Throughout the Kia Super League, we’ll be featuring short interviews with players, coaches & other interesting people we find around and about at the grounds. In yesterday’s Surrey Stars win over Lancashire Thunder, left-arm spinner Alex Hartley featured heavily, taking 3-11 in her 4 overs. She answers our quick-fire questions below…

If not Surrey Stars, who would you like to win?

I’m going to have to say Loughborough Lightning, because Evelyn [Jones] and Macca [Alex MacDonald] play there.

Who would you like to see playing in KSL that isn’t?

I’d love to see Meg Lanning come over and play. Unfortunately she couldn’t this year because she’s injured, but it would be great in future.

Favourite KSL player?

Er…that’s hard! Tammy Beaumont (so I don’t get kicked out of the house!)

Justin Bieber or One Direction?

Justin Bieber! Without a doubt!

Favourite cricket ground?

I love the Ageas Bowl.

Favourite thing on the menu in Nandos?

Lemon and herb butterfly chicken and chips. I’m not a spice person!

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Hopefully being England’s number 1 spinner and winning the World Cup!

Where do you see women’s cricket in 10 years?

Hopefully it’s massive. With the KSL we want thousands of people coming to watch, so hopefully it’ll get like that.

There have been a few one-sided games in this competition, but today takes some beating. On a glorious batting pitch, Lancashire Thunder somehow conspired to fall over themselves to get out; and the Surrey Stars then absolutely hammered them with the bat from ball 1 of over 1. With both teams having struggled so far at points in KSL, this level of dominance really wasn’t the match I was expecting to see when I woke up this morning.

So what happened? Well, for one, the Stars have clearly been doing exactly what Nat Sciver told us they’d be doing after that dramatic loss to Western Storm on Sunday – working on their fielding. Diving stops; skilful catches; and three run-outs. Perhaps the best was Cordelia Griffith’s effort to dismiss Tash Miles from short fine leg: she spotted that Miles was starting a run, used her head, quickly grabbed the ball and threw it straight to Beaumont behind the stumps, who had ample time to remove the bails. Really neat work.

It could have been so much worse for Thunder – the one catch that did go begging today was by Alex Hartley, who missed a caught and bowled chance off Amy Satterthwaite when the captain was on just 10* (she went on to make 34*). It’s a little ironic that the overseas player who Thunder only called in as a last-minute replacement when Sarah Coyte bowed out is now their leading run-scorer in the competition (with 130 runs to date).

Fortunately Hartley – who admitted after play that she was “really angry with myself” after the drop – kept her cool, her captain kept the faith and Hartley went on to take 2 wickets in her very next over. Whether or not the Stars qualify for Finals Day – that will depend on whether they can beat Loughborough Lightning on Friday – this competition has vindicated our long-held belief that Alex Hartley is one of the best spinners in England. With 7 wickets across 4 games, she also happens to be the KSL’s (joint) leading wicket-taker to date, and her scalps include Lauren Winfield, Sara McGlashan and Deandra Dottin – not bad going!

Surprising stat of the day: top run-scorers so far in KSL are Nat Sciver (169), Amy Satterthwaite (130), Tammy Beaumont (112) and…Emma Lamb (also with 112). With scores of 25, 26, 34 and 27, Lamb hasn’t rivalled the sheer dominance of the innings we’ve seen from the likes of Sciver, but her strike rate has been well over 100 and, as Satterthwaite put it after close of play, “She’s played exactly like we would want her to”. At just 18, she’s got a bright future ahead of her.

Talking of bright futures, Bryony Smith is clearly loving life right now – as the cheeky ramp shot she played over her shoulder for four today showed. Amy Satterthwaite, speaking after close of play, said that the opening 6 overs of the Stars’ innings had been vital: “I thought from the way the wicket was feeling at the time that [our score] would be just enough to try and scrape the win. The way they started left us in a pretty sore position to try and come back after the first six… In Twenty20 that first six can win or lose you the game.” Smith may have gotten herself out in the 7th over, but her 30 off 26 balls was an essential part of those crucial first 6. After Linsey Smith’s effort yesterday with the ball, perhaps we should be renaming this competition the Smith Super League?

When the initial Super League squads were announced, Berkshire left-arm spinner Linsey Smith was not even included in the list: her chance to play in the competition came only when Charlotte Edwards and Fi Morris collided horribly in the field in the Vipers’ first game last week and she was called in as cover.

Speaking exclusively to CRICKETher after the game, she admitted that even the chance to take to the field with the Vipers has been an unexpected bonus: “I’d been doing some training with the team but to get out there on a big stage like this is great. Just to be part of the team and to have an opportunity to play in the games has been amazing for me.”

But while Smith’s KSL career might have begun as a lucky break, it has not continued that way: it was only down to her own performance with the ball in the Vipers’ previous game, against Lancashire Thunder – she took 1-15 in her 4 overs – that she was retained in the starting XI for today’s match. She was clearly excited about having now claimed her spot in her own right: “I feel amazing. It’s a massive honour to be part of the Vipers with such a huge variety of players at such different levels, and some world-class players…we’ve got a lot of positive vibes in the team.”

On her bowling today – she finished with 4-10, currently the best figures in the competition – she acknowledged that things had gone to plan: “It was a pitch that suited my bowling quite a bit – quite a slow pitch. I was just trying to stick it in the wicket a little bit, making it hard for the batters by taking the pace off the ball, which went well.”

Linsey Smith celebrates taking the wicket of Alex Blackwell. Photo credit: Ruth Conchie.

Lastly, reflecting on the impact that KSL has had on her as a player, Smith was fulsome with her praise: “It just helps me get better and better really. I’m quite new to spin, still learning every game I play. So to have all these different experiences around me, both in games and out of games as well, is a huge opportunity for me to get better.”

Contrary to what seems to be becoming popular opinion, we’re not convinced there’s anything wrong with a low-scoring pitch in women’s T20 cricket – they can generate just as exciting a game as the high-scoring thriller we saw yesterday at Bristol. If this wasn’t that – and no one could really call today a “thriller” – it wasn’t the pitch’s fault; but the fact that Diamonds proved what we all suspected pre-tournament – they’ve got a very long tail.

It doesn’t help that Diamonds’ two overseas batsmen – Alex Blackwell and Beth Mooney – have almost totally failed with the bat, with scores of 3, 23 and 6, and 0, 9 and 17 respectively. Given that Ellyse Perry has also been having problems over at Lightning – she looked completely un-Perry-like when we saw her last Wednesday – is there something wider going on, in terms of Australian players who have flown over to England in the middle of their off-season being unable to recalibrate themselves quickly enough?

Meanwhile Suzie Bates – who’s been in good form with bat and ball – has been over here adjusting to English conditions with Kent for the last couple of months. This competition is very short, and having overseas players who’ve already been playing county cricket seems to have been a bigger advantage than we’d perhaps anticipated.

Alongside Bates, it was Arran Brindle who dug the Vipers out of the not-insubstantial hole they had thrown themselves into at 19-4 in the 7th over, steadying the ship from the instant she arrived at the crease – exactly the role she played so successfully for England in the last few years of her career. It’s patently obvious that she’s still a class above – and exactly what England have been missing since her retirement in February 2014. Sadly, we probably won’t be seeing her in an international shirt again – she gave a pretty unequivocal “no” when I asked her about the possibility of a comeback after close of play – but that’s one reason why it’s so exciting to see her back out there in this competition, playing against the world’s best.

But there were two real stars of today – and Linsey Smith deserves all the plaudits that we hope are coming her way. A week ago when we saw her at Loughborough she was running a how-fast-can-you-bowl sideshow – now she’s running the entire show, with the best bowling figures (4-10) in the competition to date. When she came into the attack at 32-2, the game was still just about in Yorkshire’s grasp; it was Smith who took it away from them with some highly intelligent bowling: a wicket-maiden first-up, followed by removing the dangerous Blackwell in her third over with a brilliant head-high reflex catch that otherwise would have gone crashing to the boundary. Perhaps she might even get her own Vipers shirt now!

Lastly, a mention to Carla Rudd – 2 stumpings today, and impeccable work with the gloves. It obviously helps that she’s used to keeping to bowlers like Smith and Fi Morris at Berkshire, but she’s barely put a foot wrong in this competition, and if you’re looking at the reasons why the Vipers have become the first team to qualify for Finals Day, she’s got to be a factor.

The ECB has today announced that six regional development centres – each aligned to one of the current KSL franchises – are set to launch this autumn, to provide high-quality coaching for up to 120 talented girls under the age of 16.

The new regional development centres replace the existing England Women’s Development Programme (EWDP) for Under-15s, which was a national programme that catered for only 20 girls. Each new regional centre will act as a feeder of the most talented players into the senior KSL side, with the aim that girls selected for the centres will aspire to play not just for their county but for their local KSL team.

The launch has been made possible by the awarding of Sport England funding under their “Reward and Incentive Programme”, which rewards national governing bodies who have performed exceptionally well in the 2013-17 cycle with increased investment.

The Under-19 EWDP, meanwhile, will continue to exist in its current form.

Reflecting on today’s tight game against Western Storm, which ended with a 5-wicket victory by the Storm with just 2 balls remaining, Surrey Stars captain Nat Sciver admitted that her team’s fielding had let them down.

“It’s a tough one,” she said, “because we did things so well for a long time in the game and then just at the end, when we needed a bit of composure, we put down a couple of catches and unfortunately we couldn’t help our bowlers over the line.”

One mistake in particular was clearly playing on her mind: “Dropping Taylor when she was on not very many runs has proved very costly.”

She stressed that her message to her team in the post-game debrief was to “keep your heads up”, but also that they would be working on improving their performance in the field before their next match at Guildford on Tuesday: “I’ll have a chat with the team and let them know that a bit of composure and calm can help…We need calmer heads and hopefully that’s something I can help them with.”

For Sciver, the challenge with Super League has partly been captaining a young and inexperienced side: “This has been a really good standard of tournament and it really shows what the step up is, and for some of the county girls it is a little bit different. It is definitely a learning curve.”

The Stars have now lost both their away games, while winning their home game at the Oval, but Sciver feels this is a coincidence: “I don’t think it matters that much. For most of the game today we were on top.”

On her own innings, meanwhile – she became the tournament’s top-scorer today, ending on 90* – she said: “That is as fluent as I have felt. They bowled quite a few balls short at me, which I don’t think was the plan, because I know Heather [Knight] knows I like it short. I just found they kept bowling in the area that I wanted!”

While Stars now face an uphill struggle to qualify for Finals Day, probably needing to win both their next games in order to do so, Sciver said that they would “throw everything into it…it’s all or nothing now.”

Throughout the Kia Super League, we’ll be featuring short interviews with players, coaches & other interesting people we find around and about at the grounds. Yesterday’s top-scorer in Surrey Stars’ win against Yorkshire Diamonds may have been Tammy Beaumont, but it was fellow opener 18-year-old Bryony Smith who helped her set the platform. She answered our quick-fire questions after the match…

If not Surrey Stars, who would you like to win?

I would go for Lancashire Thunder. I’ve got some good friends playing there, and beating Loughborough yesterday [Wednesday] was really good for them.

Who would you like to see playing in KSL that isn’t?

I think Ebony Rainford-Brent should be getting her kit on! She’s been up in the changing rooms picking everyone’s bats up, so I think just give her a bat and she’ll be out there!

Favourite KSL player?

I’m going to go for my teammate Rene Farrell. The Loud Australian as we call her! She’s a really good buzz around the team and a great team player.

Justin Bieber or One Direction?

One Direction.

Which sportswoman/women do you admire outside cricket?

I play a lot of squash and there’s a woman called Nicol David, she’s won pretty much every single title in the world. She’s been number 1 for about 7 years. Just the way that she’s persevered through everything.

Favourite cricket ground?

The Oval.

Favourite thing on the menu in Nandos?

Chicken burger and chips – medium spice!

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Hopefully with an England shirt on, playing here in a World Cup final!

Where do you see women’s cricket in 10 years?

Attracting an even bigger, packed crowd at the Oval – a full house!

Three days before the start of the Kia Super League, there is news of a shake-up for Surrey Stars, who have signed New Zealander Lea Tahuhu and Middlesex’s Naomi Dattani.

Tahuhu replaces Meg Lanning, who ruled herself out of the competition last week due to a shoulder injury.

All-rounder Dattani, meanwhile – fresh from taking 3-35 in Middlesex’s successful match against Warwickshire on Sunday – has been brought into the squad in place of wicketkeeper Kirstie White, who suffered an ankle injury in Surrey’s warm-up game against Loughborough Lightning last week. It means that England’s Tammy Beaumont will be back behind the stumps for the Stars.

The Stars’ choice of Tahuhu, a right-arm seamer with 49 international wickets to her name, in place of Lanning, suggests that they see strengthening their bowling line-up ahead of the tournament as crucial, after conceding over 200 runs against Loughborough in their warm-up last week.