Six T20 Blast stars to watch: The IPL phenom, England’s next great leg-spinner and a 6ft 7in quick desperate for another chance

The domestic season moves onto its second competition this week following seven rounds of first-class matches.

Twenty20 cricket brings a change of pace and the chance for different players to stamp their marks on the summer.

Gloucestershire are the reigning champions after claiming their first ever title last year, while four counties (Derbyshire, Durham, Glamorgan, Yorkshire) will be aiming to emulate them by winning it for the first time themselves this season.

There are 133 matches coming up over the next three and a half months, with finals day at Edgbaston as usual on September 13. The 18 counties are split into North and South groups, each playing seven home and seven away group games before the top four in each group advance to the quarter-finals.

As usual the familiar faces of county sides are complemented by a host of big-name overseas stars, chasing glory. 

Here, Mail Sport picks six players to keep an eye on as the Vitality Blast kicks off at Lord’s and Old Trafford on Thursday:

Dewald Brevis (Hampshire Hawks)

The signing of not one but two of South Africa’s brightest batting talents is a real coup for the three-time champions.

Teenager Lhuan-dre Pretorius will make hay against the new ball, but it is the presence of Brevis a couple of places further down the order in a mid-innings game changer role that could provide Hampshire with a new element in their game.

Dewald Brevis has lit up the Indian Premier League for Chennai Super Kings

Just turned 22, he arrives in form, having lit up the Indian Premier League in the last completed fixture before the week-long hiatus, hitting Vaibhav Arora for 6, 4, 4, 6, 6, 4 in a 30-run 11th over to rush to a maiden half-century in the competition off just 22 balls and completely alter the dynamic of Chennai Super Kings chase against Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens.

At the halfway stage, the hosts were heavy favourites for the win, but Brevis – whose 291 runs and strike rate of 184 helped MI Cape Town to the SA20 title – flipped things.

Jafer Chohan (Yorkshire)

Coping with greater expectation will be a challenge over the coming weeks for the leg-spinner who went from Loughborough University’s third XI to England winter tourist in the space of three years.

So far, hurtling through the levels has not been a problem and it was on the back of 17 Blast wickets last summer that Luke Wright, the national selector, got in touch. 

Chohan earned a call-up to England’s tour of the West Indies last year

The Yorkshire leg-spinner signed on the back of impressing Joe Root in the nets in 2023

Chohan has certainly made impressions on numerous judges since breaking into the professional ranks. Signed on the back of impressing Joe Root in the nets in 2023, the former Middlesex academy player took a wicket every 12 balls in 2024, earning an overseas deal with Big Bash side Sydney Sixers in the process.

A run-up inspired by Shahid Afridi sees him bound to the crease, but his pace is somewhere between the former Pakistan international and Adil Rashid, his county colleague and mentor.

The one thing he has lost from his armoury, however, is the surprise element.

AM Ghazanfar (Derbyshire Falcons)

The latest mystery spinner to emerge from an Afghanistan conveyor belt that has churned out Rashid Khan and Mujeeb Ur Rahman.

Despite being just 19, Ghazanfar has already been named in an ICC team of the year for one-day cricket and would have been involved at the Indian Premier League this spring but for fractured vertebra.

After four months on the sidelines, he will therefore be fresh for a first stint in county cricket, and ready to showcase the skills that have already seen him influence results for his country.

Able to move the ball both with ways with very few clues as to which way it will turn, he ransacked Bangladesh’s batting with career-best figures of six for 26 last November and has 21 all told in 11 appearances.

His mid-innings work in tandem with the parsimonious slow left-arm of veteran Samit Patel will form an integral part of Derbyshire’s plans to derail opponents in the north group.

Will Smeed (Somerset)

The decision to sign a white-ball contract ahead of the 2023 season, aged 21, caused consternation amongst traditionalists.

Not least because Smeed had effectively retired from first-class cricket before he’d made a first-class appearance.

As others who have taken the same route later in their careers have discovered to their detriment, however, removing longer-form practice denies the chance for rhythm to develop in your batting.

Will Smeed shot to fame in 2023 when he signed a white-ball only deal at the age of 21

The upshot, having returned to an all-format deal for 2025 and 2026, is that he is now back playing 2nd XI matches and goes into a tournament that Somerset won two years ago with a hundred to his name.

Smeed passed 50 five times in the 2023 title-winning campaign, and he will be looking to return to that level of productivity following a dip last year.

With Tom Banton absent on England duty, there will be greater onus on a player with a career strike rate of 151 to rattle Somerset out of the blocks.

T20 Blast 2025 

Opening week fixtures:

Thursday: Lancashire Lightning v Worcestershire Rapids, Middlesex v Sussex Sharks

Friday: Gloucestershire v Kent Spitfires, Hampshire Hawks v Essex Eagles, Leicestershire Foxes v Derbyshire Falcons, Nottinghamshire Outlaws v Birmingham Bears, Somerset v Surrey, Yorkshire v Northamptonshire Steelbacks

Saturday: Birmingham Bears v Durham, Lancashire Lightning v Nottinghamshire Outlaws

Sunday: Durham v Lancashire Lightning, Worcestershire Rapids v Yorkshire, Essex Eagles v Somerset, Middlesex v Glamorgan, Northamptonshire Steelbacks v Leicestershire Foxes, Sussex Sharks v Gloucestershire 

Finals Day: September 13, Edgbaston

Dan Mousley (Birmingham Bears)

When your best mate is Jacob Bethell, attention comes in short supply but another one of the Bears’ left-handed batters is also in the ascendancy.

This summer offers the opportunity to remind people why he was selected for England’s rare white-ball success of last winter – the 3-1 Twenty20 win over West Indies.

His team-mates reckon he could bat anywhere and has the shots for all situations, and at 23 he has developed the versatility to make the most of them.

Last year, only Sam Hain scored more runs in the Blast amongst his county colleagues while he sent down the second highest number of deliveries with his off-spin, behind Danny Briggs.

Able to take the new ball or bowl throughout the middle or at the death, as he did to help England go 2-0 up in Barbados last November, the element of surprise makes him a tough proposition.

Opponents will be aware now of his ability to send down yorkers in excess of 70mph, but as Rovman Powell discovered, knowing about them is one thing, keeping them out is another.

Josh Hull (Leicestershire Foxes)

At 6ft 7in, Josh Hull’s towering height and bounce it creates provides the one-cap Test bowler with a point of difference

In the build up to their 2022 World Cup win, England were selecting as many as four left-armers in their Twenty20 squads. But with Reece Topley, Sam Curran and Tymal Mills all now out of favour and David Willey retired, suddenly the southpaw options look thin on the ground.

Luke Wood, of Lancashire, is back in the fold but the giant Hull could offer an alternative going forward if he can develop a decent career start of 24 wickets in 21 outings.

At 6ft 7in, his towering height and bounce it creates provides the one-cap Test bowler with a point of difference and in Alfonso Thomas he has a head coach with an extensive knowledge of white-ball bowling, particularly at the death.

And if his wise counsel rubs off with group-stage wickets for the Foxes, don’t rule out Hull adding to his England appearances in the game’s shortest format later this year.

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