By Helen Maynard-Casely

The opening round of Australia’s WNCL saw six teams kick off their campaigns for the Ruth Preddey Cup. Each of the competitors had both highs and lows in what proved to be a rather exceptional round. Victoria took the honours of the top of the table, a great turnaround from their 25/26 season that had left them bottom with negative points overall.

The ticker tape from Kylie’s AFL grand final triumph had barely settled before, without much pomp and ceremony, the Australian cricket season opened. From a professional standpoint, the kick off on Tuesday was the first round of the Women’s National Cricket League – the states (and one territory) 50-over tournament. This is the comp that threads through the season, with sides facing each other twice in each round in deference to the size of the Australian continent.

This outliner round had additional challenges for team selection, as it coincided with the Australia A tour of India, removing a whole squad of WNCL stalwarts from each team’s pool. But help was at hand, with the fact that the contracted Australian players were available, and itching for match practice with New Zealand arriving soon. So each team was a bit of a motley mix of superstars and rookies – which made for some entertaining performances and results.

The 26/27 WNCL standings after Round 1

The WNCL kicked off with a re-run of last year’s final, NSW breakers hosting Queensland Fire at NSW Cricket Central. This first match saw Queensland struggle to get runs on the board, only posting 167 (with 83 of these scored by opener Georgia Voll) before they were bowled out in the 38th over – with five of the wickets taken by NSW veteran Sam Bates. NSW tied the first game up by the 25th over – roaring to most of the total courtesy of openers Phoebe Litchfield and Emma Mannix-Geeves (in her NSW debut after moving North from Tasmania). The one highlight for Queensland in that first game was the (only) four wickets taken by rookie Ayaka Kato-Stafford in her first match.

However the tables were turned spectacularly in the second NSW v Queensland tie, probably in part down to the return of Queensland captain Georgia Redmayne from injury. She opened and scored 139, the backbone of the Queensland score of 285. NSW could only manage 174 in reply, an innings that saw Kato-Stafford in the wickets again. Both Queensland and NSW end the round with a win and a bonus point on the board.

Over at the WACA, the two games similarly resulted in honours even as Western Australia hosted Tasmania. The WA team were particularly bolstered for the first game with Beth Mooney and Alana King being available to play, with the two of them putting on an unlikely 98-run partnership for the 7th wicket. In reply, Tasmania fell short of the runs required, with Ruby Strange (newly transferred from Queensland) taking a fifer on her WA debut.

Like the action over east, the results switched for the second match with Nicola Carey providing runs for Tassie’s total of 299, which then it was the turn of WA to fall short of.

The pick of the games for the round was the match-up between Victoria and South Australia, under lights for the first time at Melbourne’s Junction Oval. South Australia posted a daunting target of 290, again with the bulk of the runs coming from a moonlighting international in Tahlia McGrath – scoring 154. Victoria had the bit between their teeth and their reply was spearheaded by two more Aussie stars returning to state duty, Annabel Sutherland and Georgia Wareham who posted a 164-run partnership for the 4th wicket. The game had a tense ending, when with four overs to go, with Victoria still needing 37 runs Sutherland was caught at fine leg in search of a boundary. Victoria managed to grind out the rest of the runs to break the losing spell that had lasted the whole of last season. With the second game between the sides getting washed out, Victoria takes 2 points for the null results on top of their win and finish round one at the top of the table.

ACT had a bye for round one, so will not start their WNCL campaign until mid December. And so after that curtain raiser, the (very) early interval is now called – with the WNCL paused for the pandemonium of the 20/20 season that kicks off with the Spring Challenge on the 11 October.

Helen (Crystallised Cricket) is a writer based in Dharug and Gundagarra country, and here is writing about a game played on Dharug country. She acknowledges the traditional owners of the lands that she writes from.