The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has made a change to its domestic competitions. Women’s tournaments, both in 20-over and 50-over formats, will be played alongside the men’s T20 Blast and One-Day Cup from the 2025 season.

The two women’s competitions will be contested in place of the current Charlotte Edwards Cup (T20) and the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy (50 overs), but will be contested for trophies bearing the names of the two English legends.

The restructured national competitions will feature eight top-tier county teams: Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire (Lancashire Thunder), Somerset, Surrey, Warwickshire (Birmingham Bears) and Nottinghamshire (The Blaze). Yorkshire and Glamorgan will join the group at a later date.

The T20 Blast will be played in the same manner as the men’s competition. Both semi-finals and finals will be played on the same day, while double-headers with men’s and women’s matches have been planned in a similar way to how The Hundred is currently scheduled.

In addition, a knockout competition involving teams from all three tiers of the expanded women’s national structure is scheduled to take place in 2025. The tournament has been introduced to give all counties the opportunity to compete against 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 £8m of investment in women’s cricket by 2027 and could see an 80 per cent increase in the number of professional female cricketers in England and Wales by 2029.

Excited to fully align our men’s and women’s domestic white-ball competitions for the first time, England’s Director of the Women’s Professional Game, Beth Barrett-Wild,

Beth Barrett-Wild, ECB Director of Women’s Professional Play, She spoke about the change in domestic competitions and said they are excited to see the men’s and women’s competitions line up at the same time. She added that they want to produce teams that excite fans and raise the quality of women’s cricket.

“One of the key drivers behind the reorganisation of women’s professional cricket has been to enable us to better utilise the existing influence and scale of men’s county cricket to accelerate the growth of the fanbase for our women’s teams and players. Looking ahead to the 2025 season, we are very excited to fully align our men’s and women’s domestic white-ball competitions for the first time.

“The next step in growing 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.”

Beth Barrett-Wild, citing the example of The Hundred, said they want to put players on the same platform. Beth added:

“As we have seen through The Hundred and the line-up of our England men’s and women’s teams, we believe that by putting our men’s and women’s competitions and our 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 going forward,” he concluded.