Women’s cricket revolution to include FA Cup-style T20 competition

The latest revolution of women’s cricket involving counties, a three-tier system and a new domestic set-up, will also include an FA Cup-style knockout T20 competition.

In April, the England and Wales Cricket Board announced a third major change in women’s cricket in eight years, with eight of the 18 first-class counties awarded a “tier one” team, with the remainder taking part in “tier two”.

For 2025, the eight county sides, or seven counties and Nottinghamshire-affiliated The Blaze, will compete in the fully professional tier one while tier two will receive some ECB funding while the national counties will make up “tier three”. When the announcement was made, Yorkshire were the biggest county to miss out, although they will now be joining the top tier from 2026, and Glamorgan from 2027.

In an effort to include the national counties who would otherwise find themselves making up tier three in regionally based T20 and 50-over formats, Telegraph Sport understands the ECB intends to hold an FA-Cup style knockout T20 competition.

The tournament has been planned to take place over a set number of weekends during the cricket season, with those in the top tier not expected to join until the third round of the competition, although the specific dates and details have yet to be finalised.

National counties have traditionally played a much more significant role in women’s cricket than in the men’s game. Heather Knight played for Berkshire until the introduction of regional hubs and the first steps towards professionalisation of the domestic game in 2019.

For many England players, unpaid county cricket in a complicated four-league structure including national counties, was one of the only paths available through to the national side, for those not selected directly from the academy.

The new tier system for women’s cricket officially starts on Nov 1, with domestic players already contracted from that date, although the full details of the following calendar are still to be determined.

The majority of the domestic contracts start at the beginning of November but the central contracts awarded by the ECB in 2023-24 to 18 players will come to an end on Oct 31, but the governing body has not released the list of who will retain or lose their deals next year.

In the men’s game, those on central contracts are also assigned to a county, where the player can train throughout the winter and play matches when available, but as yet there is not a formal system in place in women’s cricket.

Some of the tier-one counties have been left frustrated that they cannot announce the England players expected to join them ahead of the start of the new contracts in November.