England’s top women’s teams will play in their own version of the Vitality Blast and Metro Bank One-Day Cup from next season, aligning the new domestic competitions more closely with those of their male counterparts.
The competitions will replace the Charlotte Edwards Cup and Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, which had been the women’s T20 and 50-over contests since 2020. Teams in the Metro Bank One-Day Cup women’s competition will still compete to lift the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy.
As with the Men’s Blast, the women’s competition will culminate in a Vitality Blast Women’s Finals Day, while the men’s and women’s Metro Bank One-Day Cup competitions will each have two semi-finals and a final.
Related
Yorkshire granted women’s Tier 1 team from 2026, one year ahead of schedule
-
Durham, Essex big winners as top-flight women’s teams are named
-
ECB name Tier 2 teams in new women’s domestic competition
-
Counties told to ‘show their vision’ as ECB revamps women’s competitions
In the Metro Bank One-Day Cup, the eight women’s teams will compete as Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Somerset, Surrey, Warwickshire and The Blaze, representing Nottinghamshire – who along with the other seven teams were awarded Tier 1 status under the new structure – and surrounds.
The eight women’s Blast teams will be Birmingham Bears (representing Warwickshire), Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire Thunder, Somerset, Surrey and The Blaze.
The top-flight women’s competitions are set to expand to include Yorkshire from 2026 and Welsh county Glamorgan from 2027.
A knockout cup competition consisting of teams from all three tiers of the expanded women’s domestic structure will also form part of the 2025 schedule with the aim of giving all counties a chance to compete against each other and players across the pyramid the opportunity to test their skills against higher-ranked teams.
In 2025, Tier 2 will comprise Derbyshire, Glamorgan, Gloucestershire, Kent, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Middlesex, Sussex, Worcestershire and Yorkshire.
Beth Barrett-Wild, ECB director of the women’s professional game, said: “A big driver for the reorganisation 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 fan base 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.
“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.”
Under the new professional structure, £8m in new funding will be invested per year into women’s domestic cricket by 2027, taking annual investment in this area to about £19m, an injection of funds the ECB believes could produce an 80% increase in the number of professional female players in England and Wales by 2029. Counties will be responsible for deciding player salaries.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo