The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has confirmed the formation of Divisions 2 and three in a revamped ladies’s home cricket construction on account of launch in 2025.
Derbyshire, Glamorganshire, Gloucestershire, Kent, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Middlesex, Sussex, Worcestershire and Yorkshire will type the 2025 season In League Two, the ten counties will compete in 50-over and 20-over cricket.
From 2025, all international locations keen to take part within the new competitors will likely be eligible for Degree 3.
Yorkshire will turn into a Division One membership within the 2026 season, topic to assembly a variety of governance, strategic and monetary circumstances, whereas Glamorgan will be a part of the Division One membership in 2027.
Though the ECB goals to develop Division 1 to 12 groups by 2029, all three divisions will likely be “closed” till the tip of the 2028 season and won’t be promoted or relegated.
It marks the following step within the growth of the ladies’s skilled home recreation, with Tier 1 having been introduced earlier this 12 months.
The plans now unveiled would equate to £8m of recent funding per 12 months into ladies’s home cricket by 2027, taking annual funding within the sector to £19m.
Beth Barrett-Wild, director of the ladies’s skilled recreation, mentioned: “It’s thrilling to see the third tier competitors finalized. “It brings a brand new dimension to ladies’s skilled home cricket one step nearer. .
“From subsequent summer season we are going to see as much as 39 counties competing in a brand new construction which can accommodate the expansion of the ladies’s skilled recreation and speed up its depth on and off the sphere.
“We have put a whole lot of work into the sport to get up to now, and after seeing how counties share their plans, I am actually enthusiastic about what’s coming subsequent.
“We must always not underestimate the magnitude of the affect this step can have on ladies’s cricket and certainly the game as an entire; there’s a thriving and sustainable ladies’s home pyramid beneath the Hundred and the England Girls’s crew, with extra skilled feminine gamers, elevated funding, and enhanced coordination between males’s and ladies’s cricket.
The ECB additionally introduced the launch of a knockout cup competitors in 2025, that includes groups from all three divisions, designed to offer counties with the chance to compete towards one another at a number of the largest venues within the nation, in addition to giving gamers the possibility to check themselves on an elevated platform personal abilities.
The three-tier construction goals to leverage the affect of current regional fashions to speed up efficiency ranges in ladies’s cricket and lay a strong basis to additional develop the depth and scope of the ladies’s skilled recreation.
