Preview: Men’s Vitality Blast Finals Day

EdgBLASTon will host its thirteenth consecutive Vitality Blast Men’s Final Day this Saturday, which remains one of the most hotly anticipated and prestigious dates in the domestic cricketing calendar.

All four quarter finals of the competition, which took place across four days last week, were all highly competitive contests and left us with four sides still standing. They’ll all take their chance in Birmingham this weekend in the hope of lifting silverware at the conclusion of a marathon day in which supporters in attendance will be treated to three matches.

While in each of 2023 and 2024 Finals Day was made up solely of counties that compete in the South section of the group stages, the sides in the North have fared a little better this summer – as a consequence, the North and South are equally represented in 2025 in front of a capacity crowd at the People’s Home of Cricket.

Order of play
Semi-final 1: Lancashire vs Somerset (11:00am start)
Semi-final 2: Northamptonshire vs Hampshire (2:30pm start)
Final: Winner of semi-final 1 vs winner of semi-final 2 (6:45pm start)

Lancashire
Lancashire’s star-studded team produced the goods throughout their highly successful group campaign, in which they topped the North Group having claimed nine wins from their 14 matches. The Lightning then overcame Kent in the quarter finals at Old Trafford, thanks in no small part to an unbeaten 85 from Liam Livingstone.

They were often able to call upon the services of Phil Salt, Jos Buttler, Saqib Mahmood and Luke Wood, as well as having welcomed England great Jimmy Anderson into the fold, but Lancashire’s side is likely to take on a different appearance on Saturday with a host of players currently away representing England in their T20 series against South Africa.

Still, with the likes of Livingstone, Anderson and captain Keaton Jennings in tow, they remain a powerful-looking outfit who can boast a recent Blast pedigree, too – as well as winning the competition back in 2015, they were runners up when losing by a single run back in 2022.

Somerset
It’s becoming a habit of Somerset’s that they should appear at EdgBLASTon at this time of year – this is, quite remarkably, their fifth straight season reaching Finals Day and they did so this year in dramatic circumstances when they edged past the Bears at Taunton, clutching victory from the jaws of defeat courtesy of a fine 26-ball knock of 71* from Sean Dickson when chasing 191.

Somerset’s side is one packed with experience and talent – they have the ability to get off to a flier with the bat if Will Smeed and Tom Kohler-Cadmore catch fire, and exciting potential of James Rew is complemented too with the senior figures of captain Lewis Gregory and bowlers Craig Overton and Jake Ball, although Tom Banton is away on international duty and bowlers Riley Meredith and Matt Henry have returned to Australia and New Zealand respectively.

Along with table-toppers Surrey, Somerset won 11 of their 14 South Group games and have shown an incredibly high level of consistency when performing in this competition, which they’ve won twice and finished as runner-up on five more occasions. It ought to be a cracker of a semi-final to get us underway between two of the big fancies.

Northamptonshire
The Steelbacks overcame the odds to qualify for Finals Day, when they saw off hot favourites Surrey at the Kia Oval last week. That was in no small part down to the hand played by the super-experienced Ravi Bopara, who knocked off an unbeaten 105 from just 46 balls. He is one of two players – along with Samit Patel – to have played in every Blast campaign since its inception in 2003.

Northants made it into the quarters having claimed the final place in the North Group, with their most notable performance coming at EdgBLASTon, funnily enough – they struck an eye-watering 240/6 in their 64-run win over the Bears back in July, as top order batters Ricardo Vasconcelos, Matthew Breetzke and captain David Willey, who has led by example throughout the campaign, all made rapid half centuries.

In Willey and Bopara, the Steelbacks have wily characters in their unit and also have previously lifted this trophy, back in 2013 and 2016, having also been a runner-up in between those triumphant years, too. As Surrey discovered, underestimate Northamptonshire at your peril.

Hampshire
Hampshire are another side that can point to years of glory in this competition, most recently tasting success in 2022, although this is their fourth Finals Day appearance in the last five years alone. Indeed, they’ll break records if they win a fourth Blast title this weekend.

The Hawks, who finished third behind runaway pair Surrey and Somerset in the South Group, have an exciting squad led by the imperious James Vince, and they proved too good for Durham in the quarter-final stage, having successfully defended 221 thanks to knocks from young opener Toby Albert and Australian overseas pair Chris Lynn and Hilton Cartwright.

The Hampshire side carries experience in abundance, with the ball in the form of Benny Howell and Chris Wood and with the bat via the likes of Vince, Lynn and James Fuller, although like Lancashire they’ll be hit by international call-ups and so be without spinner Liam Dawson.