Jake Perry chats to Priyanaz Chatterji

Scotland’s Women travel to Sri Lanka for the ICC Global Qualifier in buoyant mood. Qualification for the event crowned a memorable season for Steve Knox’s side, and after two warm-up games against Ireland in Dubai they will look to make the most of the opportunity to measure their skills against some of the finest players in the world.

For Priyanaz Chatterji the final weeks of preparation have been busier than ever. The Dundee-born seamer combines her Scotland duties with a full-time job at an energy consultancy in London, and as she prepares to meet up with her team-mates again her excitement at what lies ahead is clear.

“It’s probably not fully sunk in yet that I’m actually going, it’ll probably hit me on Sunday when I get on the plane!” she said. “I’m very excited, it’s an amazing opportunity and one that the girls have been working really hard for. There are some nerves there too of course, we’re going to be up against some pretty impressive opposition and we want to do ourselves justice.

“But personally it’s been really great to be involved with Scotland again and to see everyone on a regular basis. The team is definitely moving in the right direction, there’s a real togetherness about the squad and as last season went on we got more and more confident both individually and as a group.

“We had often relied very heavily on Kari [Carswell] in the past, and still do to some extent, but it was great to see other players stepping up and performing when it really mattered. That will stand us in good stead for Sri Lanka.”

Still only twenty-three, Chatterji was a regular wicket-taker for the Wildcats as they secured promotion to Division Two of the NatWest Twenty20 last season. It was a consistency of performance made all the more remarkable by a glimpse of her hectic weekly schedule.

“Monday-to-Friday I get up in the morning and go to the gym before work,” she said. “I aim for five times a week in an ideal world but depending on what else I have to do it might be closer to three or four. I work full-time but manage to train a couple of times a week after work, too, although being in London that can add an hour on just getting there.

“I’ve been travelling back to Scotland every other weekend for the last few months which is definitely challenging, especially when we have a double-header training session. Our starts on Saturdays are usually 9am and the same on Sundays and I don’t tend to get back home until about eleven or twelve at night.

“It’s tiring, but it’s the level of commitment that Knoxy is expecting and it is what’s needed to see my game improve.”

A successful season of Australian club cricket in 2014-15 with Perth’s Subiaco Floreat Cricket Club proved to be a memorable experience, and as she continues to develop her game Chatterji is keen to find other opportunities a little closer to home.

“To be able to train and play regularly for a Division Two county near me would be great,” she added. “Obviously if it happened to be a Division One side it would be too!”

But for now her attention is firmly directed towards Sri Lanka and the biggest occasion of her career to date. Scotland will play in Group B against South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea whilst India, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Ireland and Thailand meet in Group A. The top three teams in each group qualify for the Super Six phase and the chance to claim a place at the ICC Women’s World Cup to be held in England later this year.

“It’s inevitably going to be a massive learning experience for us,” said Chatterji. “Just playing out in those conditions is going to be a massive physical and mental challenge after cold and rainy Scotland! But ultimately it’s a competition and we want to come away with as many wins as possible.

“Getting to play against world-class players can only be a good thing,” she continued. “But whatever happens, we will learn from it, we’ll come back home and carry on working hard.

“We’ll keep on challenging ourselves to improve.”

(Reproduced with the permission of Cricket Scotland)

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Jake Perry writes on Scottish cricket for Cricket Scotland and CricketEurope and is a regular contributor to HoldingWilley.

Twitter: @jperry_cricket / Facebook: Jake Perry Cricket

Ahead of the semi-finals, we take a quick look at the player rankings from the group stages.

Our bowling rankings are topped by a seamer – Sarah Aley of the Sydney Sixers. Aged 32, and never having played a full international, Aley has to be a very outside bet to change that as a result of her performances in WBBL02; but she has nonetheless been massively consistent for the Sixers, as well as defying the dominance of spin which usually asserts itself in the women’s game.

No surprises who tops the batting rankings – do we even have to name her? More interesting are Nos. 2 and 3 – Beth Mooney certainly seems to have done enough at WBBL02 to earn a seat on the plane to the World Cup this summer as a pure batsman, regardless of her status as Assistant Glove Butler to Alyssa Healy; whilst Ashleigh Gardner too has been asking questions of the selectors, as the 19-year-old knocks on the door of a first full call-up to the national side.

Batting Ranking = Runs * Strike Rate
Bowling Ranking = Wickets / Economy

It got so that I knew what was coming when I told someone I was researching the history of women’s cricket. “Aha! Rachael Heyhoe-Flint,” they would say. She was always – without fail – the name on people’s lips.

Sometimes they would ask, “Does she come into your research at all?” I scarcely knew how to answer. Did she come into my research? Of course she did.

When I tried to find other histories of women’s cricket, the closest I came was her wonderful 1976 volume Fair Play, co-authored with Netta Rheinberg. I was surprised, at first, to discover that there were two forewords, penned by Brian Johnston and Colin Cowdrey; I realised later that Rachael’s force of personality was such that they could hardly have resisted when she approached them.

Her autobiography, published in 1978, was endlessly informative but also, in keeping with the great lady herself, filled with humour. Feminism was one of the central themes of my thesis; RHF, in the preface to her autobiography, was pretty open about her own feelings on that topic:

“Challenging male supremacy…doesn’t mean I’m Women’s Lib. Far from it, because I value that bit of underwear they rush out and burn each week with a matinee on Wednesdays. I, too, believe in good support.”

In one memorable meeting with my thesis supervisor, in which I quoted from the Eric Morecambe-penned foreword to RHF’s book – “she rarely eats at home. In fact, her lonely husband has eaten so many frozen dinners that he’s been treated for a chilblained stomach and has had a gas heater fitted in his igloo” – my supervisor struggled to believe that it could have been written by THE Eric Morecambe. It was, of course.

When I went through the Women’s Cricket Association archive, there was an entire folder devoted to the euphemistically-termed “RHF Affair” – the occasion in 1977 when she was sacked from the captaincy and omitted from the World Cup squad.

When I looked for newspaper coverage of women’s cricket, she would inevitably crop up at some point. If the story wasn’t about her, it was written by her – like all those match reports in the Daily Telegraph in 1968/9. Looking for stories about women’s cricket was often like looking for a needle in a haystack; occasionally they would be there, but they were usually very hard to spot. Interviews with RHF, on the other hand, would be whole-page spreads. “Our busts don’t get in the way,” she told one Guardian reporter in 1973, when he asked. “We don’t have to cut them off.” Somehow she still managed to charm him.

Most recently – just last Monday in fact – I spent the afternoon in the library reading about her incredible innings of 179 not out at The Oval in 1976.

Did she come into my research? Always.

She was such an ever-present theme, in fact, always there in the background, that when she agreed to meet me to be interviewed for the thesis I was rather nervous. They say, after all, that you should never meet your heroes. Thankfully in this instance that adage proved far from the truth. She was interested in my PhD. She was warm, funny, and charming. It was one of the best afternoons of the entire research process. All I can say is that I feel privileged, now, that I got the opportunity to talk to her about her incredible, eventful life before it was too late.

“Let’s rest on 179 for now,” her last email to me, sent just after Christmas, ended. Not a bad final note to strike.

Just some of the many thousands of tributes that have poured in to the former England captain, who has died aged 77.

https://twitter.com/lozwinfield/status/821970904372477952

https://twitter.com/charlieburton25/status/821806247347441669

https://twitter.com/Aggerscricket/status/821766041596522497

https://twitter.com/FIGHTINGFITPIXS/status/821991350518378501

Coming into the final two rounds of the group stages, there is still a lot to play for in the WBBL – only one side is certain of qualification, and just one team definitely can NOT qualify. (The remaining matches are all “pairs” – i.e. the Sixers play the Renegades twice, the Scorchers play the Thunder twice, etc.)

Here are the permutations… we think!! (Let us know below, if you think we’ve got it wrong.)

With 16 points already, the Sixers are certain of a semi-final, even if they lose their last two matches against the Renegades.

The Scorchers and the Hurricanes need to win at least one of their matches, against the Thunder and the Stars respectively, to be certain of qualification, or they will be depending on other results.

The Stars and the Heat need to win both of their matches, versus the Hurricanes and the Strikers, to be certain of a semi, else they will be looking to other results.

The Thunder have a slim chance of qualifying by winning only one match (see comments) whilst the Renegades need to win both their remaining matches, and hope other results go their way, with the Renegades specifically needing the Heat and the Stars to lose both their remaining games.

Finally, the Strikers are already out, because even though they can theoretically end up level-4th on 12 points, they can’t finish with more than 5 wins, and the Stars and the Heat already have 6 wins.

Kent CCC have announced that Lydia Greenway is to take up the job of women’s player-coach, following the departure of Charlotte Edwards, who has moved on to a similar role at Hampshire.

Greenway came up through the Kent age-group and academy systems, first representing the county as a 15-year-old back in 2000; going on to make over 100 appearances, scoring more than 3,000 runs and taking 83 catches.

Kent have not announced who will replace Edwards as in her captaincy capacity – Greenway has deputised in the past, most recently in the final match of last season – but given that today’s announcement didn’t mention the captaincy, it seems likely that someone else will take on the official on-field leadership role.

This presents Kent with a dilemma – give the captaincy to a “big name” player, who may not play much due to England/ KSL commitments? Or give it to a a less high-profile figure, who won’t have any such conflicts or other obligations? Surrey and Warwickshire have both recently given the captaincy to players who aren’t even on Super League teams, for this very reason! Doubtless, we will discover Kent’s answer very soon!

The decision by Investec to call an early end to their sponsorship of England men’s Tests, six years into a ten-year deal, has little direct relevance to the women’s game – our Tests (few and far between though they are) are sponsored by Kia. But with Waitrose having already pulled out of their England shirt-sponsorship agreement last year in similar circumstances, what started as a drama begins increasingly to look like a crisis.

Investec, like Waitrose before them, cited a diplomatic desire to “explore other options”, but you don’t have to scratch very far beneath the surface to get to the truth – cricket in England is increasingly marginalised – largely relegated from the back-pages to the back-streets of a pay-TV ghetto, where no top-dollar sponsor wants to be.

This is not to deny that the ECB’s ten-year waltz with Sky TV hasn’t benefited cricket, and the women’s game in particular, thanks to the huge influx of cash it has shovelled into the coffers at Lords. Without it we might not have central contracts or a Kia Super League. But this will all be for nothing if what was once the nation’s “second sport” continues its slide into irrelevance.

The simple fact is that, aside from a highly vocal “choir” of serious fans like us – those prepared to pay Sky’s shilling – no one watches cricket; and even the big crowds at a typical men’s Test seem to be there as much to catch-up with “the chaps” over a few beers, as for the cricket itself.

The ECB can (and do) quote participation figures; and point to advertising campaigns, such as the Girls Rule The World poster on the London Underground for the Women’s World Cup; but until some cricket is back on “proper” television, they are shouting into a growing void of public unconsciousness.

If they weren’t, the sponsors would be clamouring to extend their deals, not terminating them early.

The story of the new year has really been the Melbourne Renegades, dragging themselves back into contention with a hat-trick of wins. Though the Renegades will be kicking themselves for losing a precious half point for a slow over rate, and remain in last position, they are now in touch with a top four finish, which is all you need to make the semi-finals and be in with a shot!

At the other end of the table, the Sydney Sixers have gone top, after also having won all 3 of their games this week.

The Renegades started the new year with a Duckworth-Lewis win over the Stars, which left Melbourne skipper Meg Lanning red-faced after it emerged she didn’t understand the rules – she assumed that the “set” target would be adjusted after the Renegades lost a wicket chasing 7 off 21 balls. (The target can change in other circumstances, but not in this situation, where it had been “set” prior to the resumption of play.) The Renegades followed this up with a win against the Scorchers and another victory over the Stars, with Danni Wyatt finally getting in on some WBBL action –  top-scoring on both occasions with 43 v the Scorchers, and 40 v the Stars.

The much-fancied Adelaide  Strikers have been struggling this year, short on batting with Charlotte Edwards out with a back injury and Sophie Devine also missing due to domestic commitments back home in New Zealand. Both are expected back for the next round of games; and they need them, having posted sub-100 totals against the Scorchers and the Sixers, and also falling well short chasing 161 in their other game v the Sixers, despite a 50 from Tammy Beaumont.

The Brisbane Heat notched-up wins against the Thunder and the Hurricanes, thanks mainly to Beth Mooney, who made  75 v the Thunder and 78 v the Hurricanes, without being dismissed on either occasion – the keeper-batsman is now second in the run charts, behind only Meg Lanning, and it looks increasingly like there ought to be a ticket to England with her name on it for the World Cup this summer.

Though they lost out to the Heat, the Hobart Hurricanes did at least rack-up a big NRR-boosting win against the Thunder earlier in the week – Heather Knight smashing 47 off 29 balls, as they posted 171 – the highest total of WBBL02.

Three Cheers To 2016… 

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

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

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

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

Here’s To 2017… 

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

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

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

It is Sunday 26th June. England have already battered Pakistan in the first two ODIs, and will do so again tomorrow in the 3rd; but in between, county cricket makes a brief reappearance and we are off to Wokingham for the Berkshire v Kent v Lancashire “triple header”.

Even though the club is less than half a mile from my front door, I grab my car keys – that half a mile is along a path that seems to be muddy even at the height of summer; and besides, there is the picnic to bring, the camping chairs, and “the kit” – laptop, binoculars, iPad, phone, and (if all else fails) an old fashioned notebook and pencil.

As always, I arrive early – Berkshire and Kent are warming up, but Lancashire, who don’t play until later, are still on the road. I wander onto the outfield and glance at the wicket. It looks like a solid “club” wicket – a few scuffs… no cracks – but it is also a “new” wicket in cricket terms. The club was built on former farmland just 5 years ago, and the word is that the wicket might take “a while” to settle down – “a while” being anything from 10 to 50 years, depending on who you talk to – so the players know to expect a bit of up and down, and 120 would be a very, very good total today.

I skirt around the Berkshire warm-up to say hello to John “Dicko” Dickinson, the team manager, who took on the role when his daughter Charlie was still playing, and hasn’t been allowed to give it up, though Charlie is long retired. He tells me some exciting news – New Zealander Rachel Priest is here and she’ll play for Berkshire today.

Nevertheless, no sane betting man would be putting their money on Berkshire against Kent this morning, especially as skipper Heather Knight is resting between England duties, whilst the Kent lineup includes Charlotte Edwards, Lydia Greenway, Tash Farrant and someone called “Suzie Bates”!

It is soon apparent that even the gods appear to be on Kent’s side, as two chances to dismiss Charlotte Edwards go begging, while at the other end, her opening partner Suzie Bates sets off at a run-a-ball. The breakthrough comes from Linsey Smith, still a few weeks shy of her rocket to KSL stardom, and at this stage still not even expected to play in the Super League.

In theory, Smith is an orthodox spinner, but in practice she is one of those players you still get in the women’s game, who offers something different because she grew up away from those intensive professional coaching programs which push you into one mould or another. In Smith’s case, she might perhaps best be described as an “over-spinner” – the balls fizzes neither left nor right, but straight on, keeping low; so woe betide you if you try to play her off the back foot, lest the ball creep under your bat and onto the stumps – pretty much exactly what happens to Charlotte Edwards here.

A few balls later, Suzie Bates joins her, back in the slightly functional red-brick pavilion, having edged Smith to Priest at slip. So much for Kiwi solidarity, I joke to the editor… before asking if it’s too early to start raiding the picnic box for a vegetarian “pork” pie!

Kent close on 95 – a bigger total than it sounds, thanks not to any of the international stars, but to all-rounder Alice Davidson-Richards, who will almost certainly never play for England, but who is nonetheless good enough to have been selected for the Super League, and showed why here, as she top-scored with 26.

A quick turn-around and I’m clapping Rachel Priest and Sherisa Gumbs out into the middle to open the batting for the Beavers. Priest of course needs no introduction, but Gumbs does – a local lass, whose father, brother and sister are all familiar faces around the Berkshire scene. Gumbs is what you might call a “big unit” – one of those players who will flay club bowling to all ends of the park; but who is still learning that she needs to pick and choose her shots a bit more at this level.

Gumbs has her days, as an 80-odd against Lancashire last season will testify, but this isn’t destined to be one of them – characteristically, she finds the boundary with her only shot, before falling LBW to Charlotte Pape for 4. Priest however is going great guns at the other end, and is joined in a fifty stand by Alex Rogers.

Hope pops a floppy-eared head out of his rabbit hole in the adjacent corn field, surveys the situation; and because he’s Berkshire born and bred, thinks… maybe!

Then the clatter of wickets: Alex Rogers is caught by Suzie Bates for 20; Carla Rudd hangs around for a rather-too-long 7-ball single, before she is bowled by Charlotte Edwards; and then Priest holes-out too. Berkshire still need 29, with their numbers 5 and 6 at the crease, both on nought.

Hope, perhaps equally wary of the red kites circling overhead as he is of Megan Belt’s off-breaks, scurries back to the comfort of his burrow.

Lissy Macleod and Amanda “Steamer” Potgeiter begin the fight-back. They hustle – talking 1s and 2s – finding the boundary just once in the 40 balls they face between them.

But most importantly, they stay in.

It is the final over – I stand up from my camping chair, and lean in over the boundary rope, willing myself closer to the action in the middle, as it comes down to the final ball, with 2 required.

Just. Get. A. Bat. On. It.

A bat… a run… a throw – Steamer thinks it’s all over and runs on way past the crease – she’ll take the tie!

But the throw is powerful… recklessly so… and it isn’t taken by the bowler. “Run! Run! Run!” I scream, no longer able to maintain even the pretence of journalistic balance. Steamer turns and sees Macleod already half way down the pitch. She realises it’s on, and sets off on what might just be the dash of her life.

She beats the fielder chasing the overthrow.

Berkshire have won.

The crowd goes wild.

The crowd is me.

Everyone is probably looking.

I don’t care.

*

Six months later, I am sitting at my desk, wondering how to sum up 2016? Tammy Beaumont’s 100s? Nat Sciver’s 6s? Alex Hartley’s wickets in the West Indies?

Or that Sunday at Wokingham Cricket Club, when I was just a fan cheering for my team?