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WNCL: Wikman keeps her cool, as ACT take double honours over Victoria

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By Helen Maynard-Casely

Player of the match for the second time this week, Annie Wikman raises her bat as the Victorian team look on. She batted on to score 142 not out.

A hot day, even for a cricket match, spectators came with stocked eskies and grouped together in the smatterings of shade. Frozen zooper doopers were passed round to those less prepared (thanks Mr Flintoff ) as ACT and Victoria met at Phillip Oval for the second match-up in this year’s WNCL. This time Victoria won the toss, and put ACT into bat, seeking a reversal of their fortunes from Tuesday’s game.

A couple of changes to both teams from the game earlier in the week, ACT bringing in Angelina Genford and Shivani Mehta in place of Amy Hunter and Grace Digham, the latter presumably still nursing her hamstring after Tuesday. Victoria swapped out Olivia Henry for fast bowler Zoe Samuel.

Early wickets in the first innings has been the theme of this match up, and within four overs ACT were already three wickets down, two in Ella Hayward’s second over. ACT opener and captain Carly Leeson, who was looking to start to move up the gears in her run scoring, was caught by a leaping Hasrat Gil, while Georgia Elwiss came and went LBW, to be Haywood’s second wicket of the over. Tess Flintoff also started well, backing up on her long bowling performance from Tuesday by bowling opener Olivia Porter.

Then the heat started to bite, and the ACT batters got stuck in. Paris Bowdler and Annie Wikman built a strong 4th Wicket partnership of 92 before Bowdler was stumped off of Molly Strano’s bowling. The Victorian bowlers squeezed the run rate, captain Sophie Molineux and Strano keeping excellent economy through their 10 overs. Hayward picked up three wickets in total off her nine overs, catching Zoe Cooke off her own bowling just as the batter was getting in her stride. Wikman defied the heat, using her reverse sweep to devastating effect – and brought up her first WNCL century in the 44th over. Not out from Tuesday, she accumulated yet more runs at the back of the innings finishing on a humungous 142 not out, guiding ACT to 247 in total. Two days work has netted Wikman 204 runs, catapulting her to 3rd in the individual run table for the season so far.

In reply the Victorian batters started steadily – needing a run rate of just under 5 an over meant that they could look for the opportunities rather than have to dig them out. The plan was going well until towards the end of the powerplay where both openers, Nicole Faltum and Ella Hayward were dismissed in quick succession. Now 2/50, and with two new batters at the crease – the same plan had to be started over. The two left handed Sophie’s (Molineux and Reid) started to steady the ship, but Molineux was caught off Genford’s bowling on the boundary in the 17th over. Though the Victorians at this point in the innings had lost three wickets, they were very much on target with run accumulation, and it was starting to look like they could dig out a win.

Then enter Shivani Mehta. Her second over, the 19th of the innings, marked the turn with a double wicket maiden. First she bowled Reid, before Rhys McKenna wafted at a loopy delivery that caught an edge before finding the keeper’s gloves. Mehta’s next over also saw success, when Sasha Moloney sent the ball back for her to take a low catch. With 6 wickets down, it wasn’t the runs that Victoria were lacking so much, more having too many players back in the sheds. Georgia Prestwidge and Molly Strano were not going to let this daunt them though, and put together a nice partnership that looked to get the Victorians back on track. That was until Wikman, finishing an over for an injured Gabbi Sutcliffe, clean bowled Prestwidge for 24. A stubborn last-ditch batting effort from Molly Strano, who put on her WNCL best total of 60, was very entertaining to watch but ultimately in vain. Her wicket, and Victoria’s 10th fell 48 runs short, when she was caught in the deep by woman of the moment Wikman off Zoe Cooke’s bowling.

ACT Meteors backed up their home-win double over Victoria from last year, and will hope to roll this success forward to when they take on the NSW Breakers in a couple of weeks for the next WNCL round. Victoria will again be licking their wounds, and with a bye for the next round will have time to hatch yet another plan before they travel to Adelaide in early February to meet South Australia.

For those in the UK illustration of what a ‘Zooper Dooper’ is (flavoured ice block). These are such icons in Australia that, in 2019, the Royal Australian Mint released a $1 coin commemorating them.


Helen (Crystallised Cricket) is a writer based in Dharug and Gundagarra country, and here is writing about a game played on Ngunnawal country. She acknowledges the traditional owners of the lands that she writes from.

WNCL: A bright start for the Meteors at home in Canberra

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By Helen Maynard-Casely

We’re in the grip of a heat wave here in Australia and while the humidity rises at the coast, the heat never feels quite as oppressive in the drier air of the capital. The cicadas were in full song, clinging to the trees around Phillip Oval to herald Australian Capital Territory Meteors take to the field hosting Victoria in round three of the 2025/26 WNCL season.

This tie was probably the one least affected by losing players to the WPL, with only Meg Lanning and Millie Illingworth missing from the Victorian team sheet. Lanning has had limited impact on the WNCL this season so far, and Illingworth yet to have a run out – hence Victoria were probably very hopeful to break the spell of losses and get match points on the board.

ACT coaches had escaped the complications of those on WPL leave, though strike bowler Holly Ferling remains injured and in a moonboot after surgery. But overall ACT had great grounds to expect a win today, after showing good fight in a narrow loss away to last year’s finalists Queensland in the round before the long break in the season.

Player of the match Annie Wikman leads the successful ACT Meteors team from the side, flanked on the right by captain Carly Leeson.

It is a cliche, but the Meteors really did get off to a bright start to today’s match, with Nicole Fultum getting an inside edge that found the stumps off opening bowler Zoe Cooke first ball. This was followed a few deliveries later with Victorian captain Sophie Molineaux doing sinisterly the same thing. In the third over Cooke managed to trap Sophie Reid LBW, and the Victorian innings was in tatters at 3 down for only 6 runs.

Victoria saw some reprieve from total obliteration via a gritty 9th wicket partnership of 53 by Rhys McKenna and Molly Strano. Mckenna, who went on to put on 62 at a run a ball, looked in solid form – bringing up her 50 with a 6 lofted down the ground. But the team will be smarting that it could have been more – Hasrat Gil was just getting settled when she was run out at the non-striker’s end, courtesy of Anesu Mushangwe getting fingers to the ball sent down the ground by McKenna. Veteran Strano had also looked in good touch, before punting a full toss from Amy Hunter to the waiting mitts of Georgia Elwiss at mid wicket.

The Victorian innings was brought to an end at the beginning of the 37th over – ACT captain Carly Leeson had brought herself in to bowl, and the change up caused McKenna to not angle her shot down enough, allowing Mushangwe to take a low catch at mid-wicket, all out for 161. Cooke and Amy Hunter were the pick of the ACT bowlers, both netting 3 wickets with steely economies.

Low totals, it is said, can be tricky to chase down, and ACT had a few stumbles along the way. A quickfire 50 off 51 balls from Leeson did much to steady the nerves, at times it looked like she was orchestrating the fielding placements more than Sophie Molineaux. As they shuffled the field in response to one Leeson shot, she would then place the next neatly in the hole just left, leaving Victorian fielders scuttling back. Leeson, however, was felled the next ball after achieving the half century – caught off of Tess Flintoff’s pacy full toss. This was the third in a series of wickets, Bowlder and Elwiss departing previously for only 4 runs scored, leaving two new batters (Grace Lyons and Annie Wikman) and still 86 runs to get. But this was only the 15th over, and the ACT batters used this to their advantage. Wikman in particular built a lovely innings, able to sit back and pick out the boundaries when suited her. This culminated in a stylish reverse sweep to the boundary the 34th over to finish off the chase, and left Wikman on 62 not out, rewarded as player of the match.

The Meteors will be very happy with their first home game of the WNCL season, picking up a win and a bonus point to boot. The one concern for Thursday’s match will be Grace Digham who had to retire hurt while supporting Wikman’s batting, she pulled up after stealing a single which looked like a hamstring issue. Victoria still are in negative points after five matches played, will be onto yet another plan to try and fashion a win.

Be Alert! More cricket incoming on Thursday, when the next match of the round takes place.

Helen (Crystallised Cricket) is a writer based in Dharug and Gundagarra country, and here is writing about a game played on Ngunnawal country. She acknowledges the traditional owners of the lands that she writes from.

WNCL: The season so far… and what to expect when it restarts on Sunday

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By Helen Maynard-Casely

After a long pause for the 20-over season, the Women’s National Cricket League (WNCL) – Australia’s professional 50-over competition – restarts on 4 January. Not the quietest period of the cricketing calendar, the upcoming third and fourth rounds will overlap with the Women’s Premier League (WPL) in India, critically drawing away some key players from their state sides. After the amuse bouche of rounds 1 and 2 back in September/October, the majority of the season is still to play. And, while some teams have raced ahead in match points, a few have stumbled and will be keen to get their season back on track.

Standings of the WNCL after two rounds

TeamPlayedWonLossTiedN/RNRRDeductionsBPPoints
Queensland Fire440000.7940218
NSW Breakers440001.0770117
Tasmanian Tigers431001.5280315
South Australia21100-0.494004
ACT Meteors20200-0.802000
Western Australia40400-1.165000
Victoria40400-1.59510-1

After only a few games, it is already looking tight at the top of the table – with teams that have snaffled batting bonuses (from achieving victory with a run rate 1.25 times that of the opposition) at a critical advantage in the chase for the two finals spots. In the bottom half of the table, yes you’ve read that correctly, poor Victoria are actually in negative points after receiving deductions for slow over rates in their match against Tasmania.

Round 3 will see NSW taking their bye for the season, Tasmania will be hosting Queensland at Bellerive, ACT taking on Victoria at EPC Solar Park (Phillip Oval) and West Australia v South Australia at the WACA.

Tasmania v Queensland is likely to be the most important of this round to watch for the overall standings: with more bonus points in the bag from their trip to Victoria, the Tasmanians could jump to the top of the table even with a one win/loss combo. However, they have a frighteningly strong run of form at home in Hobart. Since 2022, Tasmania’s Women have only lost 3 out of 21 matches played at Bellerive. To top this, numbers 1 and 2 on the season run chart are currently held by Tasmanian players Lizelle Lee (323) and Rachel Treneman (241), reflecting the formidability of their batting attack. Queensland, in contrast, will be without gun youngster Charli Knott, who has taken a call up to the WPL, and reliant on Lauren Winfield-Hill to get runs on the board.

After a successful start at home at Karen Rolton Oval back on 26 September, South Australia will be keen to add to wins away at the WACA. They will have a significant boost in having a certain Australian vice-captain Tahlia McGrath back in the side for the next couple of rounds. McGrath has decided to sit out the WPL, presumably with a mind to find form in Australian conditions in advance of the Australia vs India multi-format series coming up in February.

ACT, a team very much in a rebuilding phase, will be keen to go for a win at home against the flailing Victorian side. The Meteors very nearly pulled off quite the surprise win away to Queensland in October’s round 2, only stopped by the indomitable Winfield-Hill’s gutsy century. That said, Victoria are a side with much to make up, having lost the opening four matches – and may hope that some of their contracted Cricket Australia players may be up for taking to the field in Canberra next week to help pull them into the points.

Round 3 WNCL matches

All matches will be streamed via the Cricket Australia app.

DateDayHomeAwayGroundStart (AEDT)Start UTC
04/01SundayTASQLDBellerive Oval, Hobart10:3023:30
06/01TuesdayACTVICEPC Solar Park, Canberra10:0023:00
06/01TuesdayTASQLDBellerive Oval, Hobart10:3023:30
08/01ThursdayACTVICEPC Solar Park, Canberra10:0023:00
08/01ThursdayWASAWACA, Perth17:0006:00
10/01SaturdayWASAWACA, Perth17:0006:00

Helen (Crystallised Cricket) is a writer based in Dharug and Gundagarra country and acknowledges the traditional owners of the lands that she writes from.

The CRICKETher Weekly – Episode 297

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This week:

  • Heat crash out of WBBL
  • Why England players haven’t fared too well in the WPL auction
  • 2026 English domestic fixtures announced
  • Erin Osborne to shake things up at Somerset
  • FairBreak’s questionable decision to set up in Saudi Arabia

 

PLAYER RANKINGS: World Cup

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Batting Rankings

Batting Rankings Matches Runs Dot % Single % Boundary % Strike Rate
1. L Wolvaardt 9 571 48 35 14 99
2. A Gardner 5 328 34 43 18 131
3. S Mandhana 9 434 49 35 14 99
4. AJ Healy 5 299 43 33 21 125
5. P Litchfield 7 304 51 29 19 112
6. RM Ghosh 8 235 44 31 20 134
7. JI Rodrigues 7 292 42 41 13 102
8. N de Klerk 7 208 46 31 21 133
9. HC Knight 7 288 52 33 11 86
10. SFM Devine 5 289 48 40 9 85
11. Pratika Rawal 6 308 56 31 10 78
12. H Kaur 8 260 49 36 11 89
13. NR Sciver-Brunt 6 262 50 35 9 85
14. M Kapp 8 208 44 40 12 103
15. T Brits 9 235 57 26 13 89
16. DB Sharma 7 215 34 56 7 90
17. NND de Silva 5 168 39 41 13 112
18. BL Mooney 6 211 45 40 9 89
19. BM Halliday 5 227 49 40 9 82
20. AE Jones 8 220 57 27 12 84
Ranking = Runs * Strike Rate ©CRICKETher/cricsheet.org

Bowling Rankings

Bowling Rankings Matches Wickets Dot % Boundary % Wide % Economy
1. DB Sharma 9 22 48 11 2 5.52
2. S Ecclestone 7 16 61 7 2 4.06
3. A Sutherland 7 17 60 10 4 4.54
4. A King 7 13 61 8 1 4.04
5. LCN Smith 8 12 61 8 0 4.14
6. M Kapp 9 12 68 10 3 4.19
7. N Shree Charani 9 14 52 9 1 4.96
8. N Mlaba 9 13 56 9 2 4.84
9. LMM Tahuhu 6 10 66 10 10 4.62
10. Fatima Sana 5 10 62 11 3 5.07
11. Sadia Iqbal 5 8 62 10 2 4.47
12. N de Klerk 7 9 52 9 3 5.30
13. CE Dean 8 8 55 9 3 4.87
14. Rabeya Khan 7 7 62 9 1 4.32
15. K Goud 8 9 59 15 2 5.73
16. I Ranaweera 4 7 49 5 2 4.53
17. Nashra Sandhu 5 7 58 10 0 4.53
18. NR Sciver-Brunt 8 9 51 13 4 5.87
19. Nahida Akter 6 6 64 9 0 3.93
20. JM Kerr 7 8 54 10 7 5.43
Ranking = Wickets / Economy ©CRICKETher/cricsheet.org

WORLD CUP SEMI-FINAL: England v South Africa – The End

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If you score a century in Women’s ODIs, you will almost certainly win the game: a whopping 86% of the 348 centuries scored in Women’s ODIs before today resulted in a win. (Intriguingly, this is far higher than in the men’s game where it is only 73%.)

So the writing was on the wall for England when Laura Wolvaardt went past 100 in the 40th over; but to ensure that South Africa reached their first 50-over World Cup final, there was still work to do. With 10 overs remaining, Wolvaardt was on 102 and South Africa were 202-5, 80-100 runs short of where they needed to be. England were still in the game, especially a ball later when Annerie Dercksen tried to reverse sweep Sophie Ecclestone and played-on. South Africa had the platform, and the long middle order right down to Nadine de Klerk – a very handy player to have coming in at 9 – but Wolvaardt’s job was still to turn a good innings into a great one.

South Africa 319-7 v England 194 #CWC25 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-10-29T16:23:02.898Z

The “Milwaukee” (so-called because unlike the Manhattan, it has just a few towers on its skyline) says it all. In those last 10 overs, South Africa built an Empire State Building – 117 runs, at a Strike Rate of almost 200. Wolvaardt herself scored a further 68 runs off just 27 balls, at a Strike Rate of 252, as South Africa posted 319. Australia might have chased that; India could possibly have on their day; England were never going to.

Charlotte Edwards said after the game that she felt like England could have chased 280; and I accept there’s a certain logic there, that when faced with a chase of 320 you have to take risks and are more likely to get bowled out. But given that England were 1-3 after losing Amy Jones, Heather Knight and Tammy Beaumont, all for nought before a single run had been scored off the bat, Edwards’s assertion feels like a “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” too far.

Notwithstanding that England’s assassin was 35-year-old Marizanne Kapp – who took 5-20 in one of the great performances of her long career – there’s a certain irony in the fact that the real problem here is age. At 32 (Jones) and 34 (Knight and Beaumont) the years are starting to take their toll, and while experience can counterbalance that to a certain extent, no one is immune to the march of time on the eyes in particular – you just aren’t seeing the ball as well as you were when you were 25. Yes, Jones and Beaumont got good balls (I’m not so sure Knight did); but good balls is what you get at this level – cook ’em, or get out of the kitchen!

Although I tipped England to win this World Cup just a couple of days ago (with the caveat that they didn’t deserve to!) I’ve been pretty consistent in saying this was the wrong team to take to this tournament. They had already proved during the Ashes that they weren’t good enough, and this is the same team – the only new player in this squad, Em Arlott, barely got a look-in – playing just one match when Lauren Bell was unwell.

I’m not suggesting a side led by Grace Scrivens would have won the World Cup – far from it, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have even made the semi-finals. But at least the rebuild would have begun for the World Cups in 2029 and 2033, by which time Scrivens will still be nearly 4 years younger than Nat Sciver-Brunt is today.

2029 and 2033 are where we need to be looking now, which means it is (or should be) the end of the road for Jones, Beaumont, Knight, Sciver-Brunt, Danni Wyatt-Hodge and probably Sophia Dunkley too. None of them will thank me for saying it – they are all desperate to continue long enough to play in a home T20 World Cup next summer, and the Olympics in the summer after that. And perhaps there is a case for giving them one more shot in the T20 format in 2026; but where the squad for this World Cup (particularly the batting) looked to the past, the next ODI team that England select needs to be looking towards the future.

As someone once said: Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. The beginning that begun in 2016 under Mark Robinson, has now ended under Charlotte Edwards – the very player he sacked to usher in his new era. Now it’s her turn to wield the knife.

You’d hope that some of these players will see the writing on the wall and go with dignity; but in her post-match presser, NSB said: “This will hurt but hopefully in time we’ll be able to take the learnings from it and move forward.” Sadly, that suggests that she doesn’t get it – this team wasn’t good enough to beat the best in January 2025; it wasn’t good enough to beat the best in October 2025; and it won’t ever be good enough. It’s time to hand over to a new group of players that one day might be.