As the county T20 competition struggles in the shadow of The Hundred, we try to find some hope for its future in Taunton, home of last year’s runners-up
Photographs by Karen Robinson/The Observer
Taunton in late May is a sedative, all steeples and cider and dappled sunlight. They say if you can see the distant hillside, it’s about to rain, and if you can’t, it already is. It’s an old joke, but county cricket thrives on old jokes. It might well be one itself.
Gates open at 2pm for Somerset’s first ever Women’s T20 Blast match, a double-header alongside the men’s side against Surrey, the next great innovation to fend off The Hundred by, erm, copying The Hundred.
The whole day is supposedly a sell-out, but there’s about 500 people in as local student Rebecca Odgers fends off the first ball. Even at its zenith, for a men’s game between the tournament favourites in a primetime Friday evening slot, it never looks more than 80% full.
Pairing the matches repackages two diverging narratives as one: the new Women’s Blast, only possible because of The Hundred, and the 23-year-old Men’s Blast, largely unviable because of The Hundred.
Between 2019 (English white-ball obsession’s apex) and 2024, county cricket lost 222,000 fans across the County Championship, One-Day Cup and Blast, a 14% decrease. The shortest format lost fans at an even greater rate – 18%. Over the same period, Middlesex’s Blast sales at Lord’s have dropped 40% (108,144 to 64,351) and Lancashire’s average Blast attendance has almost halved (10,000 to 5,500). The ECB’s marketing plan for its former lodestar focuses on football-esque local rivalries, a product “for real cricket fans”, as one source puts it. And so, I went to find some.
Andrew and Richard Empson and their father Keith were reclining in the Fan Zone, here from nearby Honiton and Exmouth. An annual Blast game has become Keith’s birthday tradition. They try to catch three or four white-ball games a year, but Andrew also takes his daughters to The Hundred in Cardiff. Would they want a Hundred franchise in Somerset? “Absolutely.”
Four local students had slightly different motivations: “To get pissed.” Tickets were £12.50. They all prefer red-ball cricket. Another family were there because their son recently moved to Exeter “and it’s something to do”.
The closest thing to Blast superfans were Harry, Joe, Charlie and Jack, all between 25 and 27, from Weston-super-Mare. They come to Taunton a few times a season for whatever’s on, but “love The Blast, fuck The Hundred”. And yet primarily they are Somerset fans. They would adjust to a Hundred franchise if it didn’t require going to Wales.
There is a growing sentiment that in a time of accelerated change, things will endure because those who care deeply about them fight for their existence. A recent New York Times column theorised that an extinction age is coming “except among people who are deliberate and self-conscious and a little bit fanatical about ensuring that the things they love are carried forward”.
Which raises the question: who will stand up for the T20 Blast? Who is a little bit fanatical about this thing? Even in one of the tournament’s strongholds – Somerset won the 2023 Blast and reached last year’s final – there’s the overwhelming sense people are only here because it happens to be on, and the most expensive tickets are £30. In the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) 2025 survey, 83% of players were concerned about their physical workload and 67% believed the schedule was detrimental to their health.
Late-night travel for the Blast was cited as a specific welfare risk, before we get into the logistical complications of a competition beginning in May and having Finals Day in mid-September.
Until this year, counties depended on the Blast for financial survival. After the sale of Hundred shares, even those without franchises are being given at least £20 million to alleviate that dependency. And the issue with targeting cricket junkies is, if forced, they would prioritise protecting the Championship. No one needs it any more, leaving only those who want it. A lot of people want other things more.
Seven thousand people go home happy. There will be fewer next year. There might be none in a decade
There’s an ongoing review into the structure of English domestic cricket, led by Rob Andrew, the ECB’s managing director of the professional game, alongside the PCA and Professional Game Committee, as well as four county chairs. Andrew has said reducing the schedule “is probably the heart of the debate”, bar the sacrosanct Hundred. He also said the Blast “needs a refresh”.
So how do you refresh it? The common suggestion – and likely solution – is attempting growth by shrinking, a reduction from 14 games to 10. Advocates point to the Big Bash’s successful revamp in Australia– it cut the number of games by 20% in 2024 and attendance rose 20%. But every Big Bash game is televised in the UK. Only a handful of Blast matches are, instead largely streamed by clubs on YouTube. Developing narratives and keeping up is hard, depending on a base level of deliberate care.
Fewer games will also only help counties struggling to sell tickets, often those who have Hundred franchises, because one has undermined and undercut the other. Hundred tickets have traditionally been cheaper, subsidised by the Blast. For Somerset, who sell out almost every Blast game, a reduced schedule means reduced income.
But even Somerset chief executive Jamie Cox has said their aim is getting “Hundred-ready”. It is expected there will be two expansion franchises when the current Hundred television deal expires in 2028, with Durham and either Somerset or Gloucestershire the most likely candidates.
Andrew’s review will be published in July, and the great debate will turn to how counties spend their Hundred windfalls. Somerset are clearly banking on a sell-off of their own in 2029. Without a Test ground, it’s really their only hope. But at least they have hope, which is more than you can say for the Blast.
Surrey ran over Somerset Women, devoid of international talent because England were playing an ODI simultaneously. The home side win a low-scoring but decent men’s game. During the innings break at Taunton, volunteers throw T-shirts into the crowd while four teenagers race giant inflatable apples. Seven thousand or so people go home happy. There will be fewer of these next year. There might well be none in a decade. Do you care enough to stop that? Does anyone?
Social links
Copyright © 2025 Tortoise Media
All Rights Reserved
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.