The ECB have announced that it will align its women's domestic competitions with the men's from 2025 onwards, creating women's versions of the Vitality Blast and Metro Bank One Day Cup in the place of the Charlotte Edwards Cup and Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy.
The announcement comes as part of Project Darwin, the ECB's restructure of women's domestic cricket in England and Wales. It will see the women's and men's T20 and 50-over competitions fully aligned for the first time from next season onwards, with sides competing under the same county banner.
It was previously announced that eight Tier One counties would compete in the two women's domestic competitions in 2025 - Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Somerset, Surrey, Warwickshire and Nottinghamshire - with Yorkshire set to join them in 2026 and Glamorgan in 2027. Those initial eight teams will compete in both the Vitality Blast and Metro Bank One Day Cup women's competitions next year.
The Blast will also mirror the men's competition in its structure, culminating in a 'Vitality Blast Women's Finals Day' where both semi-finals and the final will be played on the same day. While competition schedules and venues have not yet been announced, men's and women's double-headers are likely to form some part of the Blast schedule, mirroring the success the double-match day format has had in The Hundred.
Names in for the teams in each competition have also been unveiled, with Nottinghamshire the only side who have opted to keep their regional name as 'The Blaze'. In the One Day Cup, every side apart from The Blaze will compete as their county name, while Warwickshire and Lancashire will compete as 'Birmingham Bears' and 'Lancashire Thunder' in the Blast, making their names identical to their men's sides.
The news of the new competitions means the 2024 Charlotte Edwards Cup was the last edition of the competition, and the ongoing Rachael Heyhoe-Flint Trophy will also be its last edition. The competitions were formed in 2021 when women's domestic cricket in England was restructured under a regional system. They were named after two former England captains in Rachael Heyhoe Flint and Charlotte Edwards. The Southern Vipers will finish as the most successful team in both competitions, having won the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy twice - and on course to reach the semi-finals this year - and the Charlotte Edwards Cup twice, under the guidance of Edwards as their head coach.
Director of the women's professional game in England, Beth Barrett-Wild said of the latest development in Project Darwin: "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.
"I'd like to thank both Charlotte Edwards and the family of Rachael Heyhoe Flint for allowing us to name our two domestic trophies the Charlotte Edwards Cup and Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy during the first chapter in the professionalisation of women's domestic cricket. There are no two women in the history of the game in this country who are more synonymous with and symbolic of the progress that has been made in recent times, and it was truly fitting that their names be lent to our first women's professional competitions across the 2020 to 2024 seasons. Teams in the Metro Bank One Day Cup women's competitions will compete to lift the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy."
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