Worcestershire CCC can confirm that The Professional County Cricket Clubs (PCCs) have this week reached agreements to alter the formats of the Vitality Blast men\u2019s competition, the Vitality Blast women\u2019s competitions (Tiers 1 & 2) and the Metro Bank One-Day Cup women\u2019s competitions (Tiers 1 & 2) from next season.<\/p>\n
The reasons and details of those changes for each competition are outlined below:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Vitality Blast men\u2019s competition<\/p>\n
The required majority of the 18 PCCs voted to reduce the number of Vitality Blast men\u2019s competition group-stage matches from 14 to 12 from next season.<\/p>\n
The reduction follows the recommendations of the county-led men\u2019s Domestic Playing Programme (DPP) review, which will also see the Vitality Blast men\u2019s competition revert to three groups of six counties, with the quarter-finals and men\u2019s Vitality Blast Finals Day played before The Hundred.<\/p>\n
Women\u2019s white-ball county competitions<\/p>\n
Yorkshire will move from Tier 2 into Tier 1 from the 2026 season which will mean an even split of nine counties in each of those two tiers next season.<\/p>\n
The total number of Tier 1 group-stage matches across the women\u2019s Vitality Blast and women\u2019s Metro Bank One-Day Cup is retained at 28. The split of Tier 1 group-stage matches will change with 12 women\u2019s Vitality Blast matches (down from 14) and 16 women\u2019s Metro Bank One-Day Cup matches (up from 14).<\/p>\n
The Tier 2 group-stage matches across both white-ball competitions will be reduced from 17 to 16 group-stage matches, with each county to play each other once in each competition during the group phase.<\/p>\n
Vitality Blast women\u2019s competitions<\/p>\n
The required majority of the 18 PCCs voted to reduce the number of Vitality Blast women\u2019s competition (Tier 1) group-stage matches from 14 to 12 for next season.<\/p>\n
The vote was not tied to the outcome of the vote on the Vitality Blast men\u2019s competition. It was also agreed that the women\u2019s Vitality Blast Finals Day (Tier 1) will be expanded to include two semi-finals and a final.<\/p>\n
The Vitality Blast Women\u2019s League 2 (Tier 2) will maintain eight group-stage matches, but move to a single group \u2013 changing from North and South Groups in 2025 \u2013 with a three-team Finals Day.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Metro Bank One-Day Cup women\u2019s competitions<\/p>\n
The group stage of the Metro Bank One-Day Cup women\u2019s competition (Tier 1) will increase to 16 matches, which did not require a vote of the PCCs. It was additionally agreed to remove the two semi-finals and instead play a 2nd v 3rd Eliminator before the final.<\/p>\n
The Metro Bank One-Day Cup Women\u2019s League 2 (Tier 2) will be reduced from nine to eight group-stage games with each county playing each other once.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Worcestershire County Cricket Club CEO Ashley Giles, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe changes to the playing structure are ones we as a club feel will benefit our players, our staff and our members. The prospect of playing more regionalised fixtures against our rivals, is a proposition that excites everyone at the club. <\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying more intense derby fixtures at more accessible times means that players and supporters can enjoy a better standard of cricket in more manageable workloads and timeframes. <\/p>\n
\u201cFrom a player welfare, logistical and commercial perspective, enhancing the quality of our fixtures and building a narrative around more localised matches in the group will only improve the quality of cricket on show, with the changes coming as a welcome improvement to what is one of the most exciting T20 competitions around. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe women\u2019s Rapids will benefit from a more cohesive and aligned group stage format in both of the white ball competitions.\u201d <\/p>\n
In a switch to three regionalised groups of six across the men\u2019s competition, Worcestershire will play in Group C, retaining fixtures against the Bears and Northants, while new fixtures have been added against local sides Glamorgan, Gloucestershire and Somerset.<\/p>\n
The new group stages and format of the competition are listed below.<\/p>\n
Vitality Blast men\u2019s competition:
\nGROUPS<\/p>\n
Group A: Derbyshire Falcons, Durham, Lancashire Lightning, Leicestershire Foxes, Notts Outlaws, Yorkshire.<\/p>\n
Group B: Essex, Hampshire Hawks, Kent Spitfires, Middlesex, Surrey, Sussex Sharks.<\/p>\n
Group C: Bears, Glamorgan, Gloucestershire, Northamptonshire Steelbacks, Somerset, Worcestershire Rapids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Worcestershire CCC can confirm that The Professional County Cricket Clubs (PCCs) have this week reached agreements to alter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-62169","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\/62169","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=62169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}