Author: Syd Egan

ONE DAY CUP: 2026 Player Rankings

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Batting

Batting Rankings Matches Runs Dot % Single % Boundary % Strike Rate
1. Maia Bouchier 12 750 47 34 13 100
2. Katie George 12 698 47 38 11 91
3. Georgia Elwiss 15 630 46 37 11 92
4. Charis Pavely 14 548 46 36 13 102
5. Hollie Armitage 16 646 53 30 9 81
6. Jess Jonassen 14 558 53 30 13 90
7. Danni Wyatt-Hodge 5 378 34 42 18 131
8. Jodi Grewcock 11 554 50 32 10 89
9. Lauren Winfield-Hill 16 546 55 31 12 87
10. Eve Jones 16 679 59 29 7 68
11. Abi Norgrove 16 578 53 33 8 78
12. Ella McCaughan 16 631 58 29 8 70
13. Sophie Luff 14 536 51 35 9 82
14. Bess Heath 14 403 44 33 12 107
15. Mady Villiers 14 422 52 27 14 101
16. Rebecca Odgers 16 506 56 28 11 84
17. Sterre Kalis 14 513 52 34 9 81
18. Freya Kemp 8 370 42 37 15 112
19. Niamh Holland 16 460 52 32 11 87
20. Kathryn Bryce 14 453 57 25 12 86
Ranking = Runs * Strike Rate ©CRICKETher/cricsheet.org

Bowling

Bowling Rankings Matches Wickets Dot % Boundary % Wide % Economy
1. Amanda-Jade Wellington 18 40 58 6 1 3.99
2. Charley Phillips 15 29 68 6 6 3.75
3. Jess Jonassen 14 26 62 5 1 3.50
4. Kate Cross 16 27 62 10 2 4.59
5. Grace Ballinger 15 24 60 9 2 4.63
6. Bex Tyson 18 26 54 9 2 5.02
7. Katie Levick 16 24 55 8 2 4.78
8. Chloe Skelton 16 26 51 10 1 5.32
9. Lucy Higham 17 22 50 7 1 4.66
10. Lola Harris 16 23 52 10 2 5.05
11. Alex Griffiths 16 25 56 12 4 5.63
12. Claudie Cooper 14 20 51 7 1 4.87
13. Kirstie Gordon 14 19 50 7 1 4.72
14. Georgia Adams 12 18 51 6 1 4.68
15. Fi Morris 14 18 49 7 1 4.70
16. PJ Brett 9 17 53 7 1 4.87
17. Mady Villiers 14 17 52 8 4 5.11
18. Ellie Anderson 12 18 60 14 4 5.48
19. Maitlan Brown 8 17 58 11 5 5.18
20. Naomi Dattani 17 17 55 12 4 5.40
Ranking = Wickets / Economy ©CRICKETher/cricsheet.org

ONE DAY CUP FINAL: Hampshire v Blaze – Trebles All Round!

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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.

Hampshire 251-9 v Blaze 254-7 #ODC 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2026-09-19T17:32:11.265Z

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

Bowling
Strike Rate
Economy
Dot %
Boundary %
Single %
2/3 %
1. The Blaze 34 0.76 54 8 30 5
2. Yorkshire 37 0.79 55 9 29 5
3. Hampshire 36 0.80 53 8 29 5
4. Lancashire 37 0.78 52 8 31 5
5. Surrey 39 0.85 50 9 32 5
6. Somerset 36 0.90 51 11 29 6
7. Durham 44 0.87 48 8 31 6
8. Essex 51 0.91 49 11 30 5
9. Warwickshire 37 0.92 47 10 33 6

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?

ENGLAND v IRELAND: 3rd ODI – England Sweep Ireland But Real Test To Come

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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!)

England 291 v Ireland #ENGvIRL 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2026-09-06T12:45:09.358Z

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.