The Daily Mail has reported that the Twenty20 Blast Finals Day is set to be held in midsummer, with organisers of the English cricketing calendar looking to play the entire competition before the Hundred begins in 2022. Previously taking place on a range of dates between August 17 and October 4 over the past eight years, Finals Day would in these circumstances be played either at the end of June or the beginning of July.
The move comes as part of attempts to reorganise the timetabling of the English summer after a highly-criticised, jam-packed 2021. Organisers are convinced that the shift in the schedule would not undermine the Blast given its widespread appeal and history of selling out its Finals Day at Edgbaston, often up to eleven months in advance of the occasion.
What this will do, however – be it intentionally or not – is grant the Hundred centre stage iin high summer, potentially packaging the Blast as something of a warm-up act to the ECB’s newfangled format. On the other side of the argument, it would give the T20 competition some more coherence, allowing teams to keep their overseas players with less of a gap between the group stages and knockout matches.
