England recovered from the precarious position of 77 for 6 to post 149 for 7, enough to overcome New Zealand by 15 runs at Nelson.

Heather Knight posted a second consecutive half-century, and shared crucial partnerships of 45 off 30 with Charlie Dean, and 27 off 12 with Sarah Glenn. England’s most productive game-phase was the last 4 overs, by far:

Linsey Smith, selected in place of Lauren Filer, then proceeded to take a wicket with her first ball in international cricket in almost 5 years – Suzie Bates top-edging an attempted slog sweep to short fine leg – as New Zealand hared off after the target a bit more aggressively than they actually needed to, and ended up tripping over their own shoelaces.

This has been a very important start to the tour by Knight, who (including her 52 v India in December) has now hit three fifties in as many T20 innings. Believe it or not, prior to that she hadn’t hit a T20 half-century since BC (Before Covid) – February 2020 to be precise – and there were starting to be rumbles, including here at CRICKETher Towers, about whether she should actually still be part of England’s T20 team at all, let alone skippering it. Whatever happens in the next 6 months, she’s now put that question to bed, at least until after the World Cup.

It’s interesting, as well, that Knight has bowled in both these opening matches. England have used her very sparingly with the ball of late, partly due to injury – the last time she sent down overs in back-to-back T20s was actually also in February 2020 – but could it be that they see her as an extra bowling option on those spin-friendly pitches in Bangladesh later this year?

England’s innings showed the value of a long batting line-up: Dean still seems absolutely wasted at No.8, while Glenn – lest we forget – was once touted as a possible T20 opener for England. (Not that they actually need another one of those at the moment!) But England should also count themselves lucky, because a side with even slightly more batting depth than New Zealand would surely have made them pay for some sloppy decisions by the top order.

Syd’s blood pressure gradually RAMPED up (gettit?) as Maia Bouchier, Dean and finally Melie Kerr all perished to a particular shot (ahem).

Melie Kerr’s was perhaps the least forgivable of all – New Zealand needed 50 off 33 balls at the point at which she got out, which was perfectly feasible, and didn’t call for a gung-ho approach.

A continent away, Australia have recently pulled a rabbit out of a hat in their first ODI against Bangladesh – posting 213 after being 112 for 6 – proving that the best teams never say die. New Zealand, by contrast, seem quite happy to wave a white flag at the earliest opportunity. With Kerr back in the dugout, the hosts proceeded to lose a further 4 wickets for 8 runs and the game was done and dusted.

Syd’s Matterhorn tells the story – look at how New Zealand’s line dips under England’s, pretty much straightaway after Kerr’s wicket in the 15th over:

Realistically, New Zealand probably have one more crack at winning a match this series, before England’s four best players return to the XI after their WPL-enforced absence. It doesn’t feel massively likely, does it?

Let’s be honest, this hasn’t been a T20 series either team will look back on with fondness. Following what Syd described in this week’s The CRICKETher Weekly as “the least entertaining T20 ever where 350 runs were scored”, England then almost stuffed up what should have been an easy chase in the second match on Saturday – after India were, embarrassingly, scuttled for 80.

Finally, on Sunday, England were bowled out for 126, in an innings which featured no less than four golden ducks (Maia Bouchier, Dani Gibson, Freya Kemp and Mahika Gaur).

Poor old Bouchier. Her chances to open the batting haven’t exactly come thick and fast for England. Then, when she finally DOES get to do the job, she has to face an on-fire Renuka Singh, who sent down a beauty of a ball which moved off the pitch and snuck through the gate. It shouldn’t count against Bouchier – you can’t do much about a ball like that – but you just sense that a good little innings here would have at least put her in contention as a possible Test opener (now that Emma Lamb is, sadly, back on the plane).

By contrast, it was another dismal effort from Sophia Dunkley, who looked like she was trying to rehearse getting out to Renuka with a huge swing-and-a-miss outside off stump which then turned into a swing-and-a-hit – straight to point. Jon Lewis might want to rethink that second career as an inspirational speaker; because whatever he said to her at his Emergency Bootcamp, it doesn’t seem to have done the trick.

England did eventually post a respectable total of 126, thanks to a 50 partnership off 34 balls between Heather Knight and Charlie Dean for the 9th wicket: the death-phase was by far the most productive of the innings.

There are two schools of thought about Knight’s innings (52 off 42). One is that she showed her younger teammates the “sensible” way to play on this pitch, taking the time to play herself in, before slamming two sixes down the ground in the final over to eventually finish on a healthy strike rate of 124.

The other is that by batting at well below a 100 SR between overs 6 and 18, Knight actually created a situation whereby the younger batters coming in below her felt backed into a corner: they needed to go at a million miles an hour from ball one, partly to complement and partly to counteract Knight’s slower style of play. That’s why you get Gibson exposing her stumps first ball, Bess Heath whipping out the reverse sweep, and Kemp cutting a ball which wasn’t there to be cut.

Sorry, Trev, but I’m afraid I tend towards the latter position.

Either way, it’s hard not to hold Knight partly responsible for being happy to encourage a philosophy (Jon-ball) in which reckless batting is, seemingly, valued above sensible batting. Four golden ducks don’t happen by accident.

After their win in the first T20, a lot of journalists wrote that England had overcome the batting woes which had plagued them against Sri Lanka in September. I wasn’t convinced then; I’m even less convinced now.

And so, with a mere three days to switch mindset, it’s onto the Test match – not the best timing for England. There’s been a lot of talk about it only being four days, instead of the five we enjoyed in the Ashes in June. But if England (and India) carry on batting like they have done over the last few days, it could easily be over in three.

The South-West region might be known as Welsh Fire in The Hundred, but the Women’s Eliminator was sadly curtailed by a Western Storm on Saturday at The Oval, after lightning and then torrential rain forced the players from the field with just 75 balls having been bowled.

Fire had won the toss and chosen to bat first, and somehow endeavoured not to lose a wicket for 45 balls, though Sophia Dunkley and Tammy Beaumont got enough chips over the infield to constitute a McDonalds super-sized meal.

But with a soggy outfield slowing up the ball enough to prevent most of those chips going over the boundary rope, they had only 59 on the board by the time Dunkley was caught slogging to deep midwicket.

Hayley Matthews looked like she was competing for the prize of most-inelegant-innings-in-the-competition, managing just one boundary from her 12-ball stay at the crease – an ugly edge over short third – and there was a certain amount of relief all round when she finally sent up a soft catch straight to Phoebe Litchfield at mid-off.

And yet by the time the players were sent off the field Fire were actually in a commanding position, thanks to a 5-ball 14 from Laura Harris. Harris ain’t pretty, but she knows how to get a job done when it’s needed; here, she did her usual bull-in-a-china-shop thing, reverse swivel-pulling her third ball to the boundary before smashing one for six over square leg two balls later. Even better, Tammy Beaumont (going along sedately enough at a run-a-ball 28*) then caught the bug from Harris, and smashed a six of her own.

At 104 for 2 after 75 balls, Fire were approaching the top of the typical “Ghost” score in The Hundred (adjusting for the reduction in balls available).

But with a storm rolling over South London, sadly that was that for Fire’s run in this year’s competition.

It wasn’t the way anyone wanted this team’s run to end, but let’s hope there isn’t too much disappointment in the dressing room tonight: Welsh Fire have done plenty to hold their heads up high. From being the team which nobody wanted to play for, who took the wooden spoon in the 2022 tournament, to a team which handed Southern Brave their first defeat on home soil and hit the highest team AND individual totals in three seasons of the competition… that’s a record to be proud of.

Spare a thought for Alex Hartley, who missed out on selection in what turned out to be her final chance at playing in a professional match – with Matthews now able to bowl again, coach Gareth Breese apparently preferred to go with Emily Windsor as an additional batting option. (Although arguably, it’s perhaps exactly that lack of sentimentality which brought the Fire within touching distance of their first Hundred trophy.)

No one can help the weather, of course… but as I write this, the sun is shining over The Oval, and the men are about to play out a full, 200-ball match in their own Eliminator. One can’t help but feel that there might be a fairer way to allocate the available match time in future years?

For now, the overriding feeling is simple: Welsh Fire Woz Robbed.

Invincibles wrapped up a disappointing 2023 campaign with a thrilling 3-run win against Trent Rockets at The Oval on Monday, after racking up the highest total so far made at the ground in the Women’s Hundred – 155.

Many have been asking what has gone wrong for reigning champions Invincibles this season: despite retaining their core squad from the past two seasons, they had managed just two wins from seven matches prior to this game. The loss of Dane van Niekerk early on certainly hasn’t helped matters.

But on Monday it was her injury replacement Nadine de Klerk who took her chance to shine, striking 51* from 25 balls – the second fastest fifty in the Women’s Hundred (thanks Hypocaust for the stat) – in her first ever match at The Oval.

She was backed up by some beautifully clean six-hitting from Cordelia Griffith (23 off 16), and there was redemption, too, for Sophia Smale, who after a breakthrough season in 2022 has struggled somewhat with “second album syndrome”, but put on an excellent display, taking two for 26 and assisting in the run-out of Fran Wilson as Rockets failed to launch.

Invincibles’ innings was bookended by contrasting spells from left-arm seamer Alexa Stonehouse. Her first two sets reduced the home side to 30 for 2: she swung the ball through the defences of Lauren Winfield-Hill for a duck, before bowling Suzie Bates with a straight one in her next set. Marizanne Kapp then treated her with due respect, playing out three dots.

But at the death, with Stonehouse tasked with sending down balls 91 to 95, de Klerk had no such qualms. “It was hard to play spin and I knew I had to take someone down,” she said afterwards. And so she did. The set of “five” (actually a set of seven, containing two no-balls) began with a head-high full toss which de Klerk slammed for six over deep midwicket, and got worse from there, eventually costing 27 runs.

Not only is it the most expensive set ever bowled in three seasons of the Women’s Hundred, it almost broke Syd’s strike-rate chart!

Stonehouse is considered a future England prospect, but is only 18 years old and could have done with a bit of moral support. It was therefore slightly disappointing to see that none of her teammates (including her captain, Nat Sciver-Brunt) approached her for a quiet “shall-we-think-about-this” word until there were just two balls left in the set (and it was arguably too late to make much difference).

In reply, Lizelle Lee hefted her way to 61 from 33 balls, but Rockets’ chase was almost derailed by the lack of support at the other end. That included a very unconvincing 12-ball 9 from Harmanpreet Kaur, to top off what has been a poor tournament for her (72 runs in six innings). Has she been more affected by her impending two-match suspension in the wake of Bangladesh-Gate than she is letting on?

The match looked to be effectively over when Lee was run out off the 71st ball coming back for a second run by a brilliant direct hit-throwdown of the stumps from bowler Paige Scholfield, who broke out of her follow-through and dashed over to midwicket to retrieve the ball. Being brutally honest, though, it was also a poor call from Jo Gardner. “Maybe at the beginning of my innings that would have been two, but I was a little bit tired,” Lee said ruefully after the match.

There was very nearly a redemption arc for Stonehouse, who – with 18 needed off the final set – struck three boundaries in a row against Scholfield to get the equation down to five needed off the final ball. Finally, though, a good yorker from Scholfield sealed the deal for Invincibles.

De Klerk said after the match that despite spending three months in the UK this summer playing for The Blaze, she had actually been back home in South Africa when the phone call came (midway through a match!) asking if she would consider flying back to play in The Hundred.

“We had a cricket camp for South Africa so it was a bit of chaos to get over here,” she said. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Perhaps… although it’s also possible that her innings on Monday will see her snapped up as an overseas star in next year’s competition.

Freya Kemp says that her crucial innings of 41 not out from 21 balls, which took Southern Brave to a 7-wicket win against Oval Invincibles at the Ageas Bowl on Saturday, was inspired by her call-up to the England squad the previous day.

The 18-year-old Kemp featured for England against both South Africa and India last summer, but was ruled out of the T20 World Cup after suffering a stress fracture in her back. She has been unable to bowl in a match this season for either Southern Vipers or Southern Brave.

However, England coach Jon Lewis has shown enough faith in her abilities with the bat to call her up to play purely as a batter in England’s forthcoming internationals against Sri Lanka.

“He [Lewis] called me a few days ago,” Kemp told CRICKETher on Saturday. “It’s good to know that they’re backing me as a batter.”

“[It inspired me] subconsciously – I went out there and was clear about my plans, and that helped me.”

Kemp added that there was no fixed date for her return with the ball, but said her comeback was progressing smoothly:

“I’m just working on my action and building up my overs. It’s a slow build-up but it’s going really well.”

Imagine for a second how it feels to be Dane van Niekerk right now.

After a difficult few months in which you were prevented from playing in a home World Cup due to an arbitrary fitness target, you’re finally ready to burst back onto the scene by leading Oval Invincibles’ title defence.

Then, in your team’s match against Manchester Originals, you suffer a nasty blow to your thumb. On Sunday, you are ruled out of the rest of The Hundred after scans reveal that the thumb injury will require surgery to fix.

On Monday, you discover (via ESPNCricinfo) that Cricket South Africa have decided to abolish the fitness standard which brought about your premature retirement from international cricket.

There is one silver lining: you can stay with Invincibles for the duration of the tournament. Tuesday comes around, and it’s time for their match v London Spirit – a local derby which Invincibles have never lost. You participate in the team talk pre-match, imparting some of that famous tactical wisdom which you are known for.

Something you AREN’T known for is being a good watcher of cricket. But that’s OK, because your replacement skipper Suzie Bates has decided that your wife, Marizanne Kapp, should bowl all her deliveries in the opening 35 balls of the match.

You watch her take two wickets for 13 runs in her allotted 20 balls, including bowling poor Niamh Holland in her opening set, with a beauty which the 18-year-old had no idea what to do with.

You are left pondering about Heather Knight’s bizarre decision to promote Holland to face your wife at the top of the order, while omitting Grace Scrivens from the XI – despite the fact that Scrivens regularly opens for her region (you are well aware of this, being her captain at Sunrisers), and Holland does not.

Minutes later, two Spirit players are “having words” with each other mid-pitch after a dopey run-out, while your wife does the nearest thing she ever does on the pitch to smiling. Eventually, London Spirit sink to 87 for 9 after 78 balls. You nod to yourself, satisfied. Invincibles have this in the bag.

Except, two hours later – after a 10th-wicket partnership of 31 in 22 balls between Lauren Filer and Tara Norris; and a powerplay in which Invincibles manage to put just 23 runs on the board – it turns out they didn’t.

It’s Tuesday evening, and you could, should, have been celebrating. Instead, your side’s title defence is slipping through your fingers (Invincibles sit fourth in the table but have only a 3% chance of qualifying for the knockouts) – and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

After Oval Invincibles lost to London Spirit on a balmy Tuesday afternoon at The Oval by 22 runs, I asked Sophia Smale what van Niekerk would be saying to her teammates in the post-match dressing-room review. “How did we lose it, probably!” came the reply.

Dane van Niekerk has undoubtedly had better weeks.

Sunrisers continued their winless start to the 2023 Charlotte Edwards Cup with a four-wicket defeat to local rivals South East Stars – a disappointing end to their first ever fixture at Lord’s.

Set a target of 133, Stars looked to be cruising along, adding 61 runs in the powerplay. Bryony Smith continued her form from Tuesday’s match against Vipers (when she struck 83), while Alice Capsey made an exhilarating return to the side, smashing 24 from 10 balls including some glorious aerial drives.

The pair added 30 runs in just 2 overs, but Capsey was out in the seventh, falling to a very good catch from Mady Villiers, diving forwards at long on.

Smith survived a couple of difficult caught-and-bowled chances from Villiers and Abtaha Maqsood to reach 38 from 27, finally holing out to deep midwicket in the 12th.

Stars continued to lose wickets at the back end, including two in the 16th over to Grace Scrivens, who appeared very much to be directing on-field proceedings, having regular conversations with Dane van Niekerk between balls.

But a calm innings from Phoebe Franklin (30 off 36), and a final boundary punched hard through point by Kira Chathli, finished the job with an over to spare.

Sunrisers had rejigged their batting line-up after defeat to Central Sparks at Chelmsford a week ago, with van Niekerk making her long-waited debut for the side, while Villiers was promoted to open alongside the South African.

The pair added 32 for the first wicket – though van Niekerk was put down twice in Phoebe Franklin’s opening over – but could not build enough of a platform to take Sunrisers to a winning total.

Paige Scholfield made the initial breakthrough in the fifth over, as van Niekerk’s wild swing found air and she was bowled, before Villiers bottom-edged onto her own stumps two overs later.

Sunrisers then sunk from 40 for 2 to 64 for 6, thanks partly to some atrocious running between the wickets. Scrivens was undone by a poor call from Cordelia Griffith and a piece of good fortune – Chathli fumbled the throw-in from Bryony Smith at midwicket, but the ball ricocheted off her foot and dislodged the bails anyway.

Griffith was then involved in an extraordinary mix-up with Amara Carr, which saw the two batters almost collide halfway down the wicket. Carr had to make an emergency diversion around Griffith, and was run out at the non-strikers end.

An unsettled-looking Griffith holed out to Tash Farrant at deep square leg two overs later.

It looked like humiliation for Sunrisers, until Jo Gardner and Eva Gray ensured their team at least made a decent fist of it, with a partnership of 48 for the seventh wicket, which lifted the home side above 100.

But Gardner ultimately became the third run-out victim of the innings, coming down the track from the non-strikers end while Gray remained firmly in her crease.

Sunrisers have work to do before their bottom-of-the-table clash against Thunder on Saturday.

Southern Vipers triumphed over South East Stars by 6 wickets to get their Charlotte Edwards Cup title defence off to a flier, in spite of a record-breaking first-wicket partnership of 134 between Bryony Smith (83) and Sophia Dunkley (53).

Vipers made easy work of the 170-run target set for them by Stars, with Charlie Dean (20*) hitting back-to-back boundaries against Phoebe Franklin to take them over the line with 7 balls to spare.

The game was hosted by Falkland Cricket Club in Newbury, making it the first ever professional cricket match to be hosted in the county of Berkshire.

Vipers have always played their home games in either Hampshire (Ageas Bowl) or Sussex (Hove), so it was nice to have a reminder that the regional side also incorporates Berkshire. A crowd of roughly 400, including 150 local schoolchildren, enjoyed the match from the boundary edge; and after Vipers sealed the win, home-grown bowler Lauren Bell was mobbed for autographs.

Vipers won the toss and opted to bowl first, but looked to be ruing their decision after a mammoth, dual onslaught from Smith and Dunkley. Smith looked the most comfortable of the two, enjoying delicious helpings on the leg-side, pulling Georgia Adams for back-to-back sixes over midwicket, and forcing Anya Shrubsole out of the attack in her first competitive game of the season, after her two overs went at 13.5.

Smith was put down on 51* by Linsey Smith, who dropped a skier running in from cover. In the end, only a messy run out in the 15th over, courtesy of a throw-in from Alice Monaghan on the deep midwicket boundary, prevented her from progressing on to a century.

Dunkley fell in the next over, stepping across her stumps to cut but succeeding only in sending a thick edge through to the keeper, allowing Vipers to stifle their opponents in the final few overs. The crowd particularly enjoyed the spectacle of local hero Bell finishing the innings with two wickets in the final over – bowling both Alice Davidson-Richards and Tash Farrant – although they were denied the hat-trick by a whisker, as the ball whistled over the stumps of Kira Chathli.

In reply, Maia Bouchier (30 from 18) got things underway with a glorious drive down the ground for four, as part of a wayward, 18-run opening over from Ryana Macdonald-Gay. Bouchier shared a 50-run opening stand with Danni Wyatt, but was run out in the 5th over after Wyatt called for a second run, chancing the arm of Paige Scholfield in the deep.

Vipers overseas wicketkeeper Nicole Faltum was caught by a diving Dunkley at cover off Freya Davies, while Wyatt herself chipped one up to backward point 10 runs short of a half-century.

But the platform had been laid, and with the target in relatively easy reach, Georgia Adams (29), Georgia Elwiss (28*) and Dean simply had to place the ball well, run hard, and watch the scoreboard tick along.

New kids on the block The Blaze continued their unbeaten 2023 season with a 5-wicket win against South East Stars in the opening round of the Charlotte Edwards Cup at Beckenham, thanks to a stolid 63 not out from no.4 Georgie Boyce.

Stars had scored an above-average 160, and when Nat Sciver-Brunt and Tammy Beaumont were dismissed in the 9th and 10th overs – sparking a Blaze collapse of four wickets for 22 runs – it looked like the home side were on course for a win.

Beaumont and Sciver-Brunt had both shown signs of brilliance: Sciver-Brunt’s six off Danielle Gregory thudded into the sight-screen, while Beaumont – perhaps as a signal of intent to the England selectors – chose to open up the innings, and pulled Ryana Macdonald-Gay for a maximum over midwicket in the third over.

But Sciver-Brunt was caught in the deep for 19. Eight balls later, and two runs short of her half-century, Beaumont fell to a brilliant diving catch by Bryony Smith at cover. Sarah Glenn, meanwhile, holed out to Alice Davidson-Richards in the deep for 4.

It was left to Boyce to bring home the bacon, hitting a series of well-placed boundaries and one sweet six smashed over the head of bowler Paige Scholfield, which gradually whittled the target down.

Boyce was dropped at cover in the 17th over, allowing her to bring up a 28-ball fifty. Meanwhile, her partner Nadine de Klerk (16* off 15) survived an edge through the hands of diving wicketkeeper Kira Chathli in the ante-penultimate over, as Stars felt the pressure.

With just two runs needed from the final over, bowled by Davidson-Richards, The Blaze reached their target with four balls to spare.

Earlier, on a blustery day at Beckenham, The Blaze had won the toss and chosen to bowl first. They were at full strength with Beaumont, Glenn and Sciver-Brunt – making her debut for the East Midlands region – all present and correct, while Stars did without Alice Capsey, sitting out as a precaution after a recent foot injury.

Bryony Smith played in customary fashion, smashing 14 runs off the first over from Grace Ballinger, before playing straight into the hands of Marie Kelly at long on in the second.

Tash Farrant, promoted to no.3, was trapped LBW trying to sweep left-armer Ballinger, while Scholfield was caught trying to go over the top, handing Sciver-Brunt her maiden Blaze wicket.

When Sophia Dunkley was bowled playing around a straight one from Glenn in the 7th, the Stars were 48 for 4 and looked in trouble.

But a 68-run partnership for the fifth wicket between Phoebe Franklin (53) and Kira Chathli (24) led the recovery, before a late flourish of 24 off 13 from Davidson-Richards propelled their total to 160 for 8.

It proved enough to make the game exciting, but not quite enough to seal a win.

The Blaze have defended their decision to play at Welbeck Cricket Club, after their match against Thunder was abandoned on Monday despite no rain falling all day, due to an unsafe pitch.

CRICKETher understands that the pitch had been used for a men’s club match on Saturday, and that play continued despite falling rain, meaning that the bowler’s run-ups were churned up and unusable by the time Monday’s regional fixture came around.

The umpires were forced to call off the fixture at 2.00pm, meaning that the points on offer were split equally between the two teams.

James Cutt, The Blaze’s Director of Cricket, told CRICKETher:

“While any matchday where we are not able to get onto the field of play is clearly frustrating, this has been a challenging summer nationwide in terms of the sheer amount of wet weather we have suffered – an issue which was only exacerbated by some poor localised weather over the weekend.

“With areas of the ground then failing to improve sufficiently on the day, we recognised, alongside the match officials, that conditions weren’t appropriate for a professional game of cricket, and that the risk to injury remained too high if we were to go ahead and play the game.

“The John Fretwell Centre has a strong recent history of staging professional cricket, with nine Nottinghamshire men’s fixtures staged there over the past eight years, so it’s a setup which is used to the demands of that level of the game.

“We’re really keen to ensure we take The Blaze around the East Midlands this summer, to ensure that this is a team which people across the region can invest their support in, and that we can inspire girls and boys from around the region to pick up a bat and ball.”

The ECB would be within their rights to penalise The Blaze for the incident. The Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy Playing Conditions state that the home team must ensure venues are suitable for play 72 hours prior to the scheduled fixture or arrange an alternative, and that “failure to comply with this… may result in the deduction of points from a Regional Host and the possible award of additional points to another Regional Host”.

Perhaps a greater concern is that this may not be a one-off. The expansion of the regional calendar this season means that a number of regional fixtures are now being played at club grounds. The Blaze are returning to Welbeck twice more this season; while Central Sparks played a “home” fixture against Southern Vipers at Wormsley Cricket Ground on Monday, despite this being within Buckinghamshire (home territory of the Vipers!) Is women’s regional cricket losing out in the battle for pitches to men’s club cricket, and is this acceptable in 2023?