While County Championship fixtures are played out across the country this weekend, Birmingham is braced for a change of pace when the curtain rises on the T20 Blast on Saturday, and in dramatic style. For the first time the England and Wales Cricket Board launches the competition with a big-venue doubleheader, the significant novelty of this domestic season having inevitably been named “Blast Off”.
Warwickshire play Yorkshire and Derbyshire play Lancashire as four of the eight teams who reached last year’s quarter-finals gather at Edgbaston, which will also host finals day in July. But, having completed the competition’s collection of Birmingham-based bookends, Blast Off must now demonstrate whether it is a gimmick or terrific.
