This match was a case-study in not giving up. The Storm looked dead and buried at least twice.

First, at the end of the 4th over, with the Storm at 17-3, and with Rachel Priest, Heather Knight and Fran Wilson all back in the dugout, you’d have put your money on the Stars 100% – the Storm were dead and buried.

Then, with the Storm having somehow clawed things back to parity by the end of the 13th over, thanks to some powerful hitting in a 75 run partnership between Lizelle Lee and Stafanie Taylor, the Storm lost Lee at the start of the 14th, and proceeded to score just 3 runs for the loss for the loss of 2 wickets in following 2 overs, leaving them staring at a Required Rate of over 14. Having come back to life… presumably as zombies… the Storm were dead and buried once more – Surrey just couldn’t lose it all over again… could they?

That they did was down to a number of things – Stafanie Taylor keeping her cool, finding the boundary 7 times in the last 3 overs; Sophie Luff (whose game would really be much better suited to Tests… which she’ll probably never get to play) keeping her cool in supporting Taylor and giving up the strike; and some frankly pretty woeful fielding from the Stars – the latter probably actually the most important factor overall – if they had fielded better, the Stars would have won this game.

Afterwards, Stafanie Taylor reflected upon the impact her dropping Nat Sciver had on her mindset going into bat:

“The type of player that I am, it was horrible for me actually to be in the field and not take those catches and not get it right. So when I came off I sat in the dressing room and I just had a moment to myself, thinking: ‘I have to contribute to this team, I really have to – it doesn’t matter about what happened, but I have to give it my all and just go out there and do my best’.”