Three Cheers To 2016… 

… For giving us the first Kia Super League. This time last year, we didn’t even know who the hosts were going to be. This time last year, with each of the teams starting out from scratch, it could easily have been a flop. It wasn’t.

… For giving us Tammy Beaumont Mark Two. Whatever Mark Robinson said to her, it worked. Back in January her England career looked dead in the water; now she’s being named in ESPNCricinfo’s Women’s Team of the Year and the future looks bright. Incredible, really.

… For giving us a new captain of England who already looks a natural in the role. When her appointment was announced in June, we wondered: was she ready? How would she handle the difficult few months ahead, with the media ready to pounce should England fail to shine against Pakistan, West Indies and Sri Lanka? Three series wins later, and, well, you do the maths.

… For giving us Alex Hartley in an England shirt. ‘Nuff said.

Here’s To 2017… 

… The year of KSL 02 – hopefully even bigger and better than before, especially now we know that Finals Day will be broadcast live on Sky.

… The year of the biggest world tournament women’s cricket has ever seen. Bring on the final at Lord’s on 23 July!

… The year when we find out just how far Mark Robinson’s team are capable of going towards winning a world title at home. Fingers (and toes!) crossed…

In another revolutionary move for women’s cricket, the ECB have today announced that the next wave of England Women’s contracts, which come into effect on 1st February 2017, will last for two years.

There will also be a new level of “rookie” contract for “players who sit just above the England Women’s Senior Academy squad, but who have not quite hit the level required to win a full central contract.”

Alex Hartley, having made her international debut against Pakistan this summer and followed it up with an incredible performance in the West Indies, has been awarded a full central contract, while Beth Langston has been awarded a “rookie” contract.

Unsurprisingly, Charlotte Edwards and Lydia Greenway (who both retired from international cricket earlier this year), alongside Becky Grundy, who was not selected for England’s series’ against Pakistan, West Indies or Sri Lanka, have all been removed from the list of centrally contracted players.

The contracts have also increased in value, although the ECB have given no indication of the scale of the pay rise (the top contracts were previously thought to be worth c.£50,000).

The two-year contracts will help to answer recent criticism that the short-term nature of women’s contracts makes it difficult for contracted players to feel any kind of job security.

The full list of contracted players is below:

Tammy Beaumont (Kent)

Katherine Brunt (Yorkshire)

Kate Cross (Lancashire)

Georgia Elwiss (Sussex)

Tash Farrant (Kent)

Jenny Gunn (Warwickshire)

Alex Hartley (Middlesex)

Danielle Hazell (Yorkshire)

Amy Jones (Warwickshire)

Heather Knight (Berkshire)

Beth Langston (rookie contract) (Yorkshire)

Laura Marsh (Kent)

Natalie Sciver (Surrey)

Anya Shrubsole (Somerset)

Sarah Taylor (Sussex)

Fran Wilson (Middlesex)

Lauren Winfield (Yorkshire)

Danielle Wyatt (Sussex)

Following on from the news of Charlotte Edwards’ retirement from Kent after 16 seasons, Hampshire Cricket have today announced that Edwards will, as of the 2017 season, be representing Hampshire Women.

Having captained Southern Vipers – who are based at Hampshire’s Ageas Bowl – to victory in the inaugural KSL earlier this year, as well as being recently appointed a management board director of Hampshire CCC, a move to Hampshire makes logistical sense for Edwards. It will enable her to continue to play county cricket while also committing large portions of her time to KSL.

Bob Parks, Hampshire Women’s Head of Performance and the Southern Vipers Manager, said that he was “delighted  to welcome Charlotte to Hampshire ahead of the 2017 season. She has been exceptional during her time at the Ageas Bowl so far as part of the Southern Vipers and the immense value, experience and knowledge she adds will be key in driving the improvement of women’s and girls’ cricket in Hampshire and across the Southern Vipers region.”

While Vipers triumphed in the KSL, Hampshire currently linger in Division 2 of the County Championship, and will no doubt be hoping that Edwards can spur them on to promotion next season.

Having completed a 4-0 series whitewash against Sri Lanka last week, England have reached the end of their busiest year ever, and the time seems to have come to reflect on the preceding 12 months. The latest press release from the ECB tells us that during 2016, England have played 26 matches across all formats of the game, and won 21 of them – giving them a win percentage of 81%.

Now of course that is pretty impressive. (For the record, in 2015 their win percentage was 50% – 6 games won, 6 games lost across all formats.) But it’s also pretty obvious that a team’s win percentage doesn’t tell the whole story of their year.

For England, given that nearly half of their victories (10 games in total – about 48%) have come against teams we would have expected them to easily beat anyway (Sri Lanka and Pakistan), it’s perhaps more pertinent to look at the lost games – and particularly at the manner in which they were lost.

Of the 5 games in which England were defeated in 2016, 3 of them were lost when chasing. More significantly, all 3 of these losses were matches which, at the half-way stage in their chase, England looked on course to win easily:

1. The WWT20 semi-final. England chasing 132, and at the 10-over mark were 67-1, coasting along. They subsequently collapsed to finish on 127-7, missing out on a spot in the final by 5 runs.

2. The second ODI in the Caribbean at the Trelawny Stadium. England were chasing 148, were 56-3 after 24 overs – and collapsed to 110 all out.

3. The fourth ODI at Sabina Park. Target 224. England reached 95 before losing their first wicket. They were all out for 181.

I’ll mention one other match here which England did ultimately win: the final ODI in Sri Lanka. Nonetheless, it’s pertinent that at one point England were 58-6 in this game, following a rather embarrassing middle-order collapse. They ended up reliant on Nat Sciver and Dani Hazell to bat out of their skins in order to take them to respectable total. Against almost any other team in world cricket, being 58-6 at any point would have been fatal.

When Mark Robinson sacked his best batsman, back in May, his justification was that the rest of the team were “hiding behind” Charlotte Edwards. The argument seemed to go as follows: when Edwards gets out, the rest of the team no longer believe that they have the capacity to win the game. That’s when the collapse happens. Get rid of her, and other players will step up; get rid of her, and the problem disappears.

I never quite bought this argument. And the evidence above seems to suggest that I was right. Old weaknesses die hard, and the tendency for England to collapse in a heap doesn’t seem to have vanished quite yet.

I don’t want to put a downer on what has been a pretty positive 6 months for England – with the rise of Alex Hartley; the exciting debut of Sophie Ecclestone; the return of Fran Wilson from the wilderness; and a new captain in Heather Knight who seems to be relishing the responsibility. But ignoring a problem, pretending it no longer exists, isn’t going to make it go away. It certainly isn’t going to win you a World Cup.

The last time the Women’s World Cup was played in England, back in 1993, England had a coach – Ruth Prideaux – who knew that so much of cricket is mental. She had her players chanting “we will win”, at a time when sports psychology wasn’t even a thing. It paid off. England beat Australia, got to the final, and won it. Afterwards, most of the players recognised that believing they could do it was one of the most crucial factors in that victory.

Do England have the players at their disposal who can win a World Cup? Yes, I’d say they do. But whether they’ve got it in them mentally is another question entirely. So many of their losses in recent years haven’t been to do with talent, but with not being able to withstand the mental pressure that comes when you know you should be able to make the runs, but you just aren’t quite sure if you can do it. That’s when the collapse happens.

Unfortunately for England fans, you won’t get much greater psychological pressure over the course of a career than playing in a home World Cup. It’s going to be a stern test. If I was Mark Robinson, I know what I’d be focusing on this winter – and let’s just say it wouldn’t be cardio training.

Lancashire’s Emma Lamb has been added to the England squad which will tour Sri Lanka this month, following a successful training camp in Abu Dhabi.

Coach Mark Robinson said that Lamb had impressed in the two internal warm-up games played in Abu Dhabi, as well as during the Kia Super League, when she was the only non-international player to feature among the top ten group-stage run scorers.

Though she opens for Lancashire and Lancashire Thunder, it is likely that if she makes her debut during this series – which begins with the first ODI tomorrow – Lamb will come in down the order, having batted at number 6 in the Abu Dhabi matches.

Her international call-up follows a successful Academy tour earlier this year to Sri Lanka, when she made 85 off 80 balls in a one-day game versus Sri Lanka A and 45 off 29 balls in a T20 against Australia’s Shooting Stars.

Four months after making her international debut, 23-year-old left-arm spinner Alex Hartley has won the Cricket Society’s Most Promising Young Female Cricketer Award.

2016 has been an exciting year for Hartley, after she fought her way back into England contention having been dropped from the Academy 7 years ago. Having impressed new coach Mark Robinson, she was called into the squad for the summer series’ against Pakistan, and took her first international wicket in the final T20 at Chelmsford, finishing with figures of 2-19.

She performed brilliantly in the inaugural Super League for Surrey Stars, ending the competition with 8 wickets, including 3-11 against Lancashire Thunder.

Most recently in England’s ODI series in the Caribbean she took 13 wickets at an economy rate of 3.4 – a record total for England in a bilateral series.

Hartley said: “I’m so excited to have won this award – thank you to everyone at the Cricket Society.”

“Looking through the names of previous recipients, it is incredible to think that my name has now been added to that list.”

“The past 12 months have flown by in a bit of a blur, but I have loved every second of it. I’m still learning so much with every match I play, and I now can’t wait to see what 2017 and the possibility of playing in a home World Cup has to bring.”

The award has run since 2002, with previous winners including Nat Sciver (2013), Heather Knight (2010) and Katherine Brunt (2004). It will be formally presented at the Cricket Society’s annual autumn dinner this evening.

Cricket Australia has released more information on the reasons behind their decision to host the 2020 Women’s World Twenty20 separately from the men’s competition, as approved by the ICC yesterday.

The tournament was originally intended to be a double-header competition with the men’s and women’s matches played across the same period, as has been the case in previous competitions.

However, the success of the inaugural Women’s Big Bash League – which featured record crowds and peak viewing figures of over 400,000 – convinced Cricket Australia that a standalone women’s tournament was the right way forward.

The women’s tournament will now take place in February and March of 2020, with the men’s version to follow in October/November.

CA Chairman David Peever said:

“Having the ICC Women’s World Twenty20 as a stand-alone event means we can hold it in stadiums that we can fill, put on TV at prime-time and ensure it has the space to be promoted as the main event, away from the shadow of the men’s game.”

 “WBBL has taught us that there is an audience for women’s cricket both live and on prime-time television and this decision means we have the opportunity to hold the biggest women’s sporting event ever held in Australia.”

The decision comes on the back of the last joint World Twenty20 in India, which was widely regarded as disappointing for the women’s game, with many of the matches played out to empty stadiums.