In The Hundred light, T20 Blast seeks attention on Finals Day

The timing is interesting to say the least. Trials of The Hundred, the ECB's new short format competition proposed for 2020, begin on Friday at Loughborough. The ECB hope these tests will provide them with feedback on their grand new idea as they look to further develop the 'concept' but it risks taking attention away from Finals Day at Edgbaston on Saturday, the showpiece culmination of the Vitality T20 Blast. It could be a sign of things to come.

It remains to be seen how The Hundred will impact the existing county competitions but it is sure to have some effect given the ECB's plan to squeeze four tournaments into an already crowded summer. The T20 Blast will remain, at least initially, because of its financial importance to the 18 first-class counties and although it will be played at a different time to The Hundred, but whether it retains its quality or intensity has to be in question given the resources and attention which will be drawn away from it by the new tournament.

As a result, Finals Day may not continue in its current guise for much longer but at least this year's edition is shaping up to be a good one. Lancashire, Sussex, Worcestershire and Somerset will contest the two semi-finals before the winners of each then progress to the evening time final. Although it comes hot on the heels of a round of County Championship action, with four good teams and the likes of Jos Buttler and Moeen Ali on show, it should be a high-end day, particularly now the weather forecast has cleared up.

The opening semi-final is between Worcestershire, playing in their first Finals Day, and Lancashire. Both teams got through the quarter-finals easily enough but crucially, Worcestershire will be without Australian batsman Callum Ferguson, who has been such a key part of their success. He has returned home and that will place a lot of pressure on the likes of the highly-rated Joe Clarke and captain Moeen, although they will at least have their 19 year-old fast-bowler Pat Brown, the competition's leading wicket-taker, at their disposal.

Lancashire's leg-spinner Matt Parkinson is third on the list behind Brown, and he and his fellow spinner Zahir Khan will be hoping to recreate the damage they did to Kent in the quarter-final when they took four wickets between them. They may not find the Edgbaston pitch as spin-friendly as that Canterbury surface was but they both have the variety and confidence to cause Worcestershire problems. On the batting front, Buttler will give Lancashire a touch of world-beating class while Keaton Jennings has also been made available by the ECB.

The other semi-final will be between Somerset and Sussex which will be a shootout between arguably the two best all-round bowling attacks in the competition to date. Sussex, who won their last three group games to qualify for the knock-out stages, will include quicks Tymal Mills, Chris Jordan and Jofra Archer while Somerset have fast-bowlers Jerome Taylor and Lewis Gregory as well as spinner Max Waller. All of these bowlers are high-class T20 operators although unfortunately for Sussex, Afghanistan's leg-spinner Rashid Khan is not available.

Things will not be easy for the batsmen, although Somerset's line-up is arguably the stronger of the two having been more consistent in the tournament to date. They scored more than 200 on four occasions in the group stages while Sussex scored the second least runs of all the sides in the South group. Although they have the power of Luke Wright and Laurie Evans at the top of their line-up, Sussex's batting has tended to be hit and miss while the likes of James Hildreth, Corey Anderson and Johann Myburgh have all been consistent performers for Somerset.

An interesting sub-plot to the day will be how the young homegrown players perform under the spotlight and pressure of the Finals Day. The likes of Parkinson, Clarke and Brown have all been excellent so far and there are others too such as Sussex's batsmen Phil Salt and Delwray Rawlins, Worcestershire's fast-bowler Josh Tongue and Lancashire's opener Alex Davies, who will be hoping to show their credentials on one of the biggest domestic stages. It is an opportunity for someone to become an instant star.

Not that the counties will have as many supporters at Edgbaston seeing these players perform as they could have had. Following a number of years where clubs didn't sell-out their 800 ticket allocation for the Finals Day, the ECB have allocated just 500 tickets to each county this year but that has proved woefully inadequate such has been the demand. It means that many supporters will not be making the journey to Birmingham and although the policy will be reviewed by the ECB at the end of this season, it doesn't help those who are missing out this time round.

Nevertheless, Finals Day is an opportunity to once again confirm the quality of the T20 Blast. It is a tournament that is often derided and compared unfavourably with the IPL and Big Bash. Whilst it may not have the glitz and glamour of those two competitions, it certainly does not suffer by comparison in terms of quality which makes you wonder why the ECB are putting their energies into a brand new tournament. They have a perfectly good one right under their noses.