Jake Perry looks ahead to the start of the Beyond Boundaries Women’s Scottish Cup, where holders Carlton face a tough home tie against the side that finished just behind them in the Women’s Premier League, Stewart’s Melville.
The Beyond Boundaries Scottish Cup gets underway this weekend, with four quarter-final ties to decide the teams going forward to Finals Day on 5 September. The tie of the round is at Grange Loan, where newly-crowned Women’s Premier League champions Carlton meet runners-up Stewart’s Melville, the only side to have beaten them in their victorious campaign earlier this summer.
A month has now passed since the league was decided, but while a number of players from both teams have been involved in the ongoing Women’s Super Series, there has been plenty of other action to keep their competitive edge keen.
“We’ve had a few matches,” said Carlton skipper Annette Aitken-Drummond. “We’ve played a few ESCA T16 games and a lot of the players have been playing in the Super Series as well, so there have been quite a few games to keep things ticking along. But we’re really looking forward to getting stuck into our first cup match at the weekend.”
While Carlton’s title win was comfortable in the end, that one blemish on their record adds extra spice to the upcoming encounter. Stew-Mel’s defence of their total of 176 for 8, a score powered by a 91-run opening stand between Catherine Holland and Emma Walsingham, withstood the pressure of a brilliant late comeback from Samantha Haggo and Charis Scott, and while the challenge of Holland’s team fell away as the season progressed, Annette is expecting a similarly testing encounter.
“It’s a very tough game for us to have first up,” she said, “but we feel we’ve got the players who can go out and do the job for us. They have obviously got some good players too, but we’re going to give it everything and hopefully get to that Finals Day.”
And while the year began with the league as the main target for the current cup-holders, thoughts have inevitably turned towards what would be an historic double.
“If we could go out there and become the first women’s team to do the league and cup double, that would obviously be a great achievement,” said Annette. “It’s something that we have chatted about and it’s something that we have our sights set on, so fingers crossed it starts to come together at the weekend.”
Another intriguing tie is at Nunholm, where Dumfries & Galloway take on West of Scotland, who finished the WPL season with a near-identical record. West’s final position was skewed by the COVID-cancellation of their first two rounds of matches, however, and Charlotte Dalton-Howells’s side will be keen to make the most of their opportunity to salvage something special from what has been a particularly frustrating year.
Royal High Corstorphine visit Craiglockhart to take on George Watson’s College in a repeat of the opening match of the league season. That ended in a comfortable win for Megan Taylor’s team, who went on to have an up-and-down sort of campaign, mixing fine wins with narrow losses. While injury has robbed them of Ikra Farooq, they are still capable of beating anyone on their day, and despite the abundance of young talent who have made their mark for GWC, the Barnton team are likely to have too much firepower for them again.
The final tie of the round is at Myreside, where Watsonians meet Grange, the side with whom they combined in the WPL this year. A third-placed finish was the result after three excellent wins saw them draw level on points, if not run-rate, with Stew-Mel in the final standings. It will be particularly fascinating to see how this game pans out – for two of Edinburgh’s oldest clubs, a first-ever trip to Finals Day is now guaranteed.
Beyond Boundaries Scottish Cup Quarter-finals – 8 August (Reserve Day 15 August):
Watsonians v Grange (at Myreside)
Dumfries & Galloway v West of Scotland (at Nunholm)
Carlton v Stewart’s Melville (at Grange Loan)
George Watson’s College v Royal High Corstorphine (at Craiglockhart)
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Jake Perry is the author of The Secret Game
Twitter: @jperry_cricket / Facebook: Jake Perry Cricket
As part of their ongoing coverage of men’s and women’s domestic cricket, The Cricket Scotland Podcast will include a round-up of the Super Series every Tuesday, with analysis and player interviews along with those from other featured games. Follow @ScotlandPod on Twitter for all the latest information.
CRICKETher 
Apologies for going off the theme of this article.
On Twitter Crickether stated before the end of the Brave/Superchargers match that:-
“If Superchargers win, they will be 99% qualified; but if they lose they will no longer have their destiny in their own hands and (in an admittedly very unlikely scenario) they could still actually end up finishing last.”
Is the program failing because one part of the above cannot be true. If Superchargers lose the Brave match their destiny is still in their own hands because Invincibles have to play Rockets. This means they cannot both get more than the 11 points that Superchargers can still get and no other team (other than Brave) can get 11 points. At worst if the Invincibles/Rocket match is tied or washed out then all 3 end up on 11 points and NNR is required. Therefore Superchargers’ destiny is still in their own hands.
Have I missed something ?
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Yer – it is those scenarios where Invincibles, Rockets Superchargers are all tied on 11 – and I’m counting needing NRR as being “out of your hands” because you can’t influence what another team does. (Do we feel this is wrong?)
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Um …. interesting. “Out of your hands” implies one cannot influence the outcome which, one might argue is not the case with NRR because one can change one’s NRR and potential change it to be good enough to be better than the opposition. Just my opinion.
Another terminology thing is “probability of qualification”, specifically whether this term should or shouldn’t include the NRR scenarios. I think Probability of Qualification should mean the probability a team is certain to qualify (so the probability that a team will be in the top three is not Probability of Qualification – because , for example, one could be tied 3rd). This line of thought leads to 3 classifications; Probability of Qualification, Probability of Needing NRR to Qualify and Probability of Not Qualifying. For example Superchargers have a 53.2902% Probability of Qualification, a 19.2253% Probability of Needing NRR to Qualify and 27.4845% Probability of Not Qualifying. Again just my terminology/opinion (although hopefully the percentages are correct!).
Of course probability of any outcome has to assume a probability of result. The above percentages are based on each outcome being equally possible (ie win, lose, tie/washout). This leads to very inaccurate percentages because in reality the probability of a tie/washout is about 20 times less likely than a win/lose and a good probability model needs to factor this in. Help !
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You are absolutely right – I needed to tighten up some of these distinctions. What I’ve done is added an extra variable internally, so now we have a proper distinction internally between scenarios where you CAN qualify (on NRR) and ones where you WILL qualify. For the moment, the Y/N column is based on “can” and everything else is based on “will”.
Thanks again for the feedback on all this – it is still evolving!
(And at some point I’ll write this all up in a proper piece.)
Syd
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I think I’ve worked out how to take account of probability of result.
Rather than bore you (as indeed you may be the only person interested in this) with all teams figures, Phoenix figures are (after Fire match):-
Probability of a tie/washed = same was win/lose ie 33.33%
Probability of qualifying without NRR = 1.3057 %
Probability of qualifying with NRR = 4.3642 %
Probability of not qualifying = 94.3301 %
Probability of a tie/washed = 10% (win 45%, lose 45%)
Probability of qualifying without NRR = 1.7026 %
Probability of qualifying with NRR = 4.8703 %
Probability of not qualifying = 93.4271 %
I’m not using a software package so any confirmation that the above are accurate would be most welcome !
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I’ve got 19683 scenarios.
Fire qualify “absolutely” (no NRR) in 54 (0.27%) and “possibly” in 1062 (5.40%).
When you add these up (54 + 1062 = 1116 = 5.67%) it agrees with your probability of NOT qualifying; but there is obviously a discrepancy in the detail?
Syd
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Syd, thanks for your reply (btw, think you mean Phoenix rather than Fire). Rather stupidly I had a brain-fade and published the wrong figures above. What I should have published was:-
If Probability of a tie/washed = same was win/lose ie 33.33%
Probability of qualifying without NRR = 0.2743 %
Probability of qualifying with NRR = 5.3955 %
Probability of not qualifying = 94.3301 %
If Probability of a tie/washed = 10% (win 45%, lose 45%)
Probability of qualifying without NRR = 1.9026 %
Probability of qualifying with NRR = 5.4803 %
Probability of not qualifying = 93.4271 %
so I agree with your figures for the case where each outcome is equally likely.
My figures for Fire are:-
If Probability of a tie/washed = same was win/lose ie 33.33%
Probability of qualifying without NRR = 0.0610 %
Probability of qualifying with NRR = 2.7181 %
Probability of not qualifying = 97.2210 %
If Probability of a tie/washed = 10% (win 45%, lose 45%)
Probability of qualifying without NRR = 0.23520 %
Probability of qualifying with NRR = 3.38009 %
Probability of not qualifying = 96.38471 %
This is interesting because Fire and Phoenix both have 4pts and 2 matches left yet their probability profiles are quite different (because they will play different teams) and Fire are in a worse situation (granted we are talking about the difference between ‘dire’ and ‘really dire’!).
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Yes – sorry – Phoenix. Looks like we have the same numbers?
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