Blast Finals Day set for September on account of World Cup conflict
Edgbaston will host the Vitality Blast Finals Day on September 14 subsequent 12 months, a reversion to a late-season showpiece after this 12 months’s July closing, because of the affect that subsequent summer season’s T20 Men’s World Cup could have on the English season.
The Blast title was won this year by Somerset, who accomplished their fifteenth win of the marketing campaign in beating Essex in entrance of a capability crowd at Edgbaston on July 15, solely a fortnight after the completion of the event group phases.
The event had been condensed to make sure most availability of abroad gamers, amid the competing calls for of the worldwide and T20 franchise schedule – though even that was not enough to forestall the high-profile absence of Surrey’s Sunil Narine from the semi-finals, after he selected to stay with LA Knight Riders within the inaugural season of Major League Cricket within the USA.
Now, nonetheless, Finals Day seems to be set to happen a number of weeks after the Blast group phases and quarter-finals, with the T20 World Cup on account of be staged within the Caribbean and USA in June, and the fourth season of the Hundred set to start in late July, every week sooner than this 12 months’s occasion.
“The move to September has been made due to the impact next June’s ICC Men’s T20 World Cup has had on our England Men’s and Women’s home international fixtures,” an ECB spokesperson mentioned in a press launch. “The full men’s and women’s domestic schedule is to be released later this year.”
Despite being performed exterior of the peak of the summer season, greater than 800,000 followers attended Blast fixtures throughout its six-week window, with the ECB reporting that the competitors had loved its second-highest superior tickets gross sales ever (up 16% on 2022).
Somerset’s victory within the closing, their first since 2005, drew the event’s largest viewing figures in over a decade, with a mean viewers of 427,000, whereas viewership for the quarter-finals and semi-finals had been up 64% and 12% respectively on 2022.