England and Wales Cricket Board has announced a new regional women’s T20 tournament alongside the 50-over Rachael Heyhoe-Flint Trophy. The English cricket board released a press release to announce the domestic T20 competition and the return of the 50-over format domestic season on February 17.
As per ECB, the Women’s Regional T20 will be played between eight teams split into two groups of four sides each. The tournament will commence on June 26 with each team playing three home and three away matches during the group stage before Finals Day on September 5.
The Rachael Heyhoe-Flint Trophy will begin on May 29 and concludes on September 25. The season will be contested in a new format with each of the eight teams to play each other once in the group stage before the knockouts.
ECB has planned to host 56 domestic matches across both competitions for the newly 41 contracted female cricketers. Apart from these domestic games, England Women will be hosting Sri Lanka and Pakistan for the white-ball series later this year.
While proudly commenting about the fixtures, ECB Managing Director of Women’s Cricket, Clare Connor said, “This promises to be a truly memorable summer of cricket for the women’s game. We are not only set to further, professionalize the game with more players on full-time contracts than ever before but, crucially, we will showcase our game to more young girls across England and Wales so that they can say cricket is a game for them.”
The women cricketers will also be participating in the inaugural season of The Hundred that got postponed due to the global pandemic. The fixtures of ECB’s latest format is yet to be announced but it will be staged in the months of June and July.