By Martin Saxon

After another closely fought season, Didsbury emerged as champions of the Cheshire Women’s Cricket League for the first time since 2019. The South Manchester club achieved the feat despite having only one of the 15 highest run scorers in division one, which was their captain Roshini Prince-Navaratnam, who was also the league’s leading all-rounder this year. Instead, much of their success was due in no small part to their bowling attack – besides Prince-Navaratnam, Hannah Jones, Hannah Marshall and Zara Matthews all had fine seasons.

2022 champions Leigh had to make do with second place, despite more runs from Rachael Walsh and the bowling efforts of Kasey Bentham and Sophie Heaton. They beat Didsbury by bowling them out cheaply in the first encounter between the teams, but Didsbury reversed this in a thrilling last-ball finish in the second match. Had that match gone the other way, or finished as a tie, Leigh would now be celebrating retaining the title.

Nantwich and Stockport Georgians finished third and fourth respectively in the first division, and for both clubs, this represented their highest ever finishes. Georgians had the highest run scorer in their Australian wicketkeeper Heidi Cheadle.

Upton finished in eighth and last place in the top-flight, finding the going difficult after their promotion from division two. They recorded just one league win and are set to return to the second division next year, despite having the league’s leading wicket taker, Lily Scudder.

After missing out on promotion last year by a single point, Lindow made no mistake this year by winning division two with a 100 per cent record. As well as celebrating their arrival in the top-flight, Lindow broke new ground for the league this year by becoming the first Cheshire League club to reach the semi-finals of the Women’s National T20 Knockout.

The only other divisional winners to end with a perfect record were Buxton in Division 3 East, Runcorn in Division 5 Mid Cheshire and Aston in Division 5 South.

One of the league’s most noticeable features is just how unpredictable and competitive it remains. Only one club has retained the first division title since 2012, while no club has accomplished the treble since 2013. That said, Didsbury came extremely close this year, winning the T20 Divisional Competition to add to their League Championship success, but losing by one run to Nantwich in the Senior Knockout final.

TROPHY WINNERS

This week:

• ECB’s response to ICEC – talking the right talk but will they walk the walk?
• Will we get an England Test at Lord’s?
• Domestic salaries: why we need to level up
• South Africa v New Zealand & why NZC’s lack of a pathway is coming home to roost

Chasing a lowish total in the RHF Trophy final, Southern Vipers lost their top order cheaply, but came back from the dead thanks to a rearguard action led by top scorer Emily Windsor, to lift the title at Northampton.

Oh no… hang on… that wasn’t today… it was two years ago – chasing 183, Vipers were 109-7, but Windsor and Tara Norris brought it home with an unbeaten stand of 78, with 2 balls to spare.

It was actually a lot less squeaky this time. Vipers were 109-5 when Windsor came together with Freya Kemp, but whereas last time they had ground-out the runs they needed, this time they cruised to victory.

Two years ago, it didn’t feel like Windsor was the kind of player who could have gone at over a run a ball for 15 overs. She was someone who had evolved up in the old county pathway, where keeping your wicket intact was prized above all, and her run rate in 2021 reflected that – 47 off 97 balls – a strike rate of 48.

But times have changed, and Windsor has changed with them. From 109-5 today, Vipers needed another 92, and they got them at well over a run a ball, with Windsor finishing on 57 off 53 – a strike rate of 108 – more than double that of two years before.

She even did it without the feeling that she was really going for it. The ropes weren’t in miles; and the outfield wasn’t particularly quick, though it was in notably better nick than it has sometimes been at this ground by the end of the season. But she pushed and prodded, guiding the ball into the gaps – taking the boundaries when the ball had the legs, and running hard when it didn’t.

Freya Kemp also deserves a lot of credit for holding her nerve, and resisting the temptation to play the big shot which could have been her… and the Vipers… downfall. Given that there wasn’t a lot of batting to come, her 32 off 35 balls was almost as important as Windsor’s innings.

It so nearly wasn’t to be for the Vipers today. Josie Groves looked to have turned the game with 3 wickets in 8 balls, including the two set batters, the Georgia’s Elwiss and Adams. Quite how Groves got the ball to flutter like the first butterfly of summer, past the bat of Georgia Adams, I’ll never know. Possibly Groves won’t either. It looked set to be her day, and I even had the headline ready – Get On The Grovey Train – a much better headline than the one you’ve just clicked on too!

Groves didn’t deserve to be on the losing side today. Neither did Grace Ballinger who opened the bowling with more dots than the morse code – 5 overs in the powerplay, 3 maidens, and just two runs. Nor did Marie Kelly, who has been on the wrong end of the result in all 3 domestic finals this season.

It has been a cruel summer indeed for Blaze, who headed the table in the Charlotte Edwards Cup, and were at the top of the ladder in the RHF Trophy until literally the very last moments of the season, with Vipers overtaking them by a cat’s whisker on Net Run Rate in the final round of games in the group stages.

So the Vipers juggernaut thunders on. They lost games this summer, most notably to Sunrisers in the season-opener at the Ageas back in April. But when it mattered, they dug deep, and never more so than today. We’ve made a choice in cricket – the “winner” isn’t the best team through the season, as it is in football, where the league rules all – it is the team which handles the pressure of the big moments at the climax. And once again, that was the Southern Vipers – in 2023, cricket belongs to them.

This week:

• Raf tells Parliament how to fix women’s sport
• Sunrisers shine & Diamonds decline in the RHF
• We get cross about the lack of a Blaze home ground for the RHF Eliminator
• England v Sri Lanka ODIs reviewed
• What next for Bess Heath?

A typical score in a normal, 50-over ODI between the ICC Championship sides is 245. Crudely adjusted for a 31-over game, a par score today would have been 152. England had more than that after 17 overs, and finished on 273-8, which would have been a decent outing in a full 50-over game.

In truth, 31 overs is more like an extended T20 than a shortened ODI, and England treated it as such. Nat Sciver-Brunt hit the fastest hundred ever by an English woman in an ODI, and Maia Bouchier played admirably fearlessly for her 95. I’m normally a paid-up member of the No One “Deserves” a Hundred club, but I’m temporarily resigning my membership here to say that today The Mighty Bouch Deserved a Hundred!

England got off to a shaky start, scoring just 28-2 in the 6-over powerplay, but then Sciver-Brunt and Bouchier exploded, rocketing along at nearly 12 runs per over during the Early Middle and Middle phases. Sri Lanka’s bowlers had no answers. We talk about players “milking” singles sometimes in long-form cricket; but here NSB and Bouch were basically milking boundaries, finding the rope 33 times between them.

At one stage 300 was a possibility, but the run rate fell off a bit in the late middle phase, and it was actually only after NSB and Bouch were dismissed that it went up again, as England’s late middle order continued in T20 fashion – sacrificing 6 wickets in the final phase but getting the run rate back over 8 again.

Bess Heath had license to have a bit of a bash, and grabbed 21 off 14 balls on debut, though there was a certain inevitability about her being caught off a slog-sweep on the boundary out towards cow corner – Sri Lanka had planted not one but two catchers there for a reason! It would be unfair to say that Heath is one-dimensional – she brought out a couple of other shots today, including a reverse slog-sweep – but she needs to watch how Nat Sciver-Brunt plays to take her game forwards into 3 dimensions over the next couple of years.

Now… having just spent several paragraphs raving about England’s batting, I’m about to say something controversial. NSB shouldn’t have been Player of the Match. Hundreds might not quite be two-a-penny, but they are pretty common these days – there have been 15 tons scored for England in the past 5 years. In that time there have been just four 5fers. With bowlers only permitted to bowl a maximum of 20% of an innings, grabbing a 5fer is a much more impressive, and consequently rarer, achievement.

So… yes… I’m saying it: Charlie Dean should have been Player of the Match for her 5fer.

They were proper Off-Spinner’s Wickets too – Dean doesn’t get a lot of turn, but she does get some, and she showed today that you don’t need a lot if you land the ball consistently in the right spot. In life generally, if you keep asking the same question over and over, you’ll not only annoy people, but you’ll likely get the same answer. But spin bowling is a bit of an exception to that rule – you ask the question… then you ask it again… then you ask it again… then you get the answer you want, as a catch is nicked to the keeper or back into your own leaping hands, or the ball shimmies through the gate and onto off stump.

Lauren Filer also picked up another 3fer and a Player of the Series award of a bottle of “I Definitely Can Believe It’s Not Champagne But They Sponsor Us, So… Yer”. Player of the Series was nominated by the Sky Sports comms team, and I can see why Charles Dagnall likes Filer – he doubtless sees something of himself in her – tall and quick and “a bit ‘ard”. But the jury is still out for me. How she fares in India will be a key test, if England are trying to build a team to have a shot at the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh next October. And if she does well and proves me wrong, I’ll be the first to stand up and say it.

And with that, another international summer ends. England have had their ups and downs; but they finish it on a positive note – with 5 more ICC Championship points in the bag, and only denied a 6th by the weather in Northampton, when it would have taken a miracle of saintly proportions for Sri Lanka to have salvaged the game if the rain hadn’t intervened to do so for them.

Perhaps even more importantly, England have started to rebuild for the future. They haven’t found all the combinations yet, and the captaincy succession remains an issue in the shorter term, though it becomes increasingly clear that Grace Scrivens is the answer a little further down the line. But under Jon Lewis they have taken steps they didn’t take under Lisa Keightley, and that is really the story of this summer – the one which would be keeping me awake at night if I was an Australian looking at the next ten years.

This week:

• England v Sri Lanka – the T20 series post-mortem
• The return of Meg Lanning
• England A to tour New Zealand
• Shocking disparities in pay for women umpires

England avenged their defeat to Sri Lanka in the T20 series with a thumping win in the first ODI at Chester-Le-Street, taking just 18 overs to overhaul Sri Lanka’s 106 all out.

It was a win created by England’s new-look bowling attack – not just in terms of the two debutantes, Lauren Filer and Mahika Gaur, but also leg-spinner Sarah Glenn, who has been very-much a T20 specialist in her England career thus far, having played only played a handful of ODIs whilst racking-up 50 T20 caps. All 3 finished up with 3-fers, with Glenn doing so at an economy rate of just 2.5.

Gaur and Filer make an interesting combination because they are such very different propositions for a batter. Apart from the occasional (largely ineffective) short one, Gaur aims to keep the stumps in play every delivery; whereas Filer is looking to bowl shorter and wider, with a little bit more pace to try to hurry the batter into a mistake. Whist the vast majority of Gaur’s deliveries were hitting the stumps; the bulk of Filer’s were missing.

Both proved effective today against a Sri Lankan line-up whose confidence seemed to rapidly drain away once Gaur had dismissed Chamari with a ball the pitched on middle and danced off the seam, away from the left-hander, to hit off. Two overs later, Gaur proved it was no fluke, bowling a very similar ball to Anushka, with pitched on the right-hander’s off stump and dived back through the gate to hit middle. Brought back with Sri Lanka 9 down in the 30th over, Mahika pulled the trick off a third time to wrap-up the innings.

The pattern here of course is that it is one trick; but it is a very good trick that ought to make even the best batters wary. There will be answers – getting forward being the most obvious – but that seriously limits the batter’s options, and it definitely something some will find it difficult to adjust to, having become accustomed to playing late, as you can usually do in the women’s game.

Filer’s tactics are much more overtly aggressive – with that extra pace and lift, she’s looking to bully the batter into making an error, and that worked today against Sri Lanka’s middle order, as it did a couple of times in her only other international appearance prior to today, in the Test against Australia earlier this summer. But she needs to develop more of an armoury, or she is going to get worked-out by the top players, who will just wait of anything slightly off line and then crash it to the fence; and given that her line strays a fair bit, that’s 8-12 an over she’s going to go for. (Even today she was England’s most expensive bowler.)

Mahika will get the headlines – people love an ingénue – but Glenn was really the pick of the bowlers today. It is a big call to play her as the only specialist spinner in Ecclestone’s absence – most would have gone with Charlie Dean, especially as she offers a little bit more of a solid batting option.

(Though I guess Alice Capsey might take issue with that, arguing that she too is a specialist spinner, and it does look like the plan was for Capsey to play as a “proper” all-rounder and bowl 10 overs today.)

Glenn delivered though, bowling with pinpoint accuracy and working her arsenal of top-spinners to deceive the batters on bounce, meaning playing across the line to her is a risky move, especially because she is attacking the stumps, so if you miss… she hits – either stumps or pad.

With the bowlers having done their job to such effect, all England’s batters needed to do was not do anything stupid, and the game would be won in time for an early tea, which is pretty-much the way it went down.

Emma Lamb and Tammy Beaumont played painstaking cricket for the first 5 overs, and I did wonder if somebody had dared them to try to win it in 50 overs; but then in the 6th over, Tamy flipped the switch and we were suddenly hurtling along. Tammy got to 32 before she was dismissed – it looked like she hadn’t noticed the slip that had been put in for the new bowler, sending a catch straight to her. Emma Lamb then actually did do something stupid – trying to play a T20 shot, when there is a reason she has played just one T20 for England!

Heather Knight looked much more in control than she does in T20s these days. Somehow knowing that she doesn’t have to go at a run a ball, and she can actually leave the odd one, allows her to relax and… go at a run a ball! (It makes no sense, but then not a lot does if you stop to think about it!) She might have a trip to the headmaster’s study though, after arguing with Sue Redfern on her way back after being given out caught behind (fairly, as far I could tell from the replays on the big screen) and then running out of time on the review.

It didn’t matter much though – England only needed a handful by that point, and they got them with no further alarms.

So, the order of the universe is restored, at least in terms of ODIs, and England are back on top, with some exciting new bowlers to give us all hope. If they can do the same again twice next week, the T20s will all be forgotten, if they aren’t already. We shall see…

Prior to this match, England had played 184 T20 internationals, and had been bowled out in just 15 of them. They’d only been bowled out in consecutive matches twice – in 2011 (both to Australia) and 2018 (to Australia and India). Add Sri Lanka in 2023 to that list now.

And it goes without saying that when you’re bowled out, you almost always lose the game in international T20 cricket – England haven’t won a T20 in which they were bowled out since 2011, back in the days when 120 was a pretty good score. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t change this evening in Derby.

England were pretty abject from the first ball, when Danni Wyatt prodded a catch to cover as if she was still taking throw-downs before the start of game. Alice Capsey looked like she might be in the mood; but within 2 overs the only “mood” she was in was a stroppy one, having been hung out to dry by Maia Bouchier.

Bouch needed to make up for it big-time and she played some sumptuous strokes along the floor to get herself a start. Her 23 off 18 balls ended up being England’s highest score, but it could have been more, and it should have been more. There was no need to suddenly go aerial, and she didn’t get anything like enough power through the ball – sending it straight to the fielder on the long-on boundary.

And it was all downhill from there for England. Sri Lanka bowled really well at Chelmsford in the 2nd T20; but here England were largely the authors of their own tragedies. Heather Knight played a poor shot; Amy Jones got Amy Jonesed; Freya Kemp only has one way to play, and tonight wasn’t the night for it; and suddenly England’s tail was exposed again.

Sarah Glenn and Dani Gibson got England to a slightly more respectable total than Chelmsford, with a bit of smash ‘n’ grab; but they aren’t the players who we should be looking to to ever do much more than that. Sri Lanka’s bowlers kept pressing, and got their reward – bowling the hosts out with 6 balls left out in the middle.

I guess England’s only hope was to take early wickets and hope Sri Lanka collapsed; so they stuck to Plan A and opened the bowling with Mahika Gaur and Kate Cross. But Plan A didn’t work. Cross’ first over was the most expensive of the match; and Gaur’s second was the second-most costly. By the end of the 4th over of the chase, Sri Lanka needed under 5 an over, and you could probably have started the car at that point.

Chamari was imperious again, and was rightly rewarded with the Player of the Series gong at the end of the game. Sri Lanka remain awfully dependent on her – you do get the feeling that if she’d had gone early, a chase of 117 might have been too much – but she nonetheless left the rest of the lineup with work to do when she holed-out for 44. But what she had done was scored those 44 runs so quickly that the rest could just knock it around for singles and still win easily. And England had no answer to that – they kept an extra fielder in the ring for most of the latter stages, but there were still enough little gaps to be found by the Sri Lankans, who knew they didn’t need to go huge.

Sri Lanka’s patience was their biggest asset after Chamari’s dismissal. Harshitha managed the chase brilliantly, keeping things bubbling-over – they needed under 4 an over, and ticked along at exactly 5 from the 8th over on, to win the game with 18 balls to spare. Again, it wasn’t quite the margin of victory they’d enjoyed at Chelmsford, but it is still a decent win in this form of the game, and it’s not like there were any prizes for Net Run Rate anyway!

England’s bowling wasn’t awful, but it needed to be brilliant if it was going to rescue such a poor batting display, and it wasn’t. The quicks looked toothless, and the spinners didn’t trouble the Sri Lankans too much either, because it is hard to trouble batters who only need to chip it around at less than a run a ball.

A year ago, England scraped a win in the T20 series against India, with more than a little help from the autumnal weather (which the Indians found very uncomfortable) and then went on to lose the ODI series 3-0.

This time around, it is the T20 series which they’ve lost, with still the chance to redeem themselves in the ODIs. England are expected to have Nat Sciver-Brunt back for the ODIs, with Tammy Beaumont coming in as well, to open in place of Wyatt. That will give them a bit more backbone, and hopefully a bit more balance – when every batter is a “see ball/ hit ball” type, when it goes right, it can go very very right, as it did at Hove; but when it goes wrong, it tends to go quite badly wrong, as we’ve seen now at Chelmsford and Derby. These are ODIs which England need to win, with ICC Championship points on the line. Anything less than 3-0 to England and questions will be asked.

By Martin Saxon

Senior Knockout Cup: Didsbury Swordettes 1^st XI v Nantwich Vipers 1^st XI

Nantwich became the first club to retain this trophy since Chester Boughton Hall in 2009 as they completed a nailbiting one-run win.

The Vipers were pegged back in the first eight overs via economical spells of 0-12 and 2-13 respectively from Hannah Jones and Hannah Marshall but did well for the next 11 overs as Grace Michell played the anchor role and Hannah Bratt supplied the most eye-catching cameo.

Didsbury captain Roshini Prince-Navaratnam brought herself on for the final over and when she conceded just one run, many spectators thought this could be a crucial contribution, with her side now needing just 88 to win.

This very promising Nantwich attack have been bowling sides out cheaply in all competitions this year though, and they recovered superbly after Prince-Navaratnam and Kashmira Shinde took Didsbury to 35-1 after four overs. Bethan Robinson and Eleanor Sinker were among those recovering from expensive first overs to bowl three more miserly overs.

Didsbury eventually needed six from the final over, but a superbly composed effort from Izzi Pearson ensured they managed just a single from each of the first four balls, before two dot balls with a run out from each completed the match.

T20 Divisional Competition: Didsbury Swordettes 1^st XI v Chester Boughton Hall Deemons 1^st XI

Didsbury won this competition for the first time, and after two last ball finals in 2021 and another earlier in the day, they won here by a slightly more comfortable 12 runs.

After their disappointment earlier in the day, it initially seemed that it might be a double disappointment for the South Manchester club, who were 50-4 after 13 overs. Ali Cutler bowled four overs for just 11 runs, but this was surpassed by Gemma Rose’s 2-7, with both wickets being caught and bowled, the first of which was a truly spectacular effort.

It took Hannah Jones (38 not out from 30 balls) and Hannah Marshall (32 from 40) to get the scoreboard moving as they more than doubled the score in the remaining seven overs, taking their side to 106.

Chester also scored relatively slowly in the first two-thirds of the innings, but if Didsbury were already preparing to celebrate, they were given a fright by Rose, who cleared the boundary twice in her cameo of 22 – had she stayed a little longer, the result could have been different.

Jones returned to bowl the last of her four overs in the 19^th over, conceding just three here and only five in total in her four overs. The 20^th over was the last of three excellent overs of death bowling from Zara Matthews.

Their dream of being the first club since Chester in 2013 to complete a treble in Cheshire women’s cricket died earlier in the day. Didsbury, however, will still complete a double if they secure at least seven points from Sunday’s league match and clinch the League Championship in the process.

Development Knockout Cup: Chester Boughton Hall Deemons 2^nd XI v Nantwich Vipers 2^nd XI

Chester ensured they would be taking home at least one trophy after a relatively comfortable win in their first final of the Development Cup, the competition for division three and four teams.

Chester took regular wickets from the off, but Nantwich’s scoring rate remained good. Only when Flo Seymour reached the retirement score did the innings fall away. Lucy McCarten and Ava Rogers both finished with three wickets.

Chester knocked off 38 of the 91 they required via the opening stand between Ffion Jones and Holly Cooke, with the pair building the innings well and gradually accelerating at the right time. Liv Fuller’s 20 not out completed the chase with 21 balls still remaining.

Hale Barns CC was a superb host venue, and the League also extends its thanks to umpires Chris Moore, Duane Jones, John Bone and Jeff Langham.

This week:

• The totally (un) official inquest into England’s loss to Sri Lanka
• English players win the draft lottery in WBBL
• Equal match fees… stop us if you’ve heard this rant before!