2022 Vitality Blast: All you need to know ahead of 20th tournament

The Vitality Blast kicks off on Wednesday night with a mouth-watering match-up between defending champions Kent and Somerset in a repeat of last year's final - live on Sky Sports Cricket from 6.30pm - and here's our handy guide to the 2022 tournament... Hoping to impress the new England coach

There has been quite the sea change with the England cricket team in 2022, with Matthew Mott the last piece of the puzzle upon his appointment as the new white-ball head coach.

England's ODI and T20 squads have been somewhat of an impenetrable fortress over the last few years as they've gone from hapless 50-over World Cup losers in 2015 to winners on home soil four years later. Looking to add a T20 World Cup to the trophy cabinet in October, can anyone force their way into Mott's plans?

Phil Salt, now with Lancashire, should be near the front of the queue once more. The former Sussex opener forced his way into a much-changed ODI side that whitewashed Pakistan 3-0 last summer after a Covid-19 outbreak.

Durham pace bowler Brydon Carse also impressed and could his fellow county quick Matthew Potts follow a Test call-up with one in the white-ball arena with a good Blast showing?

Harry Brook, similarly, has his eyes firmly set on a batting berth in the Test team right now, but his first opportunity came with a maiden T20I cap in the West Indies earlier this year off the back of a stellar 2021 Blast campaign in which he was the fourth-top scorer with 486 runs at an average of 69.42 for Yorkshire.

Daniel Bell-Drummond was a shade better still than Brook last year, his 492 runs over the tournament making him the leading English batter, and could the Kent connection with England's new managing director of men's cricket, Rob Key, count in his