Saturday proved to be a good day for batting at Old Trafford, as Lancashire racked up a respectable 169 for four in their first home fixture of the T20 Blast – only for it to be bettered by visitors The Blaze, who finished up winners by six wickets, despite a nervous run-chase.
After over a decade of reporting on the women’s game, this was CRICKETher’s first outing at Old Trafford (as well as our first experience of the new-look Women’s T20 Blast). In a match which went down to the final over, the cricket didn’t disappoint – it rarely does – and Lancashire had clearly made an effort: when we arrived half an hour before play there was music blaring, food stands open, bar staff aplenty and a ton of children’s activities.
Perhaps the only downbeat note was the crowd. The “official” number for the women’s game, we’re told, was 2,600 – as compared to 4,378 spectators at the Utilita Bowl yesterday.
Rare are the days in Manchester when you don’t need a mac. Meteorologically, this was one of them – an uncommonly sunny day in a place which has a reputation has England’s rainiest city (although apparently this is very unfair).
But while the crowd might have been making more use of sunhat than raincoats, on the pitch Lancashire were relying on their own Mack – one with the first name Katie!
Aussie overseas Mack top-scored with 59 from 37 balls after Lancashire were put in to bat by The Blaze. Mack might not have the fireworks of the Harris sisters – down in Birmingham, Laura Harris was practically setting the ground on fire – but she does have stickability. She’s already scored two half-centuries for Lancashire this summer in the One-Day Cup and this one, her third, was just as solid.
The 20-year-old left-hander Tilly Kesteven, fresh from her breakthrough innings of 77 in Monday’s County Cup final, also looked in good touch here. Sarah Glenn, having hot-footed it up from Derby last night in order to play in this fixture, had a bit of a shock after being bunted for 12 from her first over by the youngster. The only disappointment is that Lancashire still haven’t managed to get a named shirt sorted out for the player who won them their first silverware in eight years – I’d be sorting that out pronto if I were them!
Glenn did take an excellent catch at point to see off Mack, jumping to her right to snatch the ball out of the air in the 13th over – and that was where the problems started for Lancashire. Mack and Kesteven had laid a platform of 81 for one after 10 overs – but after Mack departed, a couple of slower overs prevented the hosts from quite fulfilling their early potential, and they finished on 169 for four.
In reply, The Blaze proved just how good conditions really were at Old Trafford, finishing the powerplay with 63 runs on the board – admittedly helped out by Tara Norris sending down some American Pies (blame Syd thanks to Syd for the Dad Joke).
Blaze’s opening pair in the one-day comp have been outrageously poached by Charlotte Edwards (and between them had a pretty decent outing yesterday), but Marie Kelly and Georgia Elwiss together put on 100 in the first 11.1 overs as The Blaze looked to be racing to victory.
But the pair were dismissed in consecutive overs – both caught trying to power the ball down the ground – and when Sarah Bryce fell miscuing Mahika Gaur to cover in the 17th over, 37 runs were still needed off 23 balls. Had The Blaze choked?
Mack could have been the all-round hero for Lancashire if she’d managed to clutch onto the catch proffered up by Kathryn Bryce in the 18th over – instead, running in from deep midwicket, her dive left her with nothing but a bruised knee to show for it.
Faced with a choice of two left-arm spin options, Lancashire captain Ellie Threlkeld then opted to save Sophie Ecclestone for the 20th over, and instead hand the ball to the 21-year-old Sophie Morris. It proved a costly mistake: Bryce struck back-to-back boundaries, while overseas Maddy Green topped it off with a six struck sweetly down the ground.
By the time Ecclestone came on to bowl the 20th, just two runs were needed, and the result was a formality. Lancashire will need to regroup quickly ahead of tomorrow’s match against Durham up at Chester-le-Street.
We’ll be there, on the third and final day of our Epic CRICKETher Northern Roadtrip! (Watch out for our travelogue video, coming later in the week on our YouTube channel.)
Our first experience of the new Women’s County Cup takes place on a blustery, bright day in Northampton and concludes with something of an upset, as hosts Northamptonshire beat Worcestershire by 5 wickets.
We have an inauspicious start to the day when we arrive at the Northamptonshire County Ground 2 hours before play, to find the gates locked and the fixture board outside the ground merrily suggesting that this match was merely a figment of our imagination.
It turns out that we’re at the wrong gate. Once we find the right entrance, things improve: we are able to easily park at the ground, find the press box open, listen to the PA warming-up, and go to watch Chloe Hill batting ferociously in the nets. The only other person inside Wantage Road at this point is a particularly loyal Northants member in a tartan cap, tucked away at the top of the Turner Stand eating his sandwiches.
This is cricket’s first all-inclusive, all-levels knockout competition, involving 37 teams from across all 3 of the new “tiers” – a brave new world for player, spectator and journalist alike. Syd and I have perhaps got a bit complacent of late, having got used to watching players who we know well, with a live scorecard which always has the correct information, and a stream which at the very least allows you to watch all the wickets back.
But this? This is right back to the Golden Days of the Women’s County Championship, of scrambling for binoculars to see who just fielded the ball, of turning to each other to ask: “I missed that – did you see it?”
I also do something I haven’t done in years: count the number of spectators. I reckon 130-odd – presumably, that’s what happens if no one knows that a match is actually happening.
Worcestershire certainly win the “most confusing team for scorers” award, with 2 Davies’s (Gwen and Poppy) and 1 Davis (Ruby), as well as a Beech (Sophie) and a Beach (Jess). We enjoy a delightful, unofficial running commentary from two of the Northants old-handers (“Clare Boycott?” “No relation”, etc, etc), as Worcestershire unhelpfully collapse to 11 for 3 within the opening 3 overs. This is the team who made the early running in Tier 2 by beating Yorkshire on the opening weekend of the season, so it’s something of a surprise to see them struggling.
Seamer Bethan Robinson is zippy and accurate, clean bowling Bryony Gillgrass second ball before returning at the death to do the same thing to Phoebe Brett with a perfect yorker. There’s a smart piece of fielding from Abby Butcher on the deep backward square leg boundary, which not only saves four but results in the run-out of Poppy Davies, before off-spinner Lenny Sims tempts a leading edge from Hill up to mid-off and the Worcestershire batting effort gradually fizzles out.
Northants are left chasing just 97; and the county’s proactive approach to recruitment over the winter ultimately pays off, as former Hertfordshire duo Gemma Marriott (24) and Amelia Kemp (23) lay the foundations with some well-placed boundaries for an easy win.
Afterwards, I go pitch side and manage to speak to the winning skipper, Marriott, who is delighted with both the result and the entire concept of the County Cup.
“It’s a great idea,” Marriott says. “It gives exposure to so many more teams to play against different levels. We know next week we’ve got Shropshire, so it’ll be interesting to see what a Tier 3 team is like now, and then if we win that, we know we’re going to get a Tier 1 team to play against which, if we get there, is going to be a great experience.”
She admits, though, that it is a little strange to not actually know where they will be playing in just 5 days time. “The Steelbacks will play Shropshire in the next round. Please check the website for details of the fixture,” says the ground announcer, helpfully, as we depart.
Welcome to the era of the Women’s County Cup, where uncertainty and opportunity sit hand in hand.
1. England won’t have a permanent vice-captain… at least for now
Charlotte Edwards went for a significant proportion of her own captaincy without a permanent vice-captain, and that’s the model she plans to follow as head coach, at least initially as she works out who in the squad might have the necessary skills to deputise for NSB: “It’s a time where I want to just have a little look at what the squads are going to look like. I don’t want to make that kind of decision just yet.”
She did, however, say that she plans to create a broader “leadership group” which will initially rotate between players across different series and formats. That was something Jon Lewis said he had done, but there was never much evidence of the group actually contributing to team strategy – so it will be interesting to see how visible the “group” (or groups?) is during matches in future.
2. Get your “Heather Knight Is Bowling” klaxons at the ready
Lest there be any doubt, Edwards very much sees Knight as an integral part of the England line-up over the next 2 years: “She’s been great around the group. I genuinely think we’re going to see Heather Knight scoring a lot of runs over the next couple of years.”
The new coach also wants to see a lot more of Knight’s off-spin – which was rarely used in the last 2 years of her captaincy: “We’ve had some good chats around where I see her role in the team. I want to see her bowling more, which she was quite excited about.”
3. Edwards wants the England players to post less on social media
During the World Cup last October, a number of England players attracted criticism when they posted photographs of themselves out and about in Dubai – and then got knocked out of the tournament in the group stages. Edwards is stamping down on that pretty unequivocally:
“We’ve got to look at our professional behaviours and how we go about stuff. We’ve got to change people’s perceptions. We’ve got to stop putting stuff on social media that doesn’t need to be on there. If it’s not going to positively impact on them or us as a group, then it probably isn’t worth posting.”
4. England’s squad to face West Indies will be selected on 12 May – and Emma Lamb should probably stay quite close to her phone
The new national selector will be in post by then and the idea is for that person, Edwards and NSB to sit down together to select the team to face West Indies.
Asked who had particularly impressed so far in domestic cricket, one name came immediately to the fore: “The leading run-scorer is Emma Lamb. She’s performing well – that’s exactly what I’ve asked people to go and do,” Edwards said.
Hampshire’s first home game of the new era – played out in front of a crowd of 600-odd on a sunny day at the Utilita Bowl – ended in a surprise 50-run win against trophy-favourites Surrey.
On a good batting track, with new England coach Charlotte Edwards looking on from the top of the Rod Bramsgrove Pavilion, this was the ideal chance for any number of England squaddies / hopefuls to stick up a hand.
But while Em Arlott hit a match-winning century over in Chelmsford, and Eve Jones struck 97 for Lancs down in the West Country, none of the half-centurions at Southampton managed to make quite such a definitive contribution.
Maia Bouchier’s gorgeous lofted drives and well-placed pulls will have pleased Edwards, and Bouchier herself labelled her 69-ball 61 as “really important” after a difficult Ashes series.
“All I can do is learn and grow from that, and try and improve in every possible way,” Bouchier said. “We [the England players] have got six games, and we’ll make the most of those six games. It’s really competitive at the moment and that’s what we want.”
But Bouchier was eventually lured into a well-signalled trap by ADR, who followed up her first bouncer by immediately bowling a second; Bouchier tried to hook this one, and only succeeded in edging to Kira Chathli behind the stumps.
Alice Capsey – presumably also desperate to impress Edwards – picked up a couple of cheap wickets with her off-spin, and then scratched out her own 81-ball fifty.
But Capsey was also involved in the unfortunate run-out of Paige Scholfield, who came three-quarters of the way down the track despite Capsey never leaving her ground, as Surrey collapsed to 93 for five.
To be fair, Surrey had earlier had to contend with a major disruption to their bowling plans: their opening bowler Phoebe Franklin left the field nursing an injury after just 10 balls, leaving Bryony Smith to step into the breach.
Hampshire initially made hay while the sun shone (literally), as openers Bouchier and Ella McCaughan put on a century stand in just 20 overs.
That should have laid the foundation for a 300+ total. Instead, a middle-over collapse of 3 for 11 saw the run-rate plummet, although some timely cameos from Abi Norgrove and Nancy Harman eventually pushed the total above 250.
Surrey boast the most England experience of any Tier 1 top order, so a target of 260 should have been well within their grasp. But some reckless slogging from Smith and Danni Wyatt-Hodge against Hampshire’s new-ball pair Lauren Bell and Freya Davies cost them two early wickets.
Sophia Dunkley then made a mess of trying to defend a fuller, straighter ball from Bell and was bowled, leaving Surrey three down at the end of the powerplay.
Two weeks ago, Surrey convincingly defeated Hampshire on this same ground in their pre-season warm-up after Alice Monaghan smashed a quickfire 71. But in the real thing, Monaghan’s deft, run-a-ball 40 – despite being struck with a fluency which put the top order to shame – couldn’t quite make up for the disastrous start.
Hampshire clearly felt the pressure as Monaghan’s 64-run partnership with Capsey progressed, dropping several catches and botching a couple of run-out chances. But the reintroduction of Linsey Smith in the 32nd over eventually did the trick, her sharp c&b seeing off Monaghan before fellow left-armer Bex Tyson wrapped things up with the final two Surrey wickets.
There’s still a long way to go, but for now, a Surrey team which everyone predicted would dominate this new competition are (alongside Essex) bringing up the rear of the Tier 1 points table.
After all the kerfuffle of last year’s domestic restructure, we’re about to find out what it is all going to look like in practice. There has been a reasonable amount of player movement in the off-season (Durham, after all, had to build an entire team from scratch!) so for some teams, it will also be a chance to see how these new squads are hanging together… or not, as the case may be.
Our Big Plan here at CRICKETher Towers is to try to attend at least one home game of each of the eight Tier 1 counties this season, partly to try to get a genuine sense of how well teams are being supported behind the scenes. So watch out for a more even geographical spread of match reports than usual!
In the meantime, here are some predictions for the season (full squads at the bottom of the page):
Who’s going to win the One-Day Cup?
Raf: Counties were told by the ECB that they had to offer contracts to a minimum of 15 players. The deep pockets at Surrey decided that wasn’t good enough and have offered out 17 full contracts – that’s in addition to the 4 contracted England players in their squad, who as we now know will be available for the first 6 rounds of the One-Day Cup. There could be a lot of thumb-twiddling going on, but it’s also hard to look past such a well-stocked team (which is almost identical to last year’s Stars squad) for silverware.
Syd: Don’t ask me… ask the data! I carved-up the impact stats (full data here and here) from the regional era and added up the scores for the best 11 players in each squad.
That brought a clear winner to the surface: The Blaze. With their England players likely to be available for the key fixtures at the start of the season, I’m backing them to build up a sufficient head of steam to power them through the group stages. There will still be the knockouts to come in September of course, but assuming the Bryces are not off to the World Cup (which unfortunately looks unlikely at the time of writing) I think they can still do it.
Who’s going to win the T20 Blast?
Syd: The data above shows the squads with their England players included, but of course they aren’t going to be available for a chunk of the season, which particularly affects the Blast. So I took the England players out and re-ran the numbers:
This paints a very different picture, with Surrey and serial-underperformers Lancashire at the front; so I’m backing Surrey’s power-batting lineup, led by Bryony Smith, to knock the Blast out of the park.
Raf: The Blaze are the reigning champions [Ed: are you still reigning champions when the competition changes its name?] and I can see them pulling it off again this year. Similarly to Surrey, they have the same core squad as 2024 – and this time they will have both Bryces available for the whole season. The only question is whether the trophy will be emblazoned (gettit??!) with the name “Blaze”, or whether Notts might put their foot down at that point!
Who will get the wooden spoon?
Raf: Rumour has it that negotiations were a bit tricky behind the scenes at Central Sparks / Warwickshire last year, with the upshot that the squad they’ve ended up with isn’t necessarily the one they thought they would get. That’s always a difficult dynamic to negotiate – players may feel aggrieved or anxious to prove themselves – so while they’ve got some brilliantly talented young players (I’m excited to see what Dav Perrin does this season), I think they might struggle overall.
Syd: The numbers don’t look good for Warwickshire, but they look a lot worse for Somerset especially without their England players. A lot depends though on what Charlotte Edwards decides to do with a certain Heather Knight – I think she’s likely to continue playing ODIs, but if she gets dropped from the T20 format she’ll play a lot more domestic cricket and could single-handedly haul Somerset to something like respectability.
Who’s our one to watch?
Raf: I’m intrigued to see how Rhianna Southby gets on for Hampshire. We got a sneaky peek at her in their warm-up against Surrey at the Utilita Bowl last week (she hit a run-a-ball 42) and her batting looks to have come on leaps and bounds over the winter. Her keeping has always been top-notch; it’s been her batting which has kept her out of contention as a possible Amy Jones successor – could this be the season where she defies those expectations?
Syd: The wicket-keeping succession battle is certainly an interesting one, and I’ll be keeping a close watch on two of the other contenders – Seren Smale and Bess Heath. Heath’s move to Durham is a sensible one, ensuring she is their first-choice with the gloves for the first time in her professional career, having played second-fiddle (second-glove?) to Lauren Winfield-Hill at Diamonds previously. Smale, though, still has that problem with Ellie Threlkeld playing first-glove at Lancashire, so will really need to kick on with the bat to nudge the eyes of England’s soon-to-be-appointed new selector.
Who’s our golden oldie?
Raf: Hilariously, Sophie Luff was already considered a “golden oldie” by Syd last time we wrote one of these previews in 2021. To be fair, she does seem to have been a mainstay of women’s domestic cricket for eons (despite only being 31), and has been the face of most of the “revolutions” we’ve seen in the past decade (the KSL, regionals, The Hundred… phew!) Even after the ECB tried to abolish county cricket via the back door in 2019, Luff continued to spearhead Somerset, so it seems only fitting that she now leads them into the professional era.
Syd: Let’s go back all the way to 2010 – Berkshire are playing in the final of the T20 Cup against mighty Yorkshire. The top scorer for Yorkshire is one Dani Hazell (you might have heard of her) but Yorkshire can’t overhaul Berkshire’s 1st innings total of 173, of which 61 (off 46 balls) were scored by an exciting young player called “Alice” Macleod. Arguably, Lissy (she’s a mononym these days, like Elvis with a cricket bat!) didn’t quite fulfill her potential. She never played for England, but she went on to win the KSL with two different teams, and when Sunrisers won the RHF Trophy last season, she was a big part of that too. Now in her 30s, she’ll be wearing an Essex shirt this season, and playing a valuable role there as the “senior pro” as well as skippering the side if / when Grace Scrivens gets her England call-up.
Who’ll be the overall MVP?
Syd: Possibly my most left-field cricket take (yes… even more left-field than that Grace Scrivens one!) is that Katie George could still end up with 50 England caps… but as a batter rather than a bowler! I agree with Raf that Warwickshire are likely to struggle this season, but if they don’t then George will have been a big part of why they didn’t. She has been much more in control of her bowling in the last couple of years, both in terms of consistency and looking less like a lower-back injury waiting to happen; and her batting is starting to develop from “late-middle-order” to “proper middle-order”. If she can fulfil that promise, it will make her a very valuable asset indeed as she enters her peak years between 26 and 30.
Raf: From a marketing perspective, you’d have to say Ellyse Perry! As the most high-profile signing ever in the history of women’s county cricket, she’s certainly going to get the punters flocking to the Utilita during July, which is why Hampshire are (we assume) paying her the big bucks…
And what about Tier 2?
Raf: Well, it’s going to be quite embarrassing for Yorkshire if they don’t manage to finish on top, given that they are meant to be joining Tier 1 in a year’s time! They are also the only Tier 2 county who are actually handing out paid contracts to their players this year (thanks to the, ahem, largesse of Colin Graves).
Syd: Tier 2 is going to be… interesting. Which, as the apocryphal proverb about “interesting times” implies, isn’t always a good thing. Yorkshire aside, the standards are not going to be anywhere near professional, because these aren’t professional cricket teams. That doesn’t mean it can’t be competitive and exciting, and huge for the players involved; but I worry that fans that come to watch Tier 2 expecting the kind of women’s cricket they’ve seen on TV at the WPL or the World Cup are going to experience a reality-check that could leave them with a bitter aftertaste on the way home.
Raf: One thing which is still very much TBC is how the dynamic will work between Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties. Will “benched” Tier 1 players be permitted by their counties to go out on loan? Even if they are, will Tier 2 counties get parochial and promote their own players ahead of loaned-pros? Hopefully the counties can find a way to work together to present the best face of the women’s game to “new” spectators lending their support from men’s teams.
1. Charlotte Edwards will be stepping down from her other coaching roles and focusing solely on England
Hampshire, Sydney and Mumbai’s loss is our gain!
2. Edwards already knows who the next England captain will be – and the rest of us will find out soon
Obviously, she didn’t tell us who she has in mind (partly because it sounds like she hasn’t spoken to the players yet – she’s properly starting off at Loughborough next week). There was maybe a bit of a hint later in the presser when she was assessing England’s current player pool and mentioned 4 senior players by name – Heather Knight (already ruled out!), Amy Jones (doesn’t want the job), Nat Sciver-Brunt, and Tammy Beaumont. We might be reading too much into that though…
Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough – she intends to appoint someone within the next couple of weeks. (It seems that Raf was completely wrong on this week’s episode of The CRICKETher Weekly – on all counts!)
3. Edwards isn’t a continuity candidate
Firstly, she’s about as anti-Jon-Ball as it’s possible to be. “They’ve had this mantra of entertaining and inspiring… [my role] is changing their focus. For me it’s about their game smarts and their game awareness,” she said. “It’s about winning. I just want to create some intelligent players who win games of cricket for England.”
Secondly, Lottie’s input into the Ashes review seems to have been pretty critical in convincing Clare Connor that there WAS an issue with the England team culture – Connor denied that this was a problem in her initial press conference the day after the Ashes whitewash, but now seems to have accepted that she was wrong, saying: “The review told us that we did need a significant reset in terms of… the environment.”
And lastly, while obviously being diplomatic enough not to name any names, Edwards also said that she would be ensuring professional standards around fitness were fully upheld throughout the England squad. “I will make the players more accountable for fitness,” she said.
4. County cricket is really going to matter
All England players will be available for the first seven rounds of the new 50-over One-Day Cup – Edwards has already decreed it, and she made it pretty clear that she will be enforcing this. “I want us to pick on performances,” she said. “You only learn that by playing. We’ve got a lot of young players who haven’t played enough cricket.”
She also effectively said that from now on, selection for England would depend on putting in good performances in county cricket. “I want England players to dominate county cricket,” she said.
5. The England head coach role was not advertised and the Rooney Rule was not adopted
Connor was pretty clear: she and Jonathan Finch did the review and concluded that Edwards was the candidate they wanted, based on 3 set criteria:
Proven track record as a head coach
The ability to create a winning culture
A forensic understanding of the women’s game
If you ask us, the final point is essentially an admission that they got it wrong with Lewis, although when pressed on that (by Raf), Connor refused to concede this.
Anyhow, Connor did also say that the Rooney Rule had been adopted for the two previous appointments – Jon Lewis in 2022 and Lisa Keightley in 2019 – and that she remains committed to using it in future.
6. Some outsiders were involved in the Ashes review, but we may never know who they were
We found out tantalisingly little about the actual process of the review: Connor said that “some notable figures in the world game” had contributed, including several Australians, but apparently all contributions were made on condition of anonymity. So, unless those involved want to out themselves, that seems as close as we’re going to get to knowing who exactly they were.
7. The ECB will be recruiting a new national selector
New Zealand Cricket have confirmed to CRICKETher that they have no immediate plans to reintroduce women’s Test cricket, after the ICC issued a new FTP which appeared to rule out any Tests for the White Ferns until at least 2029.
The new FTP – available here – shows a significant increase in scheduled Tests, with Australia, England, India, South Africa and the West Indies all agreeing to play multi-format series. West Indies will be participating in the format for the first time since 2004.
The new FTP leaves New Zealand out in the cold, as the only top-six nation who refuse to support women’s Test cricket.
A spokesperson for New Zealand Cricket told CRICKETher: “We haven’t got any plans to re-introduce Test cricket for the White Ferns at this stage.”
New Zealand’s recent victory in the T20 World Cup had sparked hopes that New Zealand Cricket might be persuaded to change their stance, but it seems not.
The spokesperson added: “Our thoughts are that we’re better to concentrate our current resources and investment on T20I and ODI cricket in order to grow the women’s game in New Zealand.”
“The limited overs formats have proven to be very effective in terms of attracting and retaining young players, which is a significant factor in the health of the women’s game here. In time, this will provide a bigger base from which talented players will emerge to ultimately play for the White Ferns.”
“Focussing on formats which include ICC global events (such as World Cups) is our preference for now.”
The spokesperson did offer a small glimmer of hope – concluding: “Never say never.”
Sadly, that might not be soon enough for Suzie Bates & co.
North Moreton near Wallingford (population 328) has had a cricket club since 1858, but it took until 2011 to start a women’s team, and a further 2 years before they won a game.
Fast forward to 2024 and Moreton Mavericks, as the club are known, have now won The Home Counties Women’s Premier League. Defeating some of the biggest cricket clubs across five counties is a true “giant killing” performance by the South Oxfordshire team, and they lost just one match in the process, finishing 32 points clear of their nearest rivals.
Club President Mike Howat said: “The growth of the women’s section at Moreton has been a truly remarkable story and we now compete successfully with clubs of a much higher profile and status.”
26 different players, with an age range of 14-46, contributed to winning this title. Captain Georgia Haworth (23) said: “I am hugely proud of all the players who have helped us become Home Counties champions; it’s been a real team effort from everyone involved.”
Celebrations continue in their clubhouse, which is actually the village pub, The Bear of North Moreton, handily overlooking the pitch.
If you are interested in joining the club, based near Wallingford, please contact Tim Haworth tim@busbar.biz
“My daughter Lola has thrived under Darren’s coaching, had fantastic opportunities and made fantastic friends. We are so glad she found Darren and Twenty20 Community Cricket.” Louise, mum of Lola
Twenty20 Community Cricket are launching a brand-new coaching programme for girls, specifically designed to plug the gap in the development pathway for those curious about transitioning from soft to hardball cricket. The programme comes hot on the heels of MD and Founder Darren Talbot winning the Outstanding Contribution to Coaching award at the recent Surrey Cricket Foundation Cricket Collective event at the Kia Oval.
It is a course Darren dreamt up after much time spent in and around the girls’ cricket coaching environment, during which he noticed how female players are underserved in comparison with their male counterparts.
“Boys typically play cricket from a young age,” explains Talbot, “and come into a club environment where there is a long-standing progression pathway through which they can travel. In many cases for girls, those pathways are still being constructed, and though it is fantastic that the quantity of females coming in through the likes of the All Stars programme is so high, many drop off when faced with the proposition of hardball training.”
The Twenty20 Community Cricket “Transitioning to Hardball” programme is designed to entice these very players to stay in cricket, allowing them to make an informed choice in an environment tailored towards their needs. It takes place each Friday evening at RGS school in Guildford, running until December 13 and followed up with matches across the summer over and above club games, which take priority.
It is a logical extension of the girls’ development programmes that Twenty20 Community Cricket have delivered so successfully over recent years, as acknowledged at the aforementioned Surrey Cricket Foundation awards event. The Outstanding Contribution to Coaching award recognises those who have gone above and beyond in the county of Surrey, in the name of expanding reach and opportunity for people to play this great game of ours.
“I am very proud of the work we’ve undertaken to drive girls’ participation,” explains Darren. “Whilst the award is recognition for all of the hard work put in by the team, it is important that we recognise that there is more to do to truly level the playing field.”
The premise of Twenty20 Community Cricket is to bring quality cricket coaching to state school educated children, at a time when such provision has dwindled beyond recognition. The programme has now expanded to include the participation of over 50 girls across the 11-18 age range. Success has come not just in strength of numbers though; whilst several have gone on to play at county age group level and in adult cricket, Darren and his team also manage the MCC Foundation Guildford Hub, for which the girls won the national tournament at Lords in both 2023 and 2024.
More can be heard from Darren in a forthcoming exclusive interview on the Community Cricket Podcast from Tuesday 1 October: https://pod.link/CommunityCricketPodcast
England have announced their squads to tour Ireland in September and to contest the World Cup in UAE in October – with one notable omission.
Despite the fact that the Ireland squad seems tilted towards experience over youth (Georgia Adams and Mady Villiers are both included, while Kate Cross will captain), England coach Jon Lewis confirmed on Tuesday that Kirstie Gordon has opted out of the tour:
“We had a discussion with her, around multiple different scenarios that could play out for her in the future.”
“We came to the conclusion that the right thing at this point in time was to focus in on playing domestic cricket and then potentially come and play for England further down the line in other series or tournaments.”
Gordon already has 6 England caps, but the key factor was probably that the Ireland tour directly clashes with the last group-stage match and the semi-finals of the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy.
With Blaze currently in fifth place and all still to play for, Gordon is likely focused on ensuring that her team, the Blaze, have the best chance of winning the last ever RHF.
Interestingly, though, it seems that her conversation with ECB Director of Women’s Cricket Jonathan Finch also involved proud Scot Gordon raising the question of a possible return to her home nation. “I’m pretty sure [Scotland] was [part of the conversation],” Lewis said.
Gordon last represented England in July 2019 and, under ICC regulations, would now be immediately eligible to play for Scotland should she choose to do so.
Lewis, though, said that England have promised Gordon a return to England colours “down the line in other series or tournaments” – presumably as a nice carrot to prevent her head being turned by the historic chance to represent Scotland in their first ever World Cup appearance.
CRICKETher 