The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has made changes to its domestic competitions. Both the women’s 20 and over 50 format tournaments will be held alongside the men’s. A T20 blast and the one-day trophy from the 2025 season.
The two women’s competitions will be played in place of the existing Charlotte Edwards Cup (T20) and the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy (50-over). But they will be played for trophies that will be named after two legends of England.
The restructured domestic competition will feature eight teams from the Tier 1 counties of Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire (Lancashire Thunder), Somerset, Surrey, Warwickshire (Birmingham Bears) and Nottinghamshire (The Blaze). Yorkshire and Glamorgan will be added to the group later.
The T20 Blast will be played as in the men’s event. Both the semi-finals and finals will be played on the same day, while both the men’s and women’s double headers are scheduled as The Hundred is currently scheduled.
In addition, a knockout competition is planned for 2025, in which teams from all three tiers of the expanded women’s domestic structure will participate. The tournament was introduced to allow all countries to compete with each other and test their skills at the highest level.
With the restructuring of domestic competitions, the England and Wales Cricket Board expects to see an £8m investment in women’s cricket by 2027 and an 80 per cent increase in the number of professional women cricketers in England and Wales by 2029.
For the first time, we are excited to fully match the men’s and women’s domestic white-ball competitions – Beth Barrett-Wild, Director of England’s Women’s Professional Game,
Beth Barrett-Wild, Director of the ECB Women’s Professional Game, talking about the change in domestic competitions, he said that they are excited to see the men’s and women’s competitions aligned at the same time. He added that they want to field teams that will excite the fans and raise the quality of women’s cricket.
“A major push to reorganize women’s professional cricket has enabled us to better use the leverage and existing scale of men’s cricket to accelerate fan base growth for our women’s teams and players. Looking ahead to the 2025 season, we” therefore, for the first time We are very excited to fully match the men’s and women’s domestic white ball competitions.
“The next step in the growth of the women’s professional game is to create commercially viable and visible teams and competitions that excite fans and continue to showcase the quality of women’s cricket.”
Beth Barrett-Wild said they wanted to put players on the same platform while citing The Hundred as an example. Beth added:
“As we’ve seen across the board and in the rankings 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 strengthen the depth and fan sentiment of our women’s teams moving forward,” he concluded. .
