The curtain will come up on the new campaign on April 5 and run to the very end of September as the task of cramming in all competitions continues to prove problematic
The England and Wales Cricket Board have unveiled the men's county and women's regional fixtures for the 2024 summer.
Both schedules are largely based on this year's calendar, though some tweaks have been made.
The County Championship - four rounds of which will be played using the Kookaburra ball - brings the curtain up on the campaign on April 5, the first of eight rounds running until late May.
Highlights of the opening week include defending champions Surrey travelling to Lancashire, in a repeat of last season's opening game, while Nottinghamshire and runners-up Essex begin life without Stuart Broad and Alastair Cook respectively, at Trent Bridge.
Somerset celebrated their second Blast title by beating Essex (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)
The T20 Blast starts on May 30 with Hampshire Hawks welcoming Surrey and Lancashire Lightning hosting Durham. Defending champions Somerset begin their title defence at home to Essex Eagles the following night.
Despite concerns over player welfare, there are 52 instances of counties having back-to-back matches during the Blast, a 15-match increase from 2023.
The first block of fixtures runs until June 21 when the Championship returns for two rounds - though these are the only county red-ball fixtures until late August - before concluding in July. The quarter-finals are stated for September 3-6, with Finals Day already confirmed for September 14 at Edgbaston.
Preceded by friendlies against National Counties, the One-Day Cup has an earlier start date of July 22 - an indication of an earlier window in the summer for The Hundred. A meeting with Notts Outlaws is how 2023 winners Leicestershire Foxes kick off their campaign. The knockout stage for the 50-over competition will take place on August 16 and 18, with the final penned in for Sunday, September 22 back at Trent Bridge.
The Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy final moves to Grace Road - a fourth different venue in five years (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
From August 22, there are the final five rounds of the Championship. The last batch of fixtures includes a potentially pivotal clash between Essex and Surrey at Chelmsford.
Cramming all competitions into the summer has been complicated by the impact the Men's T20 World Cup, scheduled for June in the West Indies and the United States, has had on the international schedule.
The most significant changes to the calendar come in the women's regional competitions. As previously reported by The Cricketer, the Charlotte Edwards Cup will include 10 group matches - home and away games against local rivals and one each against those based in the other half of the country.
Both the T20 competition and the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy - which starts the campaign on April 20 and leads into England Women's white-ball series against Pakistan - will have two semi-finals leading onto the final.
Can anyone stop Southern Vipers in 2024? (Tony Marshall/Getty Images)
CE Cup Finals Days take place at Derby's County Ground on June 22, ahead of the New Zealand limited-overs matches. The latter stages of the Heyhoe Flint Trophy take place over successive weekends with the semi-finals stages on September 14, and the final on September 21 at Leicester's Grace Road.
Southern Vipers, now without the retired Anya Shrubsole, are the defending champions in both competitions and start their summer in the RHFT with the trip to South East Stars. They kick off the Charlotte Edwards Cup on May 18 with a repeat of last term's final against The Blaze.
Twenty-two of the 40 Charlotte Edwards Cup group matches will be double-headers with the T20 Blast, while just under two-thirds of the fixtures are to be staged at first-class county grounds.
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