that the England and Wales Cricket Board was keen to come up with a Twenty20 plan for next season.
Brearley said he understood the feelings of the excluded sides, which are largely rural and already struggling to compete with the bigger counties in terms of revenue.
"Many counties, especially those that do not have grounds in the bigger cities, will be, and no doubt are, deeply suspicious," Brearley wrote. "They will find it a divisive plan.
"Even if, as the proponents say, 'Such a tournament can generate extra revenue for cricket, for all 18 counties and the grass-roots of the game,' the counties will feel even more sidelined and secondary. Their supporters will have to travel further to watch cricket and traditional loyalties will be interrupted."
The proposals will be formally discussed by the ECB next week.
With dissent running through the game, The Mail on Sunday paper reported that ECB chairman Giles Clarke could be forced from his post when his two-year term ends next year.
The paper said that as many as seven of the 18 counties are already committed to voting out Clarke because of misgivings over his leadership.
