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.