County Championship Pushed Further to the Margins in 2024

 

County Championship will be shunted to margins of English summer

The changes means that there will be no red-ball domestic cricket between early July and the final week of August

Will Macpherson - Telegraph

The County Championship is set to be shunted to the margins of the summer in 2024 with English cricket building its calendar around June’s T20 World Cup.

In recent seasons, an effort has been made to play more red-ball cricket in the prime summer months, July especially, when the weather and pitches should be at their best. This season, there were two Championship rounds in June and three in July.

In 2024, it is understood that in provisional schedules, there is no red-ball action between the first couple of days of July and the final week of August. The competition will be almost exclusively played in April, May and September.

The season’s structure will be approximately as follows:

• April and May: two months of County Championship
• June: first bank of Blast action, followed by two rounds of Championship
• July: completion of Blast groups, followed by the start of Hundred and One-Day Cup
• August: Hundred runs until August 18. ODC runs alongside. One round of Championship at end of month
• September: Blast knockouts; ODC final; completion of Championship

The Vitality Blast is the competition worst-affected by the World Cup, which takes place in the Caribbean and USA between June 4 and 30. The Blast will largely be played in two blocks, one in June and one in July (with two rounds of Championship between), before concluding with quarter-finals and Finals Day in September. The competition faces a challenge to attract overseas talent because of the World Cup, and the gap between the groups and the knockouts. As revealed by Telegraph Sport earlier this week, county chiefs are looking at ways they can freshen up the competition’s group stages.

The quantity of cricket played by counties – 14 Championship matches, 14 Blast group games, and eight One-Day Cup group games – is set to stay the same in 2024.

However, the overall county structure will be up for debate once more in 2025. Last year, the domestic structure recommendations from Andrew Strauss’s High Performance Review were rejected by the counties, but it seems likely that there will be another attempt to reduce the overall amount of cricket played from 2025.

England men’s international schedule is also affected by the T20 World Cup. For the first time in a while they have white-ball internationals that directly clash with the Indian Premier League, with Pakistan visiting for four T20s in May. After the World Cup, they play three Tests against West Indies in July and, after a break for the Hundred, three Tests against Sri Lanka in August and September. The international season concludes with three ODIs and three T20s against Australia in September.

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