Falcons All Set For New T20 Campaign

Confidence is certainly high within the Derbyshire camp right now, following back-to-back wins in Division Two of the County Championship and a comfortable T20 warm-up friendly victory over Cheshire earlier this week.

The 2026 edition of the Vitality Blast is a little different in its format compared to recent years. Instead of two groups of nine teams, split between north and south, there will now be three groups of six sides, split between north, central and south categorisations. The Falcons are in the North Group alongside Durham, Lancashire Lightning, Leicestershire Foxes, Notts Outlaws and Yorkshire. In addition to playing each of these teams home and way in a round robin format, Derbyshire will also play a home match against a Central Group side (Somerset on Wednesday 8th July) and an away match against a South Group team (Essex on Sunday 31st May). Any points gained from these inter-group contests will be carried over into each team’s respective group.

The main takeaway from this is that each side will now play only 12 group games rather than 14 in previous editions of the tournament. This means that a strong start to the group stage is even more important, with less game time to turn things around.

It’s fair to say that the Falcons cannot afford to have a similar start that they had to last year’s T20 campaign. Mickey Arthur’s side lost their opening five matches in the 2025 tournament to leave them with a mountain to climb to advance to the last eight. Derbyshire managed to achieve four T20 victories altogether, but 10 defeats from 14 matches overall consigned them to last place in the North Group in a bitterly disappointing campaign.

There is plenty of reason to believe though that this year will be different. Speaking to The Peakite’s Paul Fisher shortly after Derbyshire’s friendly win at Cheshire, T20 club captain Nye Donald stated that “…the way we’re going to shape up, it looks like we’re going to be really threatening this year, so that’s something to look forward to.”

Pakistan international seamer Akif Javed will potentially make his Falcons debut in the T20 curtain raiser at home against Durham. Javed was signed recently by Mickey Arthur as an overseas player replacement for fellow Pakistan international Sufyan Moqim, who had to drop out “due to a recent change to international commitments” as stated by Derbyshire CCC on their website.

Speaking about Javed to Paul Fisher, Donald commented “he’s been at a national team camp. So he’s come in a little bit later than we hoped. But he’s been training and preparing for this for ages. I’ve been fortunate enough to see him overseas a couple of times and he is one of the fastest (bowlers) I’ve seen consistently.” It will be fascinating to see how Javed gets on during his first ever spell playing domestic cricket in England.

Donald also spoke to The Peakite about the importance of getting off to a good start in this year’s T20 phase of the season:

“I’ve touched on it before – we’ve typically started slow the last few years. Getting on the right side of momentum really makes getting through the group stage a lot easier. You don’t have to go crazy, you don’t need to win 10 out of your 12 games. That six or seven mark is all you’ll need to get through. If we can do the hard work up top and find our way of winning at home and nailing that down, then that’ll make things a lot easier for us.”

One key topic of discussion heading into the opening match against Durham is regarding the batting order. Last season, Nye Donald and Caleb Jewell opened the batting for every single Vitality Blast match Derbyshire competed in last season. However, Martin Andersson opened with Donald for the recent T20 warm-up friendly against Cheshire, while Jewell came in at number three signalling a possible change of approach at the top order for this new season. On this topic, Donald stated “it gives us another option that we’re certainly looking into. It’s about solidifying that middle order…we’ve got a few different ways we can set up and Martin (Andersson) is certainly sticking his hand up with the way he’s been playing recently.”

Derbyshire Falcons and Durham last faced each other on Wednesday 11th June in the North Group of last year’s Vitality Blast tournament at the Banks Homes Riverside. Durham beat the Falcons by 16 runs. After winning the toss, Derbyshire elected to field first and Durham reached 168-6 from their 20 overs. Ollie Robinson top scored with 70 from 46 balls, while Allah Mohammad Ghazanfar picked up figures of 2-18 with the ball. In response, the Falcons were all out for 152 from 19.3 overs. Wayne Madsen scored 37 from 31 deliveries, while Ben Raine took figures of 3-21 for the hosts.

In last year’s Vitality Blast tournament, Durham reached the quarter-finals before losing at home to Hampshire Hawks by 26 runs. Durham’s best ever run in the tournament was when they finished runners-up back in 2016. Derbyshire’s best ever run came in 2019 when they reached the semi-finals. At the time of writing, this remains the club’s one and only T20 Finals Day appearance so far.

Here’s hoping that Friday night marks the start of something very special indeed for Derbyshire Falcons.