Here at CRICKETher, we’re passionate about women’s cricket at all levels, including club cricket. It’s our mission to offer coverage of women’s (and girls’) club cricket wherever we can! Our ‘Club of the Month’ feature will focus on one women’s or girls’ club every month (or so!), giving you the lowdown on their highs, lows, and everything in between.

If you’d like to see your club featured here, get in touch – we’d love to hear from you!

Ansty Ladies play their cricket at Ansty Cricket Club – a small village club situated on the outskirts of Haywards Heath in West Sussex. A girls section was formed by Tina Towler in 2008, before Dave Burt began the ladies section in the winter of 2011.

Dave decided to start a ladies team at Ansty in order to provide a pathway into women’s cricket, and to stop the club’s talented young ladies from moving on to “bigger and better” clubs. He still coaches the Ladies 1st XI – assisted by Shaun Janman on match days.

Ansty runs a girls section alongside the ladies section with teams at U11, U13 and U15 age groups. Ellen “Burtie” Burt and Isabella Nixon coach the U15s, with Sofie Cawley coaching the U13 and U11 sides. The club’s youngest member is Hope who is only 7 years old (the oldest member is Julia ‘the Jarvinator’ Jarvis who is rumoured to be 60+ – her real age is unknown!)

The club facilities are good, with a second square added two years ago, meaning pitch availability is good throughout the summer. The Ladies 1^st XI get pitch priority for their league matches on Sundays. The clubhouse, according to Dave, “has a lot of character”! The club has plans in place to start building work at the end of the 2017 season on a new clubhouse.

Ansty play in the Women’s Cricket Southern League (WCSL) and in the past four seasons have won their division each time. Most recently in 2016 they won the Championship and gained club promotion to the Premiership. Across the season they gained an impressive 100% record away from home, which Dave says was “built on the back of a huge Toby Carvery breakfast”!

The men’s team also gained promotion to their respective premier league and both promotions were celebrated at the the club’s presentation evening with a night out in Brighton for the senior members.

Many of the players at the club currently play/have played age group cricket for Sussex, including Ellen Burt (Sussex Ladies, Sussex Academy, England Academy and the Southern Vipers), Abbey Freeborn (Sussex Ladies, England Women’s Development Programme), Megan Janman (Warwickshire Ladies) and Bryony Smith (Surrey Ladies, Surrey Stars, England Academy).

Ansty also provide social cricket for their members in the form of playing in the Sussex T20 Development League. Playing in this league allows the club to develop players who are new to cricket alongside those girls who are playing senior cricket for the first time. In the development team, winning is not important: the goal is to provide an environment where all calibre of players can play. Despite this ethos, the club has won this competition three of the last four seasons, with the 2016 trophy shared as rain intervened!

Many of Ansty’s ladies also play additional cricket in the men’s Saturday sides, and 2016 saw the ladies section enter a team in the annual Ansty sixes completion. Dave cites one of their proudest moments as the time in summer 2015 “where poor availability for the men’s side saw us put out 11 ladies players in the men’s 3^rd XI in the Stoner mid-Sussex league. Our hosts (Streat and Westmeston) for the match received the team with a positive response and the match was played in good spirit to finally end in a draw.”

Special shout-outs go to umpire Phil, Jane the scorer, the parents who drive the girls as far as Wokingham/Bishop Stortford on their days off, Dan “media manager” Burt and Fletch the groundsman.

Ansty have recently released a promotional video to attract players to the club which can be found on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/anstyladiescc/videos

For more information about the club, you can contact Dave Burt – mobile: 07802 462384; email: daveburt@anstyladiescc.co.uk or check out their website, http://www.anstyladiescc.co.uk

It’s been a busy week in women’s cricket…

Women’s International Championship

• Australia have completed an ODI series-sweep against Sri Lanka. With victory margins of 4 wickets, 78 runs, 9 wickets and 137 runs, the Southern Stars were wholly dominant throughout; and they finished up with a record 10-wicket win in the one-off T20 game. It makes them the first side to achieve automatic qualification for next summer’s World Cup.
• Following their poor performance against Australia, Sri Lanka’s coach Lanka de Silva has called for more women’s domestic matches. The current domestic format allows for just 5 matches per season. He told Cricinfo: “How can you compete with countries like Australia, England and New Zealand when you play so little cricket? Where is the exposure and the experience?”
• In the wake of BCCI chief Anurag Thakur ruling out any future bilateral cricket ties with Pakistan, there are question marks hanging over the India-Pakistan Women’s Championship ODIs, scheduled to take place in the UAE this month. Should India forfeit the six points on offer, they will fail to automatically qualify for the 2017 World Cup and will have to take part in the tournament qualifier (ironically alongside Pakistan!)

WBBL

• Smriti Mandhana has become the second Indian woman to sign for the Women’s Big Bash League. The 20-year-old batsman will be joining Brisbane Heat, who finished last season in sixth place.

England

• Tammy Beaumont has been named Player of the Summer at this year’s Professional Cricketers’ Association awards. With 342 runs in the 3 ODIs against Pakistan, including an unbeaten 168 at Taunton, she beat off strong competition from Lauren Winfield and Nat Sciver.

In the wake of this year’s successful T20 KSL competition, the ECB are now making plans for 2017 – including the extension of KSL to 50 overs, which we are assured will definitely take place before the World Cup, due to begin on 26 June.

In fact the current suggestion, according to a recent ECB document seen by CRICKETher, is for matches to take place on Saturdays and Wednesdays during May, with a final on the first weekend in June.

Sounds reasonable… or does it?

There will be very few overseas players in this inaugural 50-over KSL competition. Few boards are likely to release players for a tournament which takes place right before a World Cup. Therefore the teams that contest the 50-over KSL will be almost totally made up of England, Academy and county players.

Nothing wrong with that. Except… it doesn’t seem very compatible with a tournament played on weekdays in May.

Outside of the contracted England players, all female cricketers in England are still amateurs. That means they are either a) students, or b) holding down jobs which they juggle their cricket around.

Students – whether at college or university – will almost all have exams in May. It seems inconceivable that any of these players will choose to put KSL before formal examinations, which cannot be rearranged when (not if) they clash with KSL training / match commitments – and why should they be expected to? Women’s cricket is not yet a meal ticket for any except a very select few.

Those with jobs have the option of taking holiday in order to play in KSL matches – but with two (big) caveats. Firstly, for any of those – such as Vipers’ Carla Rudd and Arran Brindle – who are committed to teaching or term-time coaching jobs (a not inconsiderable number) it is likely to prove nigh on impossible to get leave to play in midweek games in May.

For others like Beth Morgan, who took 3 weeks leave from work (some of which was unpaid) in order to play in the inaugural 20-over KSL, it will come down to a straight choice between playing in 50-over or 20-over KSL. Many will opt for the latter.

So what are we left with? Essentially a competition which will take place with many of the best non-international players in England – surely the very players the tournament was aimed at – unavailable.

Could the 50-over KSL be rescheduled? Unlikely. Timings are going to be very tight next season, with most teams – not least England – likely to want some time to come together and train in the weeks preceding the World Cup; and with the T20 KSL to follow hot on the World Cup’s heels. It is difficult to see when else a 50-over competition could be fitted in, were it not played in May.

But if things go ahead as planned, the risk is surely that the KSL “brand” will be massively devalued, and that the excitement which built up around this year’s competition will quickly dissipate.

Perhaps it might be better to kick the idea of a 50-over KSL into the long grass for the moment, and focus efforts on the Women’s County Championship instead?

A century from Danni Wyatt made a dead rubber into a thrilling last game of the season, as Sussex fought back from 25-3 to beat Surrey by 3 wickets.

Chasing 218, Sussex had the worst possible start, as Beth Kerins, the pick of the Surrey bowlers today with figures of 3-33, removed both openers cheaply – Georgia Elwiss clean bowled for 6 in her first over of the day, and Georgia Adams (2) caught by Cecily Scutt at mid-off in her third. She followed this up by trapping Izzy Collis lbw for 7.

With Sussex in real trouble, Wyatt’s maturity shone through as she shared a 57-run partnership with Paige Scholfield (28) and then, crucially, remained at the crease for the remainder of Sussex’s innings, as wickets fell steadily at the other end. Even so, Wyatt retained faith in her partners, rotating the strike as Sussex picked off the required runs in ones and twos, thanks to good cameos from Hannah Phelps (19) and Ciara Green (17), always keeping the necessary run rate under 4.5 an over.

When Green fell in the 42nd over with the score on 185-7, Sussex still needed 33 runs, but with words of encouragement from Wyatt she and Tara Norris held their nerve to chase down the target with 2 overs to spare. Wyatt herself finished on 120*, the highest score in Division 1 this season.

Ultimately it was a disciplined and patient innings, compiled with only a smattering of boundaries on a slow pitch, which made it clear to all present that she is more than just a T20 specialist. Made in front of England coach Mark Robinson, it can only have enhanced her international prospects – no bad thing, with the winter squads for the tours to the Caribbean and Sri Lanka to be announced this week.

It came on the back of a solid performance from Wyatt with the ball, finishing as the most economical of the Sussex bowlers with 0-32 from her 10 overs, including a maiden. Bowling in conjunction with captain Georgia Elwiss, the pair put the brakes on Surrey openers Kirstie White and Sophie Pout (27) who had raced away at 4.5 an over in the powerplay but were subsequently restricted to just 2 an over. Wyatt herself also pulled off two run-outs throwing in from midwicket, as Surrey struggled to get much past 200 despite several dropped catches.

It was a big day, too, for Kirstie White, returning from the injury which forced her out of the KSL, yet amassing enough runs across the season (337) to finish as Division 1’s leading run-scorer. Sadly she fell just short of a century, finishing on 98* after 6 Surrey wickets fell in the last 5 overs of their innings to give Sussex maximum bonus points.

After the game Danni Wyatt told CRICKETher that batting conditions had been difficult:

“The pitch got a lot slower and lower in the second innings – you had to really watch the ball. But it was a good opportunity for me to go out there and play every ball on its merit. I’ve been having a few one to ones with Ali Maiden at Loughborough and he said the other day ‘just bat long’. Hopefully it will put me in good stead for selection for West Indies.”

She also praised the performance of the younger Sussex batsmen:

“The young girls that came in towards the end all batted really well, I’m really proud of them. I was quite calm out there and hopefully I made them calm as well. A few of the younger ones were quite nervous but I said ‘just bat, hit the bad balls, run well, it’s a very big outfield, and the runs will come’ – and they did.”

With Kent already this year’s County Champions, there was only glory to play for in their final game of the season at Beckenham; but that seemed to be enough of an incentive, as they bowled Berkshire out for 139 to secure victory by 26 runs.

Berkshire were chasing a low total – 166 – on a pitch which had little in it for the bowlers; it was a match situation that required little more than steady accumulation, but Berkshire’s batsmen played in a way that was as baffling as the Beckenham electronic scoreboard, which appeared to have a mind of its own, adding or subtracting runs from Berkshire’s total seemingly at will in a way that bore little resemblance to action on the field of play.

For Berkshire, the dismissals of Rachel Priest (6) – who holed out to Suzie Bates at mid-off – and Heather Knight (0) – who sent a leading edge to Grace Gibbs at extra cover – set the tone; Lissy Macleod, too, looked well on her way to leading Berkshire’s rebuild, but skied a ball she could easily have left alone to Tammy Beaumont at short third man when on 24.

Had everyone played like Sherisa Gumbs (33), who punished anything short or wide from the Kent bowlers, Berkshire would probably have won the match; instead they were bowled out for 139 in the 43rd over of their innings.

It was a disappointing follow-up to what had been a good performance by the Berkshire bowlers, after Lydia Greenway – captaining in place of Charlotte Edwards, who was sitting out today’s match injured – won the toss and elected to bat. Lauren Bell (3-40) caused Kent early problems with a rapid opening spell, continuing to cement her reputation for big-name scalps, this time trapping Tammy Beaumont lbw in the very first over of the day. Her next wicket was none other than Wisden’s 2016 Leading Female Cricketer in the World, Suzie Bates (22), who was caught by Knight at slip, chasing an away-swinger she really should have left alone.

It was left to Kent’s younger players to rebuild, which they did admirably, the highlight being a fluent 31 from Alice Davidson-Richards, who Edwards described as “one of Kent’s standout performers [of the season]”. Ultimately, too, the 33-run 9th-wicket partnership between 18-year-olds Emily Thompson (21*) and Phoebe Franklin (10) proved crucial.

After play, Charlotte Edwards reflected on Kent’s successful season, telling CRICKETher:

“It’s been a brilliant summer with a brilliant group of people, and the win today was a really pleasing way to finish the season.”

“It’s always a cliche, people say it’s been a team performance, but it really has been for Kent. We have got England players and we’ve got some of the best players in the world in our team, but everyone’s performed at different points throughout the season for our team.”

“I just love playing for Kent, I always have done. I’m looking forward to the winter and then coming back next season.”

Charlotte Edwards With The KSL Trophy

The inaugural Kia Super League has reached its conclusion, with Southern Vipers lifting the trophy. The key question now is: what next?

There have as yet been no pronouncements about what the competition will look like next summer, aside from the fact that it will be extended to a 50-over tournament which will take place prior to the World Cup.

This seems to raise more questions than it answers – not least whether the teams will remain the same for the 50-over competition as they are for the 20-over competition, given that very few overseas players are expected to be able to participate.

One person who is sure of where she will be next summer, though, is victorious Vipers captain Charlotte Edwards:

“I’m not moving anywhere!” she said after the final on Sunday. “I’m playing next year. Why wouldn’t you?!”

“I’ve loved having a slightly different role. I’m more of a mentor in this team and I’m enjoying the mentoring side off the pitch as much as anything…I’ve actually enjoyed the captaincy more than I have in the last few years.”

For Edwards, too, the idea that players might move between teams is a difficult one to swallow:

“Don’t try and move any of us! This is better than Super Fours where you got moved every week… Everyone is firmly in allegiance with their team.”

Indeed, the ECB might well look to Super Fours – the previous development competition, begun in 2002, which pitted the best 48 players in England against each other – as a learning experience; the teams were so unsettled that no side could really ever develop a proper fanbase, and the competition became purely a selection exercise towards the end of its life.

Edwards recognises, though, that trying to keep the teams stable creates a “headache” for the ECB:

“We [the Vipers] have lost two England contracted players so we’re going to actually gain two England players in our group. It’ll be interesting to see how they go about that, because there’s going to be certain players who don’t want to move.”

Certainly the need for a balanced competition will need to be balanced carefully by the ECB with sustaining the fan loyalty which has built up over the last few weeks.

It is going to be an interesting 12 months!

Yesterday’s KSL Finals Day was really the story of four captains.

Captain One: Georgia Elwiss, the Loughborough Lightning leader. For some KSL teams – Southern Vipers, Western Storm – their choice of captain was obvious; but for Lightning, it was coach Salliann Briggs who decided on Elwiss, after sitting down with a number of her players to talk it through. And who can argue it was the wrong choice? Briggs knows her players inside out; and Elwiss has the intelligence required of an excellent captain.

But she is also one of the least experienced captains in the competition – and inexperience, in a pressure situation, can find you out. There was one odd decision in particular that stood out: with Storm chasing 125, Elwiss chose to open the bowling with seamer Beth Langston, who conceded just 1 run off her first 2 overs – and then never came back on, even when Storm appeared to be cruising to their target.

“My gut instinct was to keep changing the bowlers around,” Elwiss said by way of explanation after the semi-final. It’s probably not the best maxim to live by. By contrast, Vipers bowled Arran Brindle for four overs straight in the final simply because she was clearly making life difficult for the batsmen.

Captain Two: England’s own Heather Knight. It was, of course, her fifty which guided Storm’s chase in the semi-final; and credit to her for that. But equally, after Storm had lost Stafanie Taylor halfway through their innings in the final, it was probably her responsibility to hang around and see them to a good total. She failed to do that, pulling the ball straight to Katie George at deep backward square leg in the 15th over, and you could tell from the way she slammed her bat as she walked off that she was furious with herself.

Then, after Vipers lost Edwards and Bates, Knight had the opportunity to turn the screw on her opponents as they slowly edged towards their target. With 3 overs to go, they still needed 20 runs, and they also needed their captain to keep her cool. But on the second ball of Anya Shrubsole’s over Knight picked up the ball and, without hope of achieving very much, shied at the stumps, earning Sara McGlashan and Lydia Greenway an overthrow. It was the mark of a captain who seemed to be out of options, and wasn’t quite sure what to do.

Shrubsole’s over went for 14 runs and Vipers surged to victory.

Vipers lift the trophy. Photo credit: Ruth Conchie

Captain Three: Charlotte Edwards – a legend if ever there was one; a player who captained England over 200 times, more than anyone else is ever likely to; a player who is used to captaining on the big stage. Edwards downplayed her own role in the post-match press conference – “This team runs itself; I just pull a few strings”, she said – but she also, tellingly, stressed that “I’ve really sensed the team behind me [during the tournament]”. Only the best captains inspire that kind of loyalty.

Edwards’ knowledge and experience mattered twice-over in yesterday’s final. Firstly, she made the decision to bring Arran Brindle into the attack in the 9th over, and bowl her for four overs straight – a spell in which she conceded just 15 runs, and removed both Stafanie Taylor and Knight from the reckoning. It turned things in the Vipers favour. Another captain might have hesitated to bowl Brindle; might have turned elsewhere. Edwards – good friends with her for so many years now – knew exactly what she was capable of.

And then, of course, there was her 24 off 18 balls to lay the foundations for Vipers’ successful run chase. While Edwards hasn’t shone with the bat during Super League, it showed what she so often displayed for England – that on the days when it really matters, she will come through. “I kept backing myself,” she said, after raising the trophy aloft. “I really enjoyed today. This is what I miss playing in and I love these sort of occasions.”

It’s not that Edwards was seeking revenge – she has said repeatedly that she is not bitter about Mark Robinson’s decision – but if she was, winning the inaugural KSL wouldn’t be a bad way to show Robinson and everyone else that she has damn well still got it. Just in case we ever doubted it.

The Victorious Captain. Photo Credit: Ruth Conchie

But I said four captains – and no, I didn’t lose count! Because Vipers didn’t just have one captain out there on the field yesterday, they had two.

Suzie Bates was instrumental in Vipers’ path to the final, both with the bat – with scores of 25, 15, 45*, 57 and 38 – and in the way she so calmly stepped into Edwards’ shoes halfway through the first game, even when Vipers had just seen their captain limping off the pitch with a likely concussion. Even since she returned to resume the captain’s mantle in the third game, we’ve seen the unfamiliar sight of Edwards – not the most collaborative of captains towards the end of her England reign – being instructed where to field not by a bowler, but by the current New Zealand skipper.

“When you’ve got experience around you,” Edwards said, paying tribute to Bates after the final concluded, “that’s what really helps.” Bates might have been just pipped by Stafanie Taylor for Player of the Tournament, but it was a close run thing. Vipers will surely be hoping that she’ll be back in orange for next year’s Super League.

Earlier this week we sat down with ECB head of women’s cricket Clare Connor to discuss the new KSL Regional Development Centres, which will replace the existing England Women’s Development Programme for Under 15s, and are set to launch this autumn. She answers all our questions below:

When and why was it decided to open these new Regional Development Centres?

The ECB’s High Performance Manager for women’s and girls’ cricket Jonathan Finch, and everyone he consulted with, decided to decommission the EWDP Under 15s programme last September. That came about because we realised that to identify from county age group cricket 20 cricketers, roughly, to be the EWDP Under 15s squad, and to traipse them up to Loughborough, was a big investment in players that we weren’t massively sure about. We were rewarding performance at that stage rather than looking at development potential.

We then worked out that with the new Sport England funding we have received, we could create these Regional Centres, to reach 120 girls on a much more localised scale, connecting them and giving them the aspiration of their Super League team to look up to.

Can you provide more details about the Sport England funding?

We’ve received talent funding for the 2013-17 funding cycle from Sport England. That talent funding has mainly gone into the Academy programme each year (home and away), the EWDP Under 19s and the EWDP Under 15s. Last year we were then awarded some extra “Reward and Incentive Funding” because we had done everything that Sport England had tasked us to do with that original pot of money. We then worked with Sport England to decide how best to spend the extra money, and the decision to go ahead with the Regional Centres came out of that conversation.

We’ve got that extra funding to run for 2 years, and we’re in the process with Sport England at the moment of putting together our submission for the next funding cycle. The current funding cycle ends on 30 March 2017.

How will the players be selected to train at these Centres?

The counties have continued doing their talent ID system, as before, to create a long-list of talented age group cricketers, based on what the counties have seen them do in county age group cricket but also the potential that they see in them. That long-list has been split into KSL regions, and in mid to late September those players will be attending talent identification days. Based on that, players will then be allocated to the Regional Centres.

What age range will the new Centres cater for?

It’ll be fairly open-age. The broad age range will be 13-16. The EWDP Under 19s will still run as a squad of about 20, because we do want to focus in on them and give them some central Loughborough time. I am envisaging 70% of the girls at the new Centres being 13 or 14. I doubt we’ll go much lower than that.

What will the programme look like at the new Centres, and where will they be based?

I don’t know yet. I am presuming that the Vipers, for example, will be at the Ageas Bowl – they’ve got such an amazing facility there – but there’s nothing to stop the training being at Sussex sometimes.

We’re splitting the funding from Sport England between the 6 KSL hosts, and they will each be presenting us with their plan as to where things will be based and what their programme entails. Jonathan Finch as our High Performance Manager will make sure he believes that is a good use of public funding.

By October half-term all six will have started their programmes. All six will deliver about 12 days between October half-term and the end of the year, and that will be a mixture of skills development and assessment and education type stuff that we would previously have done centrally through the EWDP 15s. And then we’ll continue from there.

Will the new Regional Centres be in competition with each other?

No – it’s really important to get that across. These Centres are purely about how to reach more players on a more local level, to give more players more opportunity to have an equitable route into the elite end of the game.

How do these new Regional Centres fit in with existing county girls age-group / club cricket?

It’s important to stress that competitive cricket for the selected players will still be for their county age group teams. These Centres are about development programmes in the off-season, which lots of counties do not give their girls.

The key in all of this is the connection and relationship with those people working hard in counties, with their county age group girls, to make sure that if they are selected onto a regional centre, there is communication. The regional opportunity is not to replace anything you get through county age group cricket – it will be complementary. We need to make sure, and this is not always easily achieved, that the communication between that regional infrastructure and the counties is tight.

The main thing we’re trying to do more and more is not just look at this with an ECB lens about what we think – it’s about trying to do what is right for the player. The most important thing is that the player feels that they’ve got the best support, and the support is fit for purpose for that player, both from a geographical perspective and from the perspective of: has she got the best coaching we can get for her?

What we don’t want to do is to have 14 year olds at the end of a school week driving for 4 hours from Truro (for example) to somewhere, to arrive tired and stiff and to not really enjoy it.

We definitely will not be taking players out of anything, and if there is a county training session going on and the county says “this is a really important team-building session for our under 15s”, we wouldn’t just take that player and say “no, she’s coming here”. That’s not how we want to work at all.

Given that this is being funded by Sport England, will Welsh players be able to be put forward to attend the Centres?

Absolutely, yes. Welsh players are still included within anything the England and Wales Cricket Board wants to do – any Sport England funding we get includes Wales. For example, Glamorgan Cricket Board will be treated the same as any other county.

Are more changes in the pipeline for U15s, U19s or the Academy?

There probably won’t be massive structural change coming. We’re considering aligning the Academy with the men’s equivalent programme – they’re the Lions when they play proper matches, but the programme is called the England Performance Programme. We’re looking at all of that at the moment.