Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy (Source: Twitter/X)
As The Hundred 2024 concluded, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) was criticized for placing the league alongside the Paris Olympics 2024, which hampered its viewership. However, the ECB has restructured the domestic competitions, aligning men’s and women’s competitions together. The 50-over and T20 format of the women’s competition will be carried out at the same time as the men’s T20 Blast and the One-Day Cup from the 2025 season.
It is also worth noting that the women’s T20 and 50-over tournaments – Charlotte Edwards Cup (T20) and Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy (50 overs) – will be replaced by the new tournaments but will still retain the names after whom they are named. Aligning with the men’s teams, Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Somerset, Surrey, Warwickshire and Nottinghamshire (The Blaze) will compete in The Blast. Moreover, Warwickshire and Lancashire will enter the contest as ‘Birmingham Bears’ and ‘Lancashire Thunder’.
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“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,” said Beth Barrett-Wild, Director of the Women’s Professional Game as quoted by Cricbuzz.
The women’s T20 Blast will have a pattern similar to men’s with semi-finals and finals to be played on the same day. Similar to The Hundred competition, the T20 Blast will have both men’s and women’s replicas of double-header scheduling.
“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,” Beth added.
ECB brings domestic structural change in all three tiers
The ECB aims to fetch GBP 8 million of investment into women’s cricket by 2027. The restructured moves will potentially increase the number of professional female cricketers by 80 percent in the country by 2029, ECB estimates.
“A big driver for the re-organization 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,” Beth concluded.
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Notably, the board is also introducing a knock-out cup for the vast women’s domestic structure across all three tiers from 2025. The move will bring in different countries playing against each other at big venues in the country. This will also get the talent to break the structural hierarchy and hone their prowess on a larger level.