There’s been a bit of talk over on Facebook (or should I say “Meta”?) about how many points you need to qualify for the knockout stages in WBBL.

15 seems to be the consensus, and it is a pretty good rule of thumb – historically no one with 15 points has yet failed to qualify; and 14 isn’t usually enough, though two teams (or rather, one team twice – Scorchers in 2015/16 and 2020/21) have qualified with 14 points.

That said, at the time of writing, it is still mathematically possible for the Hurricanes (currently 7th, on 7 points) to qualify outright on 13 points, without rained-off games or Net Run Rate, if they win their 3 remaining games and other results go their way.

The following sequence of results – WWWwwWWWWwWWwW – where “W” is a home win, and “w” is an away win (fixtures in date order) gives this final table:

Furthermore, 15 points isn’t a “hard” qualify either – it is mathematically possible to get as many as 20 points and still not qualify! How? Well… I’m glad you asked!

Here’s an example end-of-season table, with 5 teams level on 20 points – so one will fail to qualify on Net Run Rate.

(This is just an example – no shade on anyone – the teams are in alphabetical order!)

What’s happened?

The bottom two teams – Strikers and Thunder – have won the home matches between them, and lost every other game, so have one win each.

Stars have beaten Strikers and Thunder twice each, but lost every other game, so have four wins.

Everyone else has beaten Strikers, Thunder and Stars twice (so a “base” of six wins) and then has won all their home games versus each other, giving them an additional four wins, to take them all to 20 points.

Of course, this is unlikely – the odds on the exact scenario described above are 523,347,633,027,360,537,213,511,521 (523 septillion) to 1 against, though there are other scenarios which effectively produce the same outcome – e.g. everyone in the top 5 winning their away matches against each other – that alone halves the odds to… er… 261 septillion to 1 against!

But what you need to remember is that every situation is unlikely. The situation we end this season on will also have been 523 septillion to 1 against.

So to return to the Hurricanes for a moment, the chances of them qualifying on 13 points are currently in the range of about 250 thousand to 1 against… but whatever way the table ends, the chances of that were massively against that too… and yet it still happened.

It may be mind-blowing but that’s mathematics, and as Tom Lehrer once said… try as you may, you just can’t get away from mathematics!

Talented teenagers Alice Capsey and Grace Scrivens have been handed new regional contracts for 2022, with the ECB funding an additional contract at each of the 8 regions, plus Northern Diamonds and Thunder funding 3 further contracts themselves, to bring the total number of professional domestic players to 51.

This may go up to 52 once Fran Wilson’s exact situation is finalised, though we may equally see Charlie Dean leave her newly acquired regional contract almost immediately for an England gig.

There have also been a couple of high-profile moves, with Abbey Freeborn moving across the Midlands from Lightning to Sparks, and Marie Kelly going the other way to join Lightning. Up north, Phoebe Graham has also moved from Diamonds to Thunder.

Not entirely unexpectedly, nobody has lost their contract this year, with the additional fully funded contracts allowing regional coaches and directors to bring in new blood without having to have a difficult conversation with someone else.

The full list for 2022 is as below.

Sparks

• Emily Arlott
• Ami Campbell
• Gwenan Davies
• Abbey Freeborn
• Eve Jones
• Issy Wong

Stars

• Alice Capsey
• Aylish Cranstone
• Alice Davidson Richards
• Danielle Gregory
• Tash Farrant
• Bryony Smith

Diamonds

• Hollie Armitage
• Jenny Gunn
• Bess Heath
• Beth Langston
• Katie Levick
• Linsey Smith
• Sterre Kalis
• Rachel Slater

Lightning

• Kathryn Bryce
• Sarah Bryce
• Bethan Ellis
• Kirstie Gordon
• Lucy Higham
• Marie Kelly

Vipers

• Georgia Adams
• Lauren Bell
• Maia Bouchier
• Charlie Dean
• Tara Norris
• Paige Scholfield

Sunrisers

• Amara Carr
• Kelly Castle
• Naomi Dattani
• Jo Gardner
• Cordelia Griffith
• Grace Scrivens

Thunder

• Georgie Boyce
• Alex Hartley
• Laura Jackson
• Hannah Jones
• Emma Lamb
• Ellie Threlkeld
• Phoebe Graham

Storm

• Dani Gibson
• Alex Griffiths
• Georgia Hennessey
• Sophie Luff
• Fi Morris
• Nat Wraith

England middle order batter Fran Wilson has announced her retirement from international cricket.

Wilson, who turns 30 in November, earned 64 caps for England in an 11 year career, scoring 837 runs and taking 21 catches, including arguably the catch of the century to dismiss Hayley Matthews at Chelmsford back in June 2019.

Wilson began her career at Somerset, making her debut in 2006. She scored her first List A century in 2010, against a Berkshire team that included Heather Knight, Claire Taylor and Isa Guha, and went on to make her England debut in November of that year versus Sri Lanka. She made 6 further appearances that winter, but looked to have been frozen out of the England setup, before a move to Middlesex in 2015 led to Mark Robinson handing her a second chance, with an England “re-debut” in the summer of 2016 culminating in her being part of the team that won the World Cup at Lords in 2017.

Typically coming in at 6 or lower, she generally found herself playing the role of “insurance policy” in both T20s and ODIs, and never really had a chance to build a big innings, making just two 50s in her career, with a highest score of 85* against Pakistan in Kuala Lumpur in December 2019.

Her last England appearances were in New Zealand in winter 2021; and although she remained part of the England squad through the summer of 2021, her role was reduced to that of specialist sub fielder. She had to remain in what was essentially a “bubble” in all but name for the duration, with all the mental hardship that entails, but without the reward of actually playing.

Domestically, Wilson enjoyed success with Western Storm, winning the Kia Super League twice, in 2017 and 2019; before becoming part of the Sunrisers setup in the 2020 reorg, and she will continue to play domestic cricket in the RHF Trophy, Charlotte Edwards Cup, and The Hundred.

How many runs can you successfully chase batting at the death (the last 4 overs) in T20 cricket? In theory, even without no balls and wides, 6x6x4 = 144; but in reality no one has ever achieved anything like that. So what have they achieved?

We looked at over 250 matches from WBBL between 2015 and 2020 – all the games for which ball-by-ball data is available from Cricsheet – of which 119 went down to the death.

The highest successful death chase in the data we analysed was 41, but even this was a slight outlier. In reality as the batting side, you need to be chasing 38 or less from the last 4 overs to have a realistic chance of winning the match – any more than that, and the bowling side almost always wins.

On the other side of the equation, if the batting team are chasing 30 or fewer they will almost always win. This creates a Corridor of Uncertainty between 30 and 38 where the match is “in-play”, and the result could go either way.

That Corridor of Uncertainty isn’t constant however – it narrows sharply going into the final over, giving rise to the theory mentioned by Lisa Sthalekar on commentary during recent the Australia v India series that it is actually the penultimate 19th over which is the most important for the batting side.

In practice what this means is that you can go into the second-to-last over needing as many as 19, and the result will still be in-play. If you can then get this down to 8 required off the final over, you will likely win the game; but if not, 9 is almost always a losing ask. In short: if you are the batting side, don’t leave yourself with too much to do in the final over – you might be able to score 11 off the penultimate over, but you probably won’t score 11 (or even 9) off the last!

Interestingly, wickets don’t appear to have a whole lot to do with it. In matches where teams need 9-11 off the final over, they overwhelming fail; while at asks of 6-8 they almost always succeed; yet in both cases the average wickets down is the same – 5.2 – so we are seeing similar late-middle-order batters at the crease. Is it then psychological? Every batter will tell you they “back themselves” to score 9 off the final over; but do they really believe it? Studies of penalty shoot-outs in football certainly suggest a mental element to a similar situation; but the real reasons remain a matter for speculation.

On February 21st 2020, Australia and India faced-off in the opening match of the T20 World Cup in Sydney. Batting first, India got off to a flying start, as Shafali smacked Molly Strano and Megan Schutt for 29 off 15 balls; and although India’s run rate slowed down after Shafali was dismissed right at the end of the powerplay, that explosive start had put India in the position where they would go on to win the game by 17 runs.

A strong powerplay, followed by a weaker middle overs phase, has been a typical pattern for India in recent years, even before Shafali entered the fray. In T20 matches between the “Top 5” (Australia, England, India, New Zealand and South Africa) since 2016, their average powerplay run rate has been 7.2 runs/ over, slowing down to 6.7 in the so-called “Boring” Middle Overs.

This sounds like it should be the norm – after all, it’s in the name “power” play. However, India are actually the only team in the Top 5 where this is the case – everyone else strikes at a lower run rate in the powerplay than they go on to achieve in the middle overs – even Australia, with the likes of Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney up top.

South Africa’s opening match of that same World Cup, against England in Perth, was the complete opposite. Chasing 123, South Africa started at the pace of a funeral march, scoring at a rate of just 4.3 runs/ over in the powerplay; but came back to win the game at the death, scoring at 8.5 runs per over in the last 4 overs. (And actually it was even more “deathy” than that – they only took one run from the 17th over, hitting the required 33 off just the last 3 overs.)

Again this is a typical pattern for South Africa – they score slowly in the powerplay at 5.8 runs/ over, accelerate through the middle overs at 6.6, and then look to really make hay at the death at 7.4 runs/ over – the only team to hit at over 7 at the death.

Of course, to put things in perspective… (or as Indian and South African fans might be forgiven for thinking, “too much f****** perspective“)… cricket isn’t about winning phases; and although India and South Africa won their opening matches of that tournament, both were later beaten by Australia in the knockouts on their way to lifting the trophy at the MCG.

The middle overs might be stereotyped as “boring” but they last as long as the powerplay and death overs put together, and Australia and England, with the highest middle over run rates, ultimately make that count. It is no coincidence that the two teams who score at over 7/ over in the 10 middle overs are the ones with the highest win percentage in games between the Top 5, with a clear relationship between middle over run rate and winning games of cricket all the way down to South Africa, with a middle overs run rate of 6.6 and a win percentage of just 29%.

The middle overs might not have the glamour of the powerplay, or the cachet of the death; but they do, it seems, win you games of cricket.

All stats for fully completed (D/L excluded) T20 matches between the “Top 5”, 2016-21