The landscape of women’s domestic cricket is set to undergo a significant transformation this summer with the launch of the inaugural Women’s T20 Blast. Ellyse Perry, one of the sport’s great modern ambassadors, will play for Hampshire Hawks as part of what is set to be a hugely significant tournament. The campaign aims to further grow women’s cricket. Above all, it seeks to involve a broader swath of the public by introducing new and creative structural changes.
Looking forward to the most thrilling 2025 season in non-international cricket! It will be a spectacular showcase of 52 exhilarating double bills of men’s and women’s games played one after another. All 18 of the first-class counties will welcome at least one double bill. This unification makes way to have a unified base to work off both men’s and women’s side of teams. The Kia Oval is set to make history by staging the first Women’s Finals Day on Sunday, July 27, further enhancing visibility for the women’s game.
For Tier 1 counties, it will get harder with new performance standards. Their roster has to include at least 15 contracted players, and each Tier 1 player will be guaranteed at least a minimum salary of £20,000. Tier 2 counties’ financial guarantees will be quite different, if even existent at all, causing concern regarding fairness in pay between sections.
The T20 Women’s County Cup starts in May with a number of mouth-watering fixtures. Cheer on Surrey in their match against Hampshire and Somerset in their match against Durham! Off the field, this competition is a critical moment for women’s cricket. Cricketers such as Heather Knight of Somerset are eager to gain a new following with the new format. She stated, “I think it’ll bring hopefully a new fanbase to women’s cricket now that it’s under the Somerset umbrella.”
Ellyse Perry shares in this excitement, emphasizing the current positive momentum in women’s cricket: “It feels like a great time in the game. I think there has been lots of exciting things over the last 12 months for women’s cricket in general.”
Megan Belt, captain of Tier 2’s Kent, echoed these feelings, saying that reaching a pro level would be extremely difficult for players in Tier 2. She remarked, “How we didn’t get Tier 1, I don’t quite understand,” reflecting on the competitive nature of women’s cricket. She added further context to the struggle of balancing professional careers with sport by saying, “It is really tough and if I was a man playing for Kent, I probably wouldn’t be a teacher.”
Beth Barrett-Wild, an influential voice in the reorganization of women’s cricket, outlined the vision behind these significant changes: “A big driver for the reorganisation 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.” She continued, “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.”
This restructuring is happening in an environment where domestic cricket has seen considerable turmoil in recent years. Despite this rocky start, stakeholders are hopeful that these developments will bring about a more competitive and sustainable landscape for women’s teams. The top division’s planned expansion to 48 teams in 2029 means two additional franchises. This decision further demonstrates that Fifa is convinced about the continuing growth of the women’s game.
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