New Delhi, Sep 5 (IANS): England's eight Tier 1 women’s domestic cricket teams will play in their version of the T20 Blast and One-Day Cup from 2025, as the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) aims to align the structure of its new domestic competitions with their male counterparts.
Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshire were given Tier 1 status by the ECB in April this year as part of restructuring women's domestic cricket from next year. The two competitions will replace the Charlotte Edwards Cup and Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, which were women's T20 and 50-over contests since 2020.
In the T20 Blast, the eight women’s teams will compete as Birmingham Bears (Warwickshire), Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire Thunder, Somerset, Surrey and The Blaze (Nottinghamshire). In the One-Day Cup, the eight women’s teams will compete as Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Somerset, Surrey, Warwickshire and The Blaze.
Like the T20 Blast Men’s Finals Day, the women’s competition will culminate in a similar Finals Day. The men’s and women’s One-Day Cup competitions will each have two semifinals and a flagship final. A knock-out cup competition consisting of teams from all three tiers of the expanded women’s domestic structure will also form part of the 2025 schedule.
“A big driver for the re-organisation of women’s professional cricket has been to enable us to better use the leverage and existing scale of men’s county cricket to accelerate fanbase growth for our women’s teams and players. Looking ahead to the 2025 season, we’re therefore really excited to fully align our men’s and women’s domestic white-ball competitions for the first time.”
“The next step in the growth of the women’s professional game is to produce commercially vibrant and visible teams and competitions that excite fans and continue to showcase the quality of women’s cricket.”
“As we have seen through The Hundred and alignment of our England Men’s and England Women’s teams, we believe that by putting our men’s and women’s competitions and players on the same platform we can exponentially increase the reach of the women’s domestic game and intensify the depth of feeling fans have for our women’s teams moving forwards.”
“I’d like to thank both Charlotte Edwards and the family of Rachael Heyhoe Flint for allowing us to name our two domestic trophies the Charlotte Edwards Cup and Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy during this first chapter in the professionalization of women’s domestic cricket.”
“There are no two women in the history of the game in this country who are more synonymous with and symbolic of the progress that has been made in recent times, and it was truly fitting that their names be lent to our first women’s professional competitions across the 2020 to 2024 seasons. Teams in the Metro Bank One Day Cup women’s competition will compete to lift the Rachael Heyhoe Flint trophy,” said Beth Barrett-Wild, Director of the Women’s Professional Game.
The new professional structure will see new funding of eight million pounds per year being invested into women’s domestic cricket by 2027 – taking annual investment in this area to around 19 million pounds – and could produce an 80% increase in the number of professional female players in England and Wales by 2029.