By Andy Frombolton

Over the next few months each of the new Tier 1 counties will be assembling their squads.

The obvious hope from the ECB’s perspective is the creation of 8 evenly-balanced squads (or certainly a lot more evenly-balanced than is currently the case). For the individual counties, the goal will be to assemble a powerful team capable of winning competitions (and thus the winner’s cheque which would represent a significant contribution towards running costs). The best players will be trying to ascertain which county offers the optimum mix of reward and opportunity, whilst others might simply crave certainty and some will need to accept that to continue playing as a professional will require moving to a new county.

Of all the parties involved, the greatest bargaining power lies with the best players (although they might not realise it), in second place are good cricketers at Continuity Counties (i.e. the regional hosts transitioning to Tier 1 counties), in third place comes the ‘Continuity Counties’, in fourth place come the remaining players and in last place are the 3 ‘new’ non-transitioning counties.

The most likely outcome is a further concentration of talent at a few counties and the creation of at least 2 very weak counties. And, then in 2027, if all the extant counties are clever and ruthless, the 2 additional counties being elevated to Tier 1 could find it almost impossible to assemble a competitive squad.

Here’s why…

Each Tier 1 county is required to have 15 full time contracts i.e. 120 professionals in total (vs 88 now). Hence demand greatly outstrips supply and one has to question where 32 additional players of professional standard will be found.

This makes the ECB’s mandating that each Tier 1 county shall have 15 professional contracts look more like a desire for positive headlines than the result of a rational analysis regarding which arrangements would best deliver against a wider range of equity goals. Why couldn’t the ECB have allowed Tier 1 counties to experiment with different squad configurations e.g. why couldn’t a county have 8 professionals and 14 part-time players who could combine academic, work and/or personal commitments whilst also exploring the desirability and feasibility of a full-time career? Conversely the county could give opportunities to far more players and hence would be more likely to unearth talent.  Such an arrangement could have addressed a wide range of challenges regarding making cricket accessible and viable for players with other commitments. 

Each Tier 1 county starts with a clean team sheet and conversely every cricketer (barring some Northern Diamond players – messy!) is out of contract by November and thus available.

The new Tier 1 counties have been granted a ‘closed period’ during which they can seek to retain players contracted to the transitioning regional team e.g., Viper players to Hampshire. (Presumably the 3 non-transitioning counties have the same arrangement regarding their closest non-continuing region, e.g. Sunrisers to Essex?) Counties are forbidden from approaching any other players during this time.

I posited that the top players hold all the best cards at this stage. Consider first a top player at one of the 5 transitioning regions. If they’re happy to remain, then one option would be to commit to a new contract during the closed period. But if you were one of those players, and knowing your current team wants you, why wouldn’t you wait to see what other offers might come in? Whether they ultimately stay or move, this is their best chance to secure a good deal. 

Second, consider a player at a transitioning region who isn’t one of the top players but is a steady performer. Remember each county needs to contract 15 players and it’s reverse Musical Chairs (i.e. chairs have been added when the music stopped) and so will be keen to retain these individuals. Again, these players are in a strong negotiating position and, unless they want certainty quickly or are keen not to move, they too could hold out to see what other offers emerge.  

Next consider the 5 Continuity Counties. Their goal will be to retain the majority of the squad they’ve assembled during the regional era and add judiciously. Fortunately for them, there are 3 squads of players (at the non-transitioning counties) who – faced with the necessity to move (geographically) at the end of the season – are probably going to be more open to new opportunities than players at the Continuity Counties. The top players at these 3 regions will be much sought after and should be able to secure more than one offer. 

Fourth on my list are the bottom quartile of the currently-contracted professionals who have the advantage over talented amateurs and academy graduates of being known quantities at this level. Indeed, such is the surplus of contracts on offer that, provided they’re prepared to move, they too are virtually guaranteed a new contract. (Whether being recruited primarily to satisfy mandated squad numbers will subsequently equate to a fulfilling career is another issue.)

Finally, consider the 3 non-continuity Tier 1 counties. It’s naïve to imagine that the 3 impacted regional squads will simply move en masse to the successor county. This is not intended as a detrimental observation on any of these clubs, but reflects the reality that not all players will want to move to the new Counties whether this is for cricketing, location or personal reasons. And once a player is required to move from a place where they’ve established roots and connections, then for some it may become irrelevant whether they have to relocate 30 miles or 100?

As already noted, the top players at the 3 new non-continuity Tier 1 counties will be in hot demand from Continuity Counties and some will be tempted. Ditto some of the good players. For instance, a top Western Storm player might receive offers from Somerset, Hampshire and Warwickshire. From a purely-cricketing perspective, before deciding which offer to accept, they’d want to know what their envisaged role in a squad, who else was in the squad and might even make some assumptions regarding the potential for earning a share of win fees. For a Northern Diamonds player, there’s an added complication that some might have their heart set on a return to Yorkshire once they’re elevated to Tier 1 in 2 years and hence see any move as only being temporary. Leeds to Durham is 88 miles whilst Leeds to Manchester is just 44 miles and Leeds to Nottingham is 71 miles; the latter 2 options having the geographical advantage of not being in the opposite direction to all the other counties. 

The worst-case scenario for the 3 new counties is that only a rump of the donor region squad, stripped on the top and some of the good players, is prepared to move.

And let’s add one final curveball. The next round of central contracts. Without seeking to speculate about names, there’ll inevitably be some churn amongst that group at the end of the year. Perhaps a couple of current England players might already be working on the assumption that their contract won’t be renewed and be putting their name into the hat with certain counties, but for the majority their fate won’t be known until the domestic international season and the world cup is concluded. What happens to those players who lose their central contract? All the Tier 1 counties will have assembled their squads and will have allocated their budgets. Consequently, most teams wouldn’t have any funds left by the time any England player loses their central contract (unless one of their squad was simultaneously awarded a new central contract. But even then, a county would probably want a like-for-like skill swap – so a county losing one of its premier batters is unlikely to want to contract a released England bowler.)

Extrapolating the likely outcome of all these moving parts: Surrey, Hampshire and Lancashire will undoubtedly seek to position themselves as premier Tier 1 counties – with the contacts and connections to facilitate winter overseas placements, the chance to earn extra money from coaching, personal sponsorship and (in theory) a better chance to share in tournament winnings. Warwickshire and Notts should be well positioned to retained most of their current young squads and could use cleverly-targeted offers to entice top players from the 3 non-transitioning counties (whether cricket-focussed, such as guarantees about being first choice keeper, specific batting or bowling roles or captaincy or better personal security e.g. longer contracts or support for post-playing life via coaching qualifications). 

Of the 3 new counties, Essex are possibly best placed – able to offer incentives to persuade Sunrisers to move, plus draw on the deep talent pools in their own county, Kent and possibly discarded Oval players. Unfortunately, this scenario leaves Durham and Somerset starting with a diminished core of transferring players and subsequently fighting over a pool comprising primarily players who no other county has offered a contract to.

If they’re going to avoid this fate, these 2 counties will need to be part-visionary and part-moneyball and to act quickly. Durham, of course, faced a similar issue when their men’s team joined the county championship. What could they do? Grab a marque overseas player from a country which doesn’t tour much and isn’t coming to the UK for the next 2 years (or who has retired from international cricket); avoid anyone likely to be on England’s radar for the next few years; target a couple of good older players who can act as player-coaches; recruit 5-6 good players who are frustrated at their current club and guarantee them then roles they crave; and, then complete the squad with the ‘best of the rest’ (prioritising academy / local players with roots in the area over a player who’d be looking to leave at the first opportunity.) Somerset have deftly recruited Heather Knight and it will be interesting to see whether this has the same magnetic appeal as the Charlotte Edwards effect at Southern Vipers.

And finally, whoever each Tier 1 county ends up with, they should all offer everyone in their squads 2-year contracts in 2026 through to the end of 2027; thereby ensuring that Yorkshire and Glamorgan will have a tiny pool of proven players to choose from, thereby probably condemning them to be the 2 weakest teams in Tier 1 for years to come.

It’s going to be fascinating, messy and probably going to result in some massive variance in squad strengths. For the sake of the game, I hope not.

A crowd of 7,500 watched England beat Pakistan in the final T20 at Headingley, to seal a 3-0 series whitewash against the women in green.

A few folks seemed a tad disappointed with that crowd figure – apparently just over 10,000 tickets had been sold, plus “comps” (“complementaries” – tickets given away for free) so Yorkshire were hoping for 12,000, and it was a beautiful day in the West Riding, but despite the sunshine nearly 2,500 people bought tickets they didn’t use.

Nonetheless, at about 40% capacity, Headingley still felt pretty full – there were no huge empty spaces in the stands – and for a minor (and, let’s face it, pretty uncompetitive) series that feels pretty good to me. If we’re getting that for a dead-rubber against Pakistan, I reckon we are doing okay from a commercial perspective – not every series can be The Ashes.

On the field, Danni Wyatt put on a show, and looked all-but set to become the first full-member player to score 3 international T20 centuries. (It has been done twice by players from associate nations – shout out to Fatuma Kibasu of Tanzania, who scored her hundreds against Mali, Qatar and Eswatini; and Esha Oza of UAE, who did it against Oman, Qatar and Bahrain.)

With the help of some woeful Pakistani fielding (she was dropped 3 times) Wyatt made it to 87 off 48 balls before holing-out; and she did the right thing to keep pushing – given that there were still 6 overs left, the selfish option would have been to slow down and ensure she got the century, but there was clearly no thought of that in her mind.

Wyatt’s heroics meant that England powered through the middle overs, hitting at more than 10-an-over between overs 7 and 16. They didn’t have quite such a good death phase, losing 5 wickets for 33 to be all-out off the final ball; but arguably the perfect T20 innings is one where you max-out your resources, leaving nothing in the tank. The 174 that England made was by a distance the highest total of the series, and well in excess of a “typical” 1st innings score in a T20 between the ICC Championship teams.

It was certainly far too much for Pakistan, but at least on this occasion they didn’t collapse in a heap. Despite bowling their opponents out twice in this series, I don’t think England have been at their best with the ball. As I discuss on this week’s CRICKETher Weekly, recorded at Headingley before the game, outfield catches are cheap wickets for bowlers, and arguably should be discounted, as they are in what is increasingly seen as one of baseball’s key pitching metrics “FIP” – Fielding Independent Pitching. I’m not genuinely expecting cricket to suddenly change the way it calculates a bowler’s figures, but I do wonder if it is worth considering something like FIP as a supplementary metric?

England’s inability to take wickets when the opposition aren’t literally giving them away like they’re Maundy Money at Easter, has to continue to be a concern. Of course, they were without their main strike bowler today, which didn’t help. Her replacement got the ultimate vote-of-no-confidence from the captain of not bowling the opening over, but to be fair to Heather Knight, her lack of confidence looked entirely justified – she was all over the place, and how she only went at a rate of 6.25 from her 4 overs, I’ll never know. As one swallow does not a summer make, one decent ball per over does not an international fast bowler make, and England must be praying that Lauren Bell will be able to play every match when it really counts in the World Cup and the Ashes next winter.

I’ll be writing Wisden’s round-up of this series in the next couple of weeks, and cricket’s publication of record will document that England won this T20 series with some ease; but there will be caveats. Wyatt’s innings today, and Amy Jones’s keeping in the match at Edgbaston, were the highlights, but were they oases in the desert, or just mirages on the horizon? We’ll find out when the sterner tests come around later this year and next.

This week:

• Why England v Pakistan is a poor test ahead of the World Cup
• Are England picking on potential instead of results?
• The ECB’s “record-breaking financial results”
• NSW and Victoria win big in Australia’s new 20-over state competition

Pakistan slumped to a series defeat at Northampton, losing their last 5 wickets for just 8 runs as England turned in a thoroughly professional fielding performance, holding on to 7 outfield catches, leaving Amy Jones for once with little to do behind the stumps but twiddle her gloves, following her “4fer” in Birmingham.

After the early departure of Danni Wyatt, Maia Bouchier and Alice Capsey combined to give England what looks on the scorecard to be a decent enough start – 48-1 at the end of the powerplay; but 42% of those runs had come in just one 20-run over, which was probably the least convincing 20-run over I’ve ever seen.

Capsey was on 2 off 9 balls at the start of the 4th over, and looking… it has to be said… somewhat at sea, much as she had at Edgbaston. The over then began with Capsey dancing down the pitch and getting a big edge which passed just out of reach of the diving keeper – 4 runs, which could have easily been another early bath. Then two more thoroughly unconvincing, baseball-style clubs into the leg side, but nonetheless bringing a brace more 4s. A defensive push straight back to the bowler somehow also found its way through to the boundary, and then after a dot off the 5th, finally a much more convincing shot off the final ball for another 4.

At that point it felt like the switch might have flicked, and we were relishing the prospect of Capsey finally producing that really big innings for England that her talent has always promised; but it wasn’t quite to be – she disappeared back into her shell again, scoring just 9 runs from the next 18 balls she faced, before being caught behind, and then… just to really rub it in… stumped for good measure, to end things.

Capsey did joint-top-score, and also go on to take 2 wickets as Pakistan committed hara-kiri, winning her player of the match. But she’s into her 3rd summer of international cricket now, and after playing 28 games for England, she averages little more than Charlie Dean, with Dean averaging 19 at a Strike Rate of 108, and Capsey 22 at a Strike Rate of 123. It’s better. But not as better as it ought to be. And yes, to bend George W Bush’s quote, she is suffering from what you might call “the hard bigotry of high expectations”, but if she wants to be the best, she has to do better.

Nat Sciver-Brunt’s 31 looked a lot more authoritative, but it took another very decent cameo from Dani Gibson – 18 from 9 balls – for England to get up to the kind of score that would have given them something to bowl at against most other opponents.

Of course, they didn’t need those runs today, with Pakistan folding as they did, but one day they will, and if Gibson can nail-down that “finisher” role for England, it would be a huge win for JonBall. The other side of that coin however is that when Nat Sciver-Brunt is unable to bowl, which is becoming an increasingly regular feast in the liturgical calendar of English cricket, Gibson probably isn’t the right player to take on a full bowling role in her stead.

It is a headache that even Lewis’s famous AI might be ill-equipped to cure, and you get the feeling from the way the bowling changes proceeded today that Heather Knight knows it too – it felt like she was trying to hide Gibson’s overs where no one would notice, which isn’t an ideal starting-point for your 5th bowler. And maybe that too is the hard bigotry of high expectations, but we aren’t playing softball any more. This team has been given resources that previous generations could not even have dreamed about – our expectations are high, but theirs should be higher.

It’s been an up and down few months for Pakistan in T20 cricket. The ups: clean-sweeping South Africa 3-0 at home; and beating New Zealand 2-1 away. The downs: a 2-1 away defeat to Bangladesh; and most recently a 4-1 loss to West Indies at home – the latter essentially a 4-1 defeat to Hayley Matthews, who won 3 Player of the Match awards in the 5-game series.

Their failure to take anything much from a one-woman Windies team at home didn’t bode well for their chances against England, who for all their flaws remain indisputably one of the top 3 sides in the world, albeit that their 2nd-placed ICC ranking (ahead of India in 3rd) probably flatters them a little.

The one advantage the Pakistanis did have over some of the England XI coming into this game, was that they had played some recent cricket, with the West Indies series having wrapped up less than a fortnight ago. Contrastingly, two of England’s brightest young stars – Alice Capsey and Lauren Bell – have played a combined total of zero games between them since England returned from New Zealand over a month ago. There was rust on both of them, and it showed.

Capsey got off the mark with an edge off the back of her bat, which somehow missed the stumps and went past the befuddled keeper for 4, and… it didn’t get any better from there. With England having lost a 2nd wicket in the meantime, Capsey needed to knuckle down; instead, she played the kind of shot that looked like she’d just closed her eyes and swung, with all-too-predictable consequences.

Bell also started poorly, her first over going for 12 as Gull Feroza went on the attack up-top for Pakistan. Bowlers do of course get second chances that batters don’t, and Bell got her revenge on Feroza with a decent ball in her second over, with the help of a brilliant catch from Amy Jones. Bell also added another couple of wickets as Pakistan collapsed, giving her final figures of 3-22, which don’t read too badly; but she definitely didn’t have the control today that she showed on the New Zealand tour, and which England will need from her if they are going to challenge for the T20 World Cup.

Ultimately, none of it mattered in terms of the outcome of this match. England had enough depth and experience to recover from 11-4 to post 163. Amy Jones and Heather Knight were dealt a difficult hand with the situation they found themselves in, but they played their cards with all the nous of a pair who have over 450 caps between them.

In this, they were ably assisted by some terrible fielding from Pakistan – Nida Dar just couldn’t get her placements right – everything England hit seemed to find a gap, and when it didn’t, it found a misfield.

Having dug in in the early-middle phase, England were then able to accelerate and maintain a pace of 10+ over for the remainder of the match. Knight and Jones’ stand meant that Dani Gibson could come in and add a very useful 41 not out at the death, to take the game out of Pakistan’s reach. (It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that Gibson is one of the ones who has been playing regional cricket, batting herself back into form with a half-century for Storm at Bristol last week.)

Pakistan made a decent start to their chase, and by the half-way mark were on-track to win the match, according to our new toy – a win-predictor called “Win-her”, which is based exclusively on data taken from women’s cricket.

Of course, Win-her turned out to be very-much not correct in terms of the outcome of this game, but that doesn’t mean it is “wrong”. What it is saying is that a team that has made a decent dent in the chase and only lost 3 wickets at the 10-over mark in the chase, will mostly go on to win the match.

And Pakistan should have! But where England used the late-middle phase to explode, Pakistan imploded, losing 5 wickets for 10 runs and handing the game to England, leaving 12,000 fans to go home happy on the opening day of England’s international summer.

By Andy Frombolton

The whole structure would be stronger, more inclusive and more likely to unearth additional talent. Here’s why…

Under current Project Darwin proposals, most, possibly all, of the current women’s squads at the 8 counties selected for Tier 1 status will find themselves homeless at the end of the year; displaced by a cohort of professionals. In the case of the 3 Tier 1 counties which aren’t migrating from being regional hosts, many of these players will be ‘guns for hire’ representing counties with which they have no affiliation.

For those in power focussed on the ‘headline’ goal – the creation of 8, soon to be 10, premier counties, the fate of these players might seem of little interest. Surely these players can move to an adjacent county if they’re that keen to carry on playing county cricket comes the simplistic response; disregarding any issues of practicality or feasibility, the implications for the cricketers in the receiving county who they would displace, or the sheer inequity of the situation where an amateur player’s opportunity to play for her county (the ultimate goal for 99% of all players) will no longer be based solely on her skill and determination but also on where she lives. And what of the gifted amateur playing in the North East from 2027 when neither Yorkshire or Durham have an amateur county team?

But if the notions of fairness, inclusion and equity aren’t enough to trigger an ECB rethink, let me instead show this will undermine and weaken the top tier of the game.

Consider first the 15-strong squads at the Tier 1 counties. Simple maths means at least 4 players aren’t being selected every match. Nor are many academy players. For this reason, regions used to host inter-squad matches or blended ‘region vs host county’ matches – but the increase in the number of RHF and CEC matches now makes that unviable. The current preference seems to be that there will be 2^nd XI matches between the Tier 1 counties – but the standard is going to be variable –any such team would have at most 3 contracted players (fewer if contracted players are injured) with the balance of the squad comprising academy players (since there’ll no longer be any older amateur county players to supplement the ranks). And it would involve a lot of travel.

Consider next any competition featuring the Tier 2 counties – the precise number of which isn’t yet determined. ECB has indicated they expect Tier 2 to comprise 10 to 14 counties i.e., the remaining 10 (and then in 2027, 8) [men’s] counties plus some of the stronger smaller counties. Both logic and experience suggest that the larger counties will have a huge advantage – since they typically act as a magnet for the best amateur players in a region, have stronger county age groups and have better resources and facilities. The result will be mismatched fixtures. Ask any player at a smaller county how much fun it is to turn up for a match knowing they’re going to be thrashed by a much stronger team, and the answer is ‘none’. And the best players in the stronger counties aren’t going to be stretched or tested, meaning that late developers are less likely to be developed and new, diverse or unusual talent is less likely to be unearthed. Coaches and scouts at the Tier 1 counties are likely to dismiss any outstanding performances on the grounds that they were ‘only’ achieved in a Tier 2 match.

In reality the potential for any Tier 2 player to progress to Tier 1 will thus be very limited. The dream of a seamless path from All Stars to Country disappears as the professional game becomes unrelatable and unattainable for anyone who hasn’t secured a professional contract by the age of twenty.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

If the Tier 1 counties also ran an ‘amateur’ team, this team could play against (a much smaller number of) Tier 2 counties in a 18-20 team second tier competitions split into 4 regions (to minimise travel) but culminating in national semi-finals and finals.

The Tier 1 teams obviously wouldn’t be amateur since they’d include (a capped number of) contracted players but the ECB has also stated that Tier 2 will become semi-professional, so it should be that Tier 2 teams might also include a couple of professional players (probably combining the role of playing professionally with a county development/coaching role – incidentally such a role which would also create opportunities for players leaving full-time professional cricket ; a looming issue which will grow as more players enter, and then leave, professional cricket).

The standard of these games should be just as good as any inter-Tier 1 2^nd XI match, particularly as the ECB has promised to increase funding for the county game. They would provide quality match practice for any contracted Tier 1 player not playing RHF or CEC. And the best Tier 2 players who hadn’t been picked up by a Tier 1 county in their teens would have a stage on which to showcase their talents and thus the opportunity to progress to a professional career.

The structure exists today. It would easy to implement. And it would maximise the chances of finding talent across the nation. The complete reverse of the current proposals.

This week:

• RHF Trophy: Diamonds pull off a thriller v Sparks!
• England squad v Pakistan: was it selected by AI or Jon Lewis?
• Bess Heath becomes Amy Jones’s formal understudy
• Will England take an A team to Ireland?
• Cricket Australia shorten WBBL – Syd isn’t happy

Ella “Mac” McCaughan has been a constant fixture for Southern Vipers in the short history of the RHF Trophy; and she has been a consistent but not spectacular performer through the past four seasons, averaging 23 across 36 games for the team she made her 50-over debut for as a 17-year-old, back in 2020.

The one caveat about her career so far was that she had never made a really BIG score in senior cricket before today, and… if we’re being brutally honest… she still hasn’t; but her 83 off 97 balls, opening the batting for the Vipers against a perennially strong Diamonds side, was the difference between the two teams on a day that ended in a rain-adjusted win for the Vipers at the newly-renamed “Utilita Bowl” in Southampton.

Lizzie Scott was the victim of an early assault by McCaughan, who struck five 4s off Scott’s first two overs. On an outfield which was lightning-fast, despite overnight rain, Vipers hit 49 off the first 6 overs of the powerplay, with McCaughan 31 off 24 balls, eclipsing Maia Bouchier at the other end, who had made a mere 14 off 12 at that stage.

Runs were a little harder to come by after that, with the two balls in use at either end not quite pinging off the bat the way they had when they were new. Nonetheless, Vipers reached 72 before Bouchier was dismissed – caught by Lauren Winfield-Hill having skied an attempted pull.

A second big partnership, this one for 93, ensued between McCaughan and Aussie import Charli Knott, who has made herself very-much at home in English domestic cricket. Today’s 40 off 40 balls was actually her lowest score of the season so far, and thanks to a not-out against Sparks in the week, she currently averages 69. Given that Knott is (realistically) nowhere near the Australian national side, that might be indicative of a continuing gap in standards between English and Australian domestic cricket; or it might be a sign of greater things to come. Time will tell, but it is worth noting in passing that one of the day’s other better performances was another Australian who has never added to the handful of caps she won in 2019 – Erin Burns.

McCaughan and Knott were ultimately dismissed in successive overs by Turners – not balls that span, but deliveries from medium-pacers (and not sisters, despite both ending up playing cricket for the same team) Sophia and Phoebe Turner. But by that time Vipers had a platform of 168 with 7 wickets in hand to push on towards something really big. They didn’t quite achieve that, finishing on 287 after losing wickets towards the end; but it was still a big total, well in excess of the 250 which is an average 1st innings score in the RHF.

With spots of rain already in the air, and a deluge forecast from about 4pm, Diamonds walked out to bat facing not only the Vipers’ bowling lineup, but also Professors Duckworth, Lewis and Stern, with “stern” being the operative word for the test they were about to undergo. As Winston Churchill might have said of DLS, it remains the worst form of deciding a rain-affected cricket match, apart from all the other ways which have from time to time been tried. My view is that it is fair, but it certainly feels harsh when you see the par score go from 19 to 40 in one ball due to the loss of an early wicket.

Having lost 3 wickets early, and with the weather palpably closing-in, Diamonds found themselves frantically chasing DLS for the rest of their innings. They did actually get the gap down to single-figures at one point, as Winfield-Hill and Burns put on 82 for the 4th wicket, but their dismissals suddenly added another 40-odd runs to the target, and there was clearly going to be no way back for the Diamonds, with the umpires calling time after 30 overs as the rain took hold.

The result was a big one for Vipers, against the only other side to have won the RHF Trophy. It lifts them to second in the table, just ahead of Sunrisers on Net Run Rate, but still behind Stars, who continued their unbeaten start to the season with a DLS win of their own versus Sparks. With two semi-finals, rather than a single “eliminator” this season, there’s a bit more to play for than there has been mid-table than in previous years, and the Diamonds I saw today should certainly make that top four, but Vipers have shown once again why they remain the team to beat.