Starting next season, eight new women’s professional teams will participate in the T20 Blast and One-Day Cup, aligning the women’s game more closely with the men’s format. This development follows a restructuring initiative by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), which awarded Tier 1 status to Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Surrey, and Warwickshire in April as part of their 2025 domestic cricket overhaul.
Each team will compete under their county name, except for the Trent Bridge-based squad, which will continue to be known as The Blaze. Similarly, Warwickshire’s women will take on the Birmingham Bears name in the T20 Blast, like their male counterparts, while Lancashire will compete as Lancashire Thunder.
The ECB outlined the new structure, announcing that £8 million of additional funding per year will be directed towards women’s domestic cricket by 2027. This will bring the total annual investment to £19 million, with the potential to boost the number of professional female cricketers in England and Wales by 80% by 2029.
The ECB further revealed that a new knockout cup competition will be introduced in 2025, featuring teams from all three tiers of the expanded women’s cricket framework. This competition aims to provide every county a chance to compete at top venues and offer players from across the system an opportunity to showcase their talents on a bigger stage.
Next summer’s T20 Blast is also expected to include several double-header events featuring both women’s and men’s teams, fostering more unity between the two formats.
The changes mark the end of the regional structure that has been in place in recent years, with the 20-over Charlotte Edwards Cup and 50-over Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy set to conclude after this summer.
Beth Barrett-Wild, director of the women’s professional game, explained that the reorganisation seeks to leverage the existing popularity of men’s county cricket to build a broader fanbase for the women’s teams. She highlighted that aligning the men’s and women’s competitions under one platform, similar to the success seen with The Hundred and the England national teams, could significantly increase the visibility of women’s domestic cricket and strengthen fan engagement with the women’s game.