If you’d told me two weeks ago that England would scrape over the line in the 1st ODI, with their captain bailing them out after an otherwise pretty hapless batting performance, I’d have believed you: Nat Sciver-Brunt has done it so many times it’s become routine!

England inched their way to victory by 1 wicket, with 10 balls remaining; but the captain in question was of course not Nat Sciver-Brunt, but Charlie Dean, who waved farewell to Maia Bouchier with 51 still required, and somehow shepherded England’s three No. 11s up hill and down dale to the win.

In some ways it was a situation tailor-made for Dean. England needed runs, but they had plenty of balls in the bag, so perhaps the key requirement was simply to follow the advice of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Don’t Panic! And whilst there were certainly moments when it could have gone the other way, with Nensi Patel dropping a pretty straightforward catching opportunity at backward point which would have won New Zealand the game, Dean kept her wits about her. She didn’t rush things, or try to win it in a couple of hits; instead almost letting the runs come to her, and trusting her partners just enough to eke out the result.

England were fortunate to be chasing a target of only 211, largely because New Zealand succumbed to the most horrible of collapses in the final phase of their innings, having been well-placed at 183-4 with 8 overs left and 230 very much on the cards. As Charlie Dean mentioned at the toss, there have been a couple of high-scoring county games at The Riverside this season, with Lancashire and Durham both notching up 300+ scores there in the One Day Cup; but with heavy rain having fallen in recent days this was clearly not a 300 pitch. 230 would have won this match.

But the good work done by Melie Kerr and Maddy Green, who put on 105 through the middle overs, was undone with the bottom 5 making just 12 runs between them; and 210 wasn’t… quite… enough.

England will feel happy with the bowling performance, having struggled to finish sides off of late. Bell was excellent – the slower balls at the back end may be predictable, but if they remain on-the-mark, they’ll do the job; Corteen-Coleman doesn’t have Ecclestone’s range quite yet, but she feels like the type who will work hard to attain it; and Lauren Filer handled a difficult situation well enough, having been drafted-in to the XI only at the last minute after Issy Wong pulled up short in the warmups.

Jodi Grewcock was the one under the most pressure with her leg-spin, and while she wasn’t perfect, she probably did enough to make it difficult watching for Sarah Glenn, whose chances of ever playing for England again get slimmer by the day, given Grewcock’s potential to be the batting allrounder England are so desperate to discover. Her innings with the bat was sawn off today by her lack of confidence to review an LBW that would have been overturned; but hopefully there are further opportunities for her in the remaining ODIs to show the grit she has displayed for Essex this season and which England could sorely have done with as they trod firmly on rake after rake.

The Duke of Wellington is said to have admitted his victory at Waterloo was “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life”; but all anyone remembers now is that he won. Wellington went on to become Prime Minister, and now lies buried in St Paul’s Cathedral; because a win is a win, however you get there.

This week:

• England’s World Cup squad… we have views!
• England quick-march off to an army bootcamp
• Charis Pavely & Alexa Stonehouse impress in the One Day Cup
• What can cricket learn from Formula 1?

This week:

• Laura Wolvaardt’s incredible 100 v India
• Our favourite Suzie Bates memories
• England players return to the One Day Cup, with mixed results
• T20 World Cup to be on free to air TV in the UK

How many wickets does it take to make a wobble? That was the question as Hampshire, with 9 runs needed from 27 overs, lost two in four balls to the off spin of Scotland’s Katherine Fraser. First Freya Kemp cleared her front leg, took a mighty swing of the blade… missed it completely and was bowled. As she turned to walk back, she took a moment to glare at her broken stumps, as if they were somehow to blame.

Two balls later Rhianna Southby joined her – also bowled, but in perhaps the most opposite way possible. Taking a huge stride forwards Southby planted her bat solidly in front of middle, in a classic forward defensive manoeuvre; which would have been straight out of the textbook, had the ball not been heading instead towards her off stump – clipping it, and leaving those Hampshire fans who were already starting to pack up their picnics with the feeling that perhaps this game was not quite as done and dusted as it had seemed moments before.

They need not have concerned themselves – the wobble was unwobbled by Abi Norgrove, who until then had been quietly pursuing a strategy of leaving the fireworks to other people. Norgrove struck the winning runs in the following over, driving Mady Villiers safely across the carpet of the Hampshire Bowl outfield to the invitingly small straight boundary at mid on, to give Hampshire a bonus point win which puts them third in the One Day Cup table – one of only two undefeated sides, alongside the opening rounds’ surprise package, Somerset.

Hampshire’s win was effected by the batters; but it had been set up by a career-best 5-22 from Lauren Bell, playing her first proper match since winning the WPL with RCB back in February. After a wicketless opening spell where she had looked understandably slightly rusty, including a 9-ball over to Emma Marlow which included a trio of wides, Bell came screaming back in the 29th over, bowling Phoebe Turner who found herself slashing at thin air as she was beaten for pace; and then having a possibly slightly unlucky Katherine Fraser adjudged LBW.

When Bell had Sophia Turner caught behind in her following over, it really was wobble time for Durham, who went from 109-5 to 118 all out, as Bell cleaned-up – trapping fellow England Lauren, Filer, LBW (Filer thought she’d hit it; the umpire didn’t agree) and then finally finishing things off as Katie Levick – as confirmed a Number 11 as they come – haplessly fended off a bit of a snorter and was caught on the ring. Bell’s figures for that spell of 5 wickets for just 4 runs, and her Stalinesque ruthlessness in executing the Durham tail, emphasise why she will be one of the first names on England’s team sheet this summer.

Chasing next-to-nothing, Maia Bouchier led a bit of a charge by Hampshire in the first few overs, striking Lauren Filer for 3 consecutive boundaries as England’s firey quick looked a bit more consistent, but a whole lot less dangerous, than she had a week before when she’d bagged a 5fer of her own at The Oval.

Durham used 5 different bowlers in the powerplay as they searched for the wickets that were going to be their only hope,  and it was the 5th of these, Mady Villiers, who made the breakthrough; although it is perhaps more accurate to say that Ella McCaughan died by her own sword – popping a bit of catching practice up to Sophia Turner at midwicket in a dismissal so reminiscent of her opening partner, that I assumed at first it was The Bouch and that the scoreboard had got it wrong!

Bouchier went on to make 47 before seeing an admittedly terrible long hop outside off stump from Filer, but inexplicably trying to pull it, and falling to a spectacular diving grab by Turner in roughly the same position she’d caught McCaughan. It was an innings that showed exactly why Charlotte Edwards continues to rate Bouchier; but just as exactly why it won’t be a massive surprise if she plays a few more games for Hampshire this season than Bell does.

As far as the game itself went, it didn’t matter of course – Hampshire closed it out, and will be the ones celebrating this evening. Meanwhile a somewhat melancholy Durham embark upon on the long drive home, perhaps thankful only that Essex failed to win again, meaning they aren’t quite rock-bottom; but nonetheless far too close to it for comfort.

This week:

• Controversy at The Oval: a wrong dismissal and a too-big bat
• Is Lauren Filer in our World Cup squad?
• Was it right to withdraw England players from the ODC for a camp?
• No women in The Wisden Five

This week:

• Tier One: Exciting young batting talent on display in Hampshire, as Freya Kemp makes her case for World Cup selection
• Australia “reassess” their Molineux captaincy call
• New cricket books including What Cricket Means To Me

Worries about the future of England’s batting may not have entirely been put to rest on a blustery opening day of the season at the Hampshire Bowl – no one at Southampton came close to matching the 124 off 80 balls scored by 34-year-old Danni Wyatt-Hodge for Surrey v Warwickshire, 150 miles to the north in Edgbaston. But between them, Young Guns Ella McCaughan (aged 23), Abi Norgrove (20), Jodi Grewcock (21) and Freya Kemp (20) scored over 300 runs, with Hampshire emerging blinking into the daylight of a new summer, surpassing Essex’s 265 with just two balls to spare.

With Georgia Adams niggled in the quads, it was Naomi Dattani who led out a Hampshire side that contained one young debutante – 21-year-old Cesca Sweet – and one slightly older one, in the now fully evolved form of 28-year-old Pokemon connoisseur par excellence Amanda-Jade Wellington.

They quickly reduced Essex to 21-2 – Grace Scrivens caught at slip for a duck and Cordelia Griffith run out by inches via a direct hit from Dattani – but Grewcock and Lissy MacLeod set in for a 94 run partnership. By the time MacLeod was run out attempting a sharp single just a little too casually, beaten by a sharp throw from Bex Tyson, Essex had reached 115, while Grewcock went on to make 80 off 97 balls, before being bowled trying to pull a straight one from Dattani.

There was a slight sense of disappointment that Grewcock hadn’t pushed on to 3 figures; but the platform she had established nonetheless allowed Essex to close in on a final total of 265-8. Some slightly frantic work from Sophia Smale (33 off 29) and Kate Coppack (17 off 17), combined with some woeful fielding from Hampshire including 3 drops that you’d expect to be taken 999 times out of 100 at this level, allowed Essex to add 70 runs in the final 10 overs – finishing at almost exactly an “average” first innings score for this competition – 266 being the typical first dig in 2025.

With England coach Charlotte Edwards In Da House (keeping a low profile in the upper part of the pavilion) a couple of fringe players would have been keen to impress, but possibly none more so than Maia Bouchier, looking to bat her way back into England contention after being dropped last summer. Edwards has always been a fan of Bouch, having brought her to Hampshire back in the “old” county era; but whilst her talent has never been in doubt, her concentration remains an issue, and so it was today as she looked to the heavens having popped the simplest of catches up to Jo Gardner at extra cover for 7.

If Edwards really is setting store by county form, then the return of Ella McCaughan, playing her first match since injury brought a premature end to her promising 2025 season, will have given her much more to think about. McCaughan (90) and Norgrove (85) put on 147 for Hampshire’s second wicket, as they milked a decidedly average Essex attack, to keep the hosts in touch. It wasn’t the stuff for which adjectives were made, but it did a job and by the 35-over mark had taken Hampshire to 167-1 with the target now in sight, albeit with the required rate drifting towards 7s.

It needed something more, and that something came in the form of Freya Kemp, who entered the fray after Sophia Smale had McCaughan caught and bowled 10 short of her century. Kemp didn’t bring out the fireworks; but she smartly worked the spaces in the field to register a surprisingly risk-free run-a-ball 46 which turned the game decisively in Hampshire’s direction. Kemp couldn’t quite finish things off, caught in the deep by Gardner in the penultimate over; but Naomi Dattani could, striking the winning runs with a couple of balls in the bag, to get Hampshire up and running in 2026.

This week:

• England v England: why we’ve only learned things we already knew
• Will Davina Perrin be in the World Cup squad?
• Meg Lanning to coach Australia U19s in their tri-series v England & SL
• Our fears for the place of women’s cricket in the NZ20