The Blast has been slimmed down this season and will all be played in one block before the start of The Hundred.<\/p>\n
A review into the white-ball domestic structure led by the counties – in consultation with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) – recommended the changes with an eye on player welfare and competition narrative.<\/p>\n
The group stage has been reduced by two games to 12 matches per side, with the quarter-finals and Finals Day following on directly in July.<\/p>\n
It means the competition is wrapped up in one block, albeit with two County Championship rounds sandwiched in the middle of the 12 T20 fixtures in mid-June.<\/p>\n
The two groups of nine sides have also been replaced by three groups of six, split into north, central and south sections as they were in 2020. <\/p>\n
The top two teams in each group plus the best two third-placed teams progress to the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
North Group: Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Durham, Yorkshire and Leicestershire<\/p>\n
Central Group: Gloucestershire, Northamptonshire, Birmingham, Somerset, Glamorgan, Worcestershire<\/p>\n
South Group: Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Middlesex, Essex, Hampshire<\/p>\n
Each county plays the other teams in their group home and away – a total of 10 matches – with an additional home game against a county from outside their group and one away game against a side from another group.<\/p>\n
Key dates<\/p>\n
22 May: Group stages begin<\/p>\n
12 July: Group stages end<\/p>\n
15 July: Quarter-finals<\/p>\n
18 July: Finals Day (Edgbaston)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blast has been slimmed down this season and will all be played in one block before the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-596297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}