This week:

• Middlesex win the League 2 One Day Cup
• 2026 season review: your questions answered
• Who has earned a spot in the Wisden Five?
• England U19s squad announced
• Worrying news from the West Indies

Phase-adjusting three seasons of WBBL batting shows how raw strike-rate rankings systematically mark down openers.

By Zalak Kansara

Tammy Beaumont’s recent WBBL strike rate looks ordinary if it is read as a single number. Across the 2023-24 to 2025-26 competitions she scored 530 runs from 439 balls, a strike rate of 120.7. Among the 50 batters who faced at least 200 deliveries, that placed her 25th.

But those batters did not face the same mix of overs.

The WBBL contains four meaningfully different scoring phases. In this three-season sample, batters scored at 105.2 in the mandatory Powerplay, 112.7 in ordinary middle overs, 139.1 in non-Surge death overs and 155.5 during the Power Surge. The Surge was the highest-scoring phase, yet it accounted for only 9.6% of balls faced.

That matters because access to those phases is uneven. Openers faced only 4.9% of their deliveries during the Surge. The corresponding figure was 10.2% for batters whose median position was three or four, and 13.4% for middle and lower-order batters.

Raw strike rate therefore mixes two things: how quickly a batter scored, and the scoring environments in which she happened to bat.

A phase-adjusted comparison

To separate those effects, each batter’s expected runs were calculated from her own distribution of deliveries across the four phases and the competition strike rate in each phase. Actual runs were then compared with those expected runs and rescaled to the competition’s overall strike rate of 119.8.

The calculation is:

Expected runs = sum of balls faced in each phase multiplied by that phase’s league strike rate, divided by 100

Phase-adjusted strike rate = actual runs divided by expected runs, multiplied by the overall league strike rate

This is not an attempt to produce a definitive measure of batting quality. It asks a narrower question: how would the ranking look if each player’s output were judged relative to the scoring rate of the phases she actually faced?

The answer changes the shape of the table. The 17 openers in the 200-ball sample rise by an average of 6.1 ranking places after adjustment. The other 33 batters fall by an average of 3.1 places.

The shift is not driven by one player. Katie Mack rises 15 places, Beaumont and Chamari Athapaththu each rise 14, and Sophia Dunkley rises 11. Individual movements should not be treated as verdicts, but the group pattern is difficult to dismiss as a Beaumont-only effect.

Beaumont as an illustration

Beaumont faced 253 balls in the mandatory Powerplay, 172 in ordinary middle overs, 14 in the Surge and none in non-Surge death overs. Applying the full-precision league phase rates to that distribution produces 481.75 expected runs.

Her adjusted calculation is therefore:

530 actual runs divided by 481.75 expected runs, multiplied by the 119.76 league strike rate, produces 131.76, reported as 131.8.

That moves her from 25th by raw strike rate to 11th by the phase-adjusted measure, a rise of 14 places.

The adjustment does not say that 131.8 is her “true” strike rate. Nor does it claim that Powerplay batting is harder in every match. It says that Beaumont scored materially more runs than the league phase rates would predict from the particular mix of overs she faced.

Her zero death-over deliveries make her an unusually clear example. The wider result, however, is that openers as a group are less exposed to the fastest-scoring phase in the competition.

Does the result survive different choices?

The direction remains the same under four alternative specifications.

At a 300-ball eligibility threshold, openers rise by 4.6 places on average and everyone else falls by 2.9. When phase benchmarks are calculated separately for each season, openers rise by 5.9 and everyone else falls by 3.1. When the Surge is folded back into the underlying middle or death phase, openers still rise by 4.9 and everyone else falls by 2.5.

There is also a potential issue with rain-affected matches, because a fixed death-over definition is less natural in a shortened innings. Excluding all 17 matches in the sample that carried a D/L result or a reduced target leaves 47 eligible batters. Openers still rise by 5.3 places on average, while everyone else falls by 3.0.

None of those tests reverses the finding.

What this does and does not show

Phase adjustment deals with one source of context, not all of them. It does not control for match situation, opposition quality, ground dimensions, wickets in hand or the tactical role assigned to a batter. The phase rates describe what happened across the competition; they are not proof that one phase is intrinsically easier or harder.

The role labels are analytical rather than official. A batter is classified from her median batting position across her innings in the sample: positions one and two are openers, three and four are top order, and five or lower are middle or lower order.

The measure is therefore most useful as a check on raw tables. A ranking that relies heavily on strike rate risks marking down players who repeatedly bat in lower-scoring phases and rewarding those with greater access to high-scoring ones. In the WBBL, the Power Surge makes that distortion especially visible.

Beaumont’s rise from 25th to 11th is the clearest illustration. The more important finding is the group result behind it: across three seasons, openers systematically move upward once their phase exposure is taken into account.

Biggest rises (10 of 50 eligible batters)

Biggest falls (10 of 50 eligible batters)

Full ranking by movement (50)

Reading the table: A smaller rank number is better; ↑ means a higher position after phase adjustment. Adjusted SR compares a batter’s actual runs to the expected runs for the phases she faced and rescales the ratio by the overall competition strike rate. The adjustment describes phase exposure and performance in this sample; it does not predict future performance. Tied movements are ordered by adjusted rank.

This week:

• Blaze win the treble
• Is Tier 1 becoming lopsided?
• Ben Sawyer leaves New Zealand
• England’s winter: WBBL, bilateral, Champions Trophy & a Test v West Indies?

They say in football “The table never lies!” and thus it was in the One Day Cup. Two teams – Blaze and Hampshire – finished the regular season a country mile ahead of everyone else – the gap between 2nd placed Hampshire and Surrey in 3rd ended up being a massive 16 points – with Blaze just edging ahead of Hampshire on the final day. After Hampshire underlied that gap by thrashing Surrey in the eliminator, those same two teams contested the final, with Blaze winning off the very last delivery.

Emma Jones, whose move to the Blaze this season followed years at Surrey where her name had tended to be followed by the phrase “is injured again”,  held her nerve under extreme pressure to score 34 off 25, including 27 of the Blaze’s last 31 runs, to get them over the line. Earlier, Georgia Elwiss (64) and Tammy Beaumont (74) had dominated the middle overs but couldn’t quite finish the job, leaving those who came after them quite a bit to do.

The required rate was just over 6 when Elwiss was caught on the run by Georgia Adams, and it continued to climb until Blaze needed 29 off 18 balls, with 6 wickets down. Jones had been joined by Kirstie Gordon coming in at 7; and while it isn’t quite fair to call Gordon a tail-ender, she isn’t really even a bowling allrounder either – more a bowler who knows which end of the bat is which. Thus this was not the 10-wicket walk in the park the Blast final had been – it became a test of character, but it was one which Blaze were equal to, as the nerves took their toll instead on Hampshire, who went to pieces in the field, dropping so many catches that I lost count.

A few years ago, I ran a 10k and was rather narked to be beaten by a guy whose strategy was to run a “k”, walk a “k”, run a “k”, walk a “k” – overtaking me several times in the process, including in the final straight! Hampshire’s innings felt a lot like that – there were the sprints led by Ella McCaughan in the second half of the powerplay, and Freya Kemp between 25 and 30 overs; but there were also the periods where they struggled to make progress – a nervous start from Maia Bouchier, and a lumbering period when Georgia Adams was trying to work her way out of the rut around the 20-over mark. Ultimately these slower phases cost Hampshire dearly – another 10 or 15 runs on the board would obviously have made all the difference in a game which went down to the wire.

One Day Cup Bowling Metrics

Credit to Blaze’s bowlers, who did what they have done all season – throughout the competition they’ve had the best Strike Rate; the measiliest Economy; and the lowest boundary percentage. Their bowling strengths have allowed them to carry a slightly weaker batting lineup, and the results are in – batters might win you matches, but bowlers win you tournaments. Today’s triumph sealed the “Treble” of T20 Blast, T20 Cup and One Day Cup for a team that, in their “Loughborough Lightning” incarnation, were such a byword for underachievement that they were the only side in the Regionals Era to suffer being disbanded and rebooted following the 2022 season.

Remarkably they achieved this not by buying in new star players, but by taking the ones they had in the Lightning Era – the Bryces, Kirstie Gordon, and Lucy Higham (4 wickets today), and building a team around them which worked so efficiently as a unit that even losing the Scotland trio for the duration of the World Cup this summer couldn’t stop their march to glory. As for Nat Sciver-Brunt and Amy Jones, who both theoretically play for the Blaze… who needs ’em? The Blaze managed a treble just fine without them; and if that isn’t “trebles all round” I don’t know what is?

This week:

• England v Ireland series wrap-up
• Irish & Scottish players in English domestic cricket – what should the rules be?
• A bonkers week in the One-Day Cup & 2 Berkshire greats retire
• England player availability debunked
• Leah Poulton replaces Clare Connor

I made two predictions during England’s innings today – that they would get over 400, and that Sophia Dunkley was going to break Charlotte Edwards’ nearly 30-year-old record score for England in an ODI – 173* against Ireland during the 1997 World Cup in India. Like a man attempting to mow 4 gardens in one day, they were four-lawn hopes; as England somewhat squandered what felt like a real opportunity to go huge.

England lost 8 wickets caught, and the other two run out, as they were bowled out with 7 balls still in the bucket. Capsey was unlucky to see Kia McCartney get a finger onto a Dunkley drive which then went on to hit the stumps; while Charlie Dean got a good ball from Cara Murray which took an edge to Amy Hunter behind the stumps. The other 8 wickets to fall though were batter error – mostly attempts to hoik it out of the ground by players who apparently thought they’d gone back in time to 2016 when Mark Robinson’s England whacked Pakistan for 378 here on boundaries the size of a new penny!

Is Sophia Dunkley excused being caught on the rope because she got 119 off 119 balls… or all the more guilty because she’s been out there for 35 overs which should have been enough to work out that the rope was quite a long way away? Answers on a postcard to “Sophia Dunkley Competition, PO Box 119, London W1A 1AA” – the winner will receive a Magnum*.

(*The ice cream, not the champagne!)

From 242-4 at the 40 over mark, England will have been eyeing up a strong Death Phase to push past 300; instead they lost 6 wickets and gave Ireland the squeak of a chance as they finished on 291 all out.

It was only a squeak of course – 292 is a lot of runs, and while Ireland do have plenty of players that can strike at the sort of rates required on their day, the operative words here are “on their day”. Alice Tector played out a soporific 38 dots as she clawed her way to 29 off 59 balls – a Strike Rate of 43 when Ireland needed to be going at 100+. If you are scratching around for the positives, you might want to argue that Ireland weren’t going to win the match anyway, so it was a valuable hour (and a quarter!) out in the middle building up experience for the 18-year-old. At the other end, Amy Hunter looked to be working her way towards a third consecutive half century, before a Charge of the Light Brigade moment saw her ride headlong into the valley of death and get stumped off Mady Villiers.

It seems to be a dilemma faced by a lot of emerging sides that against the top teams they have plenty of players good enough not to get out, but many of those players can’t score quickly enough to have any chance of winning the game. This problem is compounded for Ireland by the fact that their best player (Orla Prendergast) is coming in at 4, so she isn’t getting time in the middle at a point where Ireland could realistically build a winning position. Today she came in with 20 overs (all but) gone and the game already a distant speck on the horizon. If Prendergast is going to be this team’s Hayley Matthews or Chamari Athapaththu she probably needs to move to the top of the order, even if that isn’t the “right” place for her to be.

Ireland made it to 40 overs with 5 wickets in hand, but lost their final 5 wickets for 10 runs, as England completed a better bowling performance, with Lauren Filer looking more threatening and Tilly Corteen-Coleman finding some turn (though she is still a liability in the field!)

England might not have hit 400; and Sophia Dunkley did not break Charlotte Edwards’ record, though she did pick up Player of the Match, Player of the Series and ODI Player of the Summer – the latter apparently being decided by the PCA’s computer, despite her not having played any of the ODIs v New Zealand. But England did the job they needed to do – there was no repeat of the slip-ups we saw in Ireland in 2024, when the hosts won two of the 5 matches. It hasn’t been a perfect summer for England by any stretch – we spoke to Charlotte Edwards after the game today, and she is clearly stung in particular by the way England performed in the Test against India, telling us that she will be arguing for some domestic red ball cricket to find a space in  the calendar going forwards, even if it is just 2-or-3 games per team rather than a complete “championship”. Next summer’s Ashes suddenly loom large, and that will be the real Test/test.

This week:

• ⁠England v Ireland: what have we learned?
• ⁠Champions Trophy moved to India
• ⁠Smriti Mandhana becomes all-time leading run-scorer
• ⁠A bonkers game between Somerset & Yorkshire in the One-Day Cup