English cricket prepares for landmark Blast to celebrate T20's twentieth anniversary

NICK FRIEND: County cricket chief Neil Snowball confirmed to The Cricketer that Finals Day could return to its end-of-season slot in future, while ticket sales are up on the equivalent point in 2019

T20 Blast Finals Day could yet return to its end-of-season slot in future despite being brought forward into mid-July for the coming summer.

The tournament – or rather, Twenty20 cricket as a professional format – turns 20 this year. And while the game has evolved beyond reasonable belief over the course of the last two decades, England's domestic competition has retained much of its original essence.

Indeed, moving the showpiece day in the domestic schedule back into the heart of the campaign represents a throwback to the early days. The inaugural edition, won by Surrey against Warwickshire at Trent Bridge in 2003, came to a conclusion on July 19, with this year's flagship occasion slated for July 16.

"Finals Day isn't just the major date in the domestic calendar, but it's a significant date in the sporting calendar now in its own right," Neil Snowball told The Cricketer.

Snowball, the ECB's managing director for county cricket, was previously Warwickshire's chief executive and so has seen first-hand – through Finals Day's affiliation with Edgbaston – the benefits of its place at the culmination of the season, and he is aware that moving it from the position that has become part of annual tradition represents a major shift.

"I don't worry about that," he insisted. Tickets for the day are already sold out, other than for the allocations set aside for the four semi-finalists, which speaks to its enduring success since Edgbaston became its permanent venue in 2013.

The move is the effect of opting to play this year's tournament as what Snowball described as "a continual Blast" rather than "the split Blast" that has come to exist as the norm in recent years as Finals Day has inched towards the start of autumn.

Beyond simply matching up to 2003, part of the thinking behind this change is to better accommodate overseas players for the duration. Last year, the case of Rashid Khan highlighted the issue with stretching the competition so widely across the summer months: the Afghan's last-gasp cameo against Yorkshire in the quarter-final was the reason that Sussex reached Finals Day, only he couldn't stick around for the monthlong wait, and so the county arrived at Edgbaston without their trump card.

"I think we learnt a lot last year," said Snowball. "We learnt a huge amount. I think that was part of it."

^{Rashid Khan's absence from Finals Day in 2021 was a legacy of the scheduling of the competition across most of the summer; this year's tournament is due to last seven weeks from beginning to end (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)}

When he spoke to The Cricketer previously last year, Snowball admitted that he felt as though the synergy between the Blast and The Hundred was less defined than had been hoped for, albeit not helped by the pandemic. The Vitality Wildcard Draft, for example, was meant to reward players who'd impressed in the weeks beforehand but for several reasons – timings, Covid and predetermined choices among them – it didn't quite work as planned.

So, running the Blast to its conclusion ahead of The Hundred will provide "a different dynamic" in that regard. Snowball also pointed out that having the Blast done and dusted before August will mean leaving September exclusively – barring the Royal London Cup final – to the final throes of the County Championship.

There is also, however, an admission that there has been plenty of chopping and changing, and that the game – for the sake of all its stakeholders – needs to settle upon a consistent formula.

"I'd like us to get to the point where we get into a rhythm as to how the season plays out," he said. "Last year was the first year of The Hundred, this is the second year. This year, we've got the Blast finishing before The Hundred. Let's see how that plays out."

By which he means that nothing is set in stone.

"There's always a lot of discussion about the schedule and how it all fits together. The fact that we went this year with the seven-week intensive Blast campaign, culminating with the final before The Hundred, obviously last year was slightly different. I think there were different views: some people liked the fact that you had the build-up to the Hundred, you then had The Hundred, and you then had the culmination of the Blast with the quarter-finals and Finals Day.

"That certainly gave the quarter-final venues plenty of time to sell. I think what you lost was the impetus of the narrative, whereas I think this year we'll be able to compare that and see how it works as it runs right the way through from group stage to quarter-finals to Finals Day to wildcard picks for The Hundred."

He is unworried by the short turnaround between the round-robin phase and the quarter-finals, recognising the challenge at play but also backing the counties, "who are so much more sophisticated now in terms of their sales processes", to ensure there is no issue with selling out.

^{T20 Finals Day has become a major day in the annual calendar (Harry Trump/Getty Images)}

Overall, ticket sales so far are 14 per cent up on the ECB's target for this stage and 26 per cent ahead of 2019 at the same number of days out from the start of the season, albeit the tournament started two months later following the World Cup. In that year – the last real reference point given the complications of the last two seasons – more than 900,00 tickets were sold for the Blast across the 18 counties.

The concern for sporting bodies and competitions worldwide has been what in-stadium support would look like once grounds reopened post-lockdown, with clubs having used the interim period to radically improve their live-streaming provisions.

Those early figures, therefore, are reassuring – especially for the counties, for whom the competition is such a major revenue source, although plans are afoot at the ECB to better utilise the streams available to them. Wicket Watch, a Soccer Saturday-style programme, was trialled on YouTube at the end of last season in the County Championship and a similar initiative – perhaps to coincide with the final round of Blast group matches – has not been totally ruled out.

Snowball also confirmed that there have been conversations with clubs around diversifying "the way they sell and want to market" their tickets, with issues around fan experience, alcohol consumption and creating a welcoming environment all high on the agenda.

For their part, the ECB has put more marketing spend than ever before into this year's competition, including a TV advert that is due to broadcast during BT Sport's coverage of the Test series in the Caribbean and the Women's World Cup on Sky Sports from March 9, the same date on which tickets for the competition go on universal sale.

A digital content day was held at Edgbaston in late February in conjunction with the counties, while they were also involved in conversations around a rebranded logo to mark the 20th anniversary. Snowball described the Blast as "one of the best examples of collaboration in recent years" between the ECB and the first-class counties.

On that theme, there have been discussions around the possibility of shaking up the group stages, which have been shaped on a geographical basis – either in two or three pools – since the outset. That might be something for the future, though the value of local derbies and the keenness to retain them has been made clear by the counties in those conversations.

^{Surrey, under the captaincy of Adam Hollioake, won the first Twenty20 Cup in 2003 (Tom Shaw/Getty Images)}

"That's definitely something that's been fed back from the counties," Snowball explained. "They love their local rivalries and that's one of the great things about the Blast. But we've been doing it for 20 years, so could we freshen that up a little bit? In my time at Warwickshire, for various reasons, there was always a thing about playing Surrey – and yet, we could only play them if we got to the knockouts.

"I think that's part of a bit of a refresh that we can look at – not taking away the history of the local derbies but maybe looking at that North/South piece."

Data provided by marketing agency Two Circles has offered what Snowball called "absolutely explicit evidence" to back up the counties' view that Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are "the best" for hosting Blast matches – and 99 of the 126 games are set for those days as a result – although The Hundred has afforded "a real eye-opener in terms of being able to sell large volumes of tickets on different days of the week".

The inclusion of 10 doubleheaders alongside Charlotte Edwards Cup fixtures, meanwhile, is a legacy of the growth of the women's domestic game. Encouragingly, those tie-ups were the ideas of the counties and venues involved; they have happened sporadically in the past but not on this scale. "It's the next natural progression," said Snowball. "I really hope that they continue to grow alongside each other."