Image Credit- ECB
A revised domestic
tournament for England and Wales, which will begin the following season, has
seen sixteen of the eighteen first-class counties submit bids for one of the
eight professional women’s teams.
The only two clubs that announced they did not bid for a Tier 1 squad under the
new format among those asked to tender are Derbyshire and Worcestershire.
While Surrey, Lancashire, Sussex, Hampshire, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, and
Gloucestershire all revealed this week that they have submitted tenders to the
ECB, Essex and Glamorgan made official declarations on Wednesday.
On Monday, Middlesex
announced that it had gained “the full support of Marylebone Cricket
Club” in its application. MCC, who also received an invitation to bid for
a team and owns Lord’s, the home stadium of Middlesex, has not made a bid of
their own.
Along with Durham, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Somerset, and Northamptonshire,
Kent also made their bids known last week.
It is anticipated that counties will be notified as soon as possible regarding
interview times for the upcoming round of the process, which is scheduled to
take place by the end of March.
In a shift from the
present regional structure that took effect in 2020, the ECB requested all 18
first-class counties along with MCC to submit a tender for one of the Tier 1
clubs in February. Teams that compete in the 50-over Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy
and the 20-over Charlotte Edwards Cup are currently governed by the ECB and
typically represent multiple counties. The ECB is attempting to overcome an
identity crisis that has befallen some of the regional teams by bringing
ownership, responsibility, and governance closer to the clubs through team
alignment with current counties and their men’s teams.
All National Counties and First-class counties that were not granted Tier 1
status will be requested to participate in a process to ascertain the
composition of Tier 2 and 3 competitions, comprising 10-14 teams and 16-20
teams respectively.
Derbyshire has
chosen to take a longer-term approach, choosing to “pursue the
establishment of a sustainable Tier 2 women’s structure, one which will
hopefully grow into Tier 1 status” in the future, even though there are no
plans for promotion or relegation from 2025–2028. For the past seven seasons,
Derbyshire has played host to at least one England Women’s international match
annually in addition to serving as the winter training ground for the Blaze, a
regional women’s side. During the first wave of the Covid-19 epidemic in 2020,
Derby hosted all five Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is) between England Women and
the West Indies.
