The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has confirmed the formation of Tier 2 and Tier 3 within the revamped ladies’s home cricket construction set to be launched in 2025.
Derbyshire, Glamorgan, Gloucestershire, Kent, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Middlesex, Sussex, Worcestershire and Yorkshire will make up Tier 2 within the 2025 season, with the ten counties taking part in 50-over and 20-over cricket.
Tier 3 standing might be awarded to all nationwide counties who wish to take part within the new competitions from 2025.
Yorkshire will develop into a Tier 1 membership for the 2026 season, topic to assembly a collection of situations on governance, technique and finance, whereas Glamorgan will be a part of Tier 1 in 2027.
All three tiers might be ‘closed’ till the top of the 2028 season, with no promotion or relegation, although the ECB has set the ambition to increase Tier 1 to 12 groups by 2029.
It signifies the subsequent step within the evolution of the ladies’s skilled home recreation, with Tier 1 having been introduced earlier this yr.
The plans unveiled thus far equate to £8m new funding per yr being invested into ladies’s home cricket by 2027 – taking annual funding on this space to £19m.
“It’s exciting to see the three tiers finalised,” Beth Barrett-Wild, director of Ladies’s Skilled Sport, mentioned. “It brings the new landscape of women’s professional domestic cricket one step closer.
“From subsequent summer time we’ll see as much as 39 counties competing throughout the brand new construction, which is able to each accommodate the expansion and speed up the depth of the ladies’s skilled recreation – on and off the sphere.
“It’s taken substantial work from the game to get to this point and having seen how the counties have shared their plans, I’m so enthused about what comes next.
“We should not underestimate how huge this step is for ladies’s cricket and certainly the entire recreation; a thriving and sustainable ladies’s home pyramid beneath The Hundred and England Ladies, with extra skilled feminine gamers, elevated funding, and enhanced alignment throughout the boys’s and ladies’s recreation, is a big step ahead for cricket.”
The ECB additionally introduced the formation of a knockout cup competitors, launching in 2025, that may encompass groups from all three tiers, with the goal of offering counties with the chance to compete in opposition to one another at a few of the nation’s greatest venues, and provides gamers the prospect to check their expertise on an elevated platform.
The three-tier construction goals to construct on the influence of the present regional mannequin, which has accelerated efficiency ranges inside ladies’s cricket and laid stable foundations, to additional develop the depth and attain of the ladies’s skilled recreation.
