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!

A brilliant spin bowling performance, on an admittedly helpful pitch, set Sri Lanka up for only their third ever win on English soil, and their first against England, having previously beaten Pakistan in the 2009 and 2017 World Cups.

The hybrid pitch at Chelmsford, which contains threads of plastic sewn into the surface to give the natural grass a helping hand, offered just enough grip and turn to bamboozle England’s batters, who collapsed into a black hole of embarrassment. It could have been even worse too, if only Sri Lanka could have fielded quite as well as they bowled – Dani Gibson and Amy Jones were both dropped, and Charlie Dean should have been run out on 7 after a horrible mix-up with Gibson. Honestly… England were lucky to get to 100.

Dean did at least capitalise on her good fortune – she took on the bowling and hit 34 off 26 balls. There is definitely more to come from Dean with the bat, and she showed today that she can go at a decent strike rate – this was her highest strike rate in an innings for England, and it put the rest of the performance in a little perspective.

We’ve long thought that the problem with Jon-ball (like it’s male counterpart, Baz-ball) was that it was always going to implode at some point, but it didn’t even do that today – batters weren’t being caught bravely on the boundary, but meekly on the ring – England collapsed not with a bang, but with a whimper.

It goes without saying that 104 barely registers against a “typical” score in T20 internationals between the ICC Championship sides these days – this was England’s worst day out against anyone but Australia in more than 10 years, during which time T20 cricket has undergone an unrecognisable transformation, with 138 being par these days.

England were then forced to play the role of spectators as Chamari Athapaththu took charge – 55 runs at a strike rate of 177 , with eight 4s, two 6s. It’s not often you see the ball literally hit out of the ground these days. Athapaththu did it not once, but twice – a smashing performance in every sense!

That 67-run powerplay really settled the game – with 6 overs done, the required rate was less than 3 an over, and Sri Lanka knew they could just wait for the bad balls… which… well… talking of…

England really didn’t help themselves by selecting Issy Wong, who they know has issues with her run-up, and then asking her to bowl two overs when they were defending a very low total. Everyone who has seen Wong play in domestic cricket in England this year knows she isn’t right – she has been reduced to a bit-part role at Sparks, and she was dropped by Birmingham Phoenix, with Phoenix and New Zealand coach Ben Sawyer proclaiming that he was going to fix her. Well… he didn’t. She began with a front-foot no-ball… then bowled another two balls later… then another… then a wide, as the over went for 12 freebies.

Heather Knight then brought Wong on again at the end, almost as if she was trying to complete her humiliation, and sure enough she conceded another 12 as Vishmi Gunaratne treated her with the disdain her performance honestly deserved. With the WBBL draft tomorrow, Wong could not have picked a worse time to have a match like this; but I’m going to say it – if anyone picks her, England should not let her go. She needs to go back to the drawing board, and she can’t do that jetting around the globe in franchise cricket. She won’t like it, but it’s surely her last chance to save her career, rather than burning out at 21.

By the end, Fortress Chelmsford  had been reduced to rubble, with the crowd openly jeering a visibly embarrassed England, most of whom looked like they wanted to follow those 6s from Chamari – out of the ground and far away.

Odds are that England will still win the series in Derby next week, but they have learned a bitter lesson here today. England treated these games as warm-ups – a chance to give players time in the middle. They underestimated Sri Lanka, and it came back to bite them. Hard.

England won a very rain-affected match in Hove by 12 runs – a margin that sounds much closer than it actually was, as the Sri Lankans thrashed 17 runs off Kate Cross’s final over in what was by that point a hopeless cause.

With heavy rain having fallen for much of the afternoon, it was a miracle they got on at all, initially losing just 3 overs per innings from the delayed start, as the ground staff worked the super-sopper harder than Sophie Ecclestone’s shoulder in a Test match.

In her new opening role, Maia Bouchier looked slightly subdued, but still contributed a healthy 22 off 18; whilst at the other end Danni Wyatt perhaps read the conditions a bit better, choosing to stroke and guide the ball, rather than trying to hammer the leather off it – even her huge 6 into the parking lot behind the Sharks stand was more of a lift than a smash.

Between them, Wyatt and Bouchier took an undefeated 11-an-0ver 55 off the foreshortened 5-over powerplay to put England in a very healthy position, though both were lost shortly after – Bouch run out by a decent bit of fielding and Wyatt smartly bowled by Inoka Ranaweera with a slightly late-career Jenny Gunn-ish whiff of a delivery.

This set the stage for England’s young guns to… in the immortal words of George Michael… “go for it” with Freya Kemp and Alice Capsey (combined age… younger than me!) both impressing – Kemp returning a strike rate of 200 for her 20, and Capsey not far behind – a strike rate of 189 as she passed 50 for the third time in an England shirt.

21 of Capsey’s 51 runs came in a single over, as Ranaweera felt the full force of Capsey’s bat, with members of the crowd being forced to take evasive action on no less than 3 occasions as for a brief while it rained sixes rather than rain!

186 is a pretty massive total. Adjusted for the lost overs, a score of 117 is typical in T20s between the ICC Championship teams – so we are talking about something like 70 runs over par; and there was absolutely no chance of Sri Lanka chasing it. The required rate was already almost 12 an over when further heavy rain threatened to deny England victory, with the game 11 balls short of a result. We were ready to give up, and a fair few members of the crowd actually did; but the weather softened just enough to get the players back on, though the groundsmen were doubtless looking on in horror at the potential for damage to the square.

It wasn’t an easy bowling situation for England. Mahika Gaur had to complete her 2nd over, though that did allow her to pick up a maiden wicket of Chamari Athapaththu – not a bad scalp for your first on debut. It is difficult to pass judgement on such a truncated opportunity for the 17-year-old, but she showed why she has potential – great action, good pace, and a fantastic appeal – and England will certainly want to see more of her in this series.

Charlie Dean was tasked with a tricky penultimate over with a wet ball, with half an eye on the skies as rain threatened again, but she delivered with her customary reliability – conceding just 6, to basically ensure that England would win the game and take a 1-0 lead in the series to a sold-out Fortress Chelmsford at the weekend.

Southern Brave won The Hundred at the third time of asking, as Rhianna Southby capped-off a dream August with another brilliant performance behind the stumps as Superchargers slumped to 105 all out in the showpiece final at Lord’s.

It seems barely plausible now that Southby was dropped by Southern Vipers (coached by… er… Brave coach Charlotte Edwards) earlier in the summer for the entirety of the Lottie Cup – she didn’t play a single game in the regional T20 comp, with Vipers continuing to prefer Aussie import Nicole Faltum.

And to be fair, there was some logic to the decision – Vipers were struggling for runs in the early part of the season, and Southby is not a batter – she was carded to come in at 10 today, and was only that high Lauren Bell’s reputation precedes her as a ‘Genuine No. 11’. Southby had also arrived at Vipers over the winter with something of a rap sheet for making a lot of basic errors due to lapses in concentration – a reputation she didn’t quite dispel playing in the RHF Trophy at the dawn of the summer.

So it is probably safe to say that she wasn’t top of the list in many people’s fantasy picks when it came to selecting a wicket keeper for The Hundred.

But the one thing Southby has always had in spades however is moxie – even in her early days at Surrey, she was always the one person she could depend on to believe in herself – so whilst back at the start of August no one else might have imagined she would be lifting that big ‘H’ today, you can bet your life that she did.

Brave v Superchargers was the key turning-point – not the game today, but the one that took place back at the start of the comp, on August 6th at the Ageas Bowl. Southby took 2 catches and 2 stumpings, dismissing 4 of Superchargers top 5, earning herself a Match Hero medal – a rare feat for a wicket-keeping performance. Suddenly people were looking at her differently – talking about her as a possible successor to Amy Jones.

That may or may not come to be – it is a big call for an international side to consider picking a specialist keeper who can’t bat in the top 6 – but if there was any doubt that in terms of pure keeping, that Southby is the best we have right now below England, that was dispelled this afternoon.

During yesterday’s abandoned semi-final eliminator, we had lightning in the skies over The Oval; but here we had lightning behind the sticks at Lord’s, as Southby pulled off 3 smart stumpings to break the back of the Superchargers’ middle order, including the wicket of rival “Future England Keeper” Bess Heath, who landed on her behind both literally and metaphorically trying to beat Soutby’s glovework.

The other crucial role today for Brave was played once again by Danni Wyatt, as it had been in Viper’s Lottie Cup win earlier in the season. After a start which definitely wasn’t what they’d have wanted – losing both Smriti Mandhana and Maia Bouchier cheaply, there were just echoes of Brave’s collapses in the two previous Hundred finals.

It left Wyatt with a lot of responsibility on her shoulders, and she had to rein in her game just a little during the front half of the innings, but in the late middle phase she opened up and it was the period that decisively  turned the game in Brave’s favour as the strike rate hit its highest heights at a ground where big scores have proved somewhat elusive.

One can only wonder what the final score would have been if Wyatt hadn’t been taken out by one of the unluckier dismissals we’ve seen of late – run out at the non-strikers end after a Georgia Adams drive rebounded off Wyatt’s glove and straight to Kate Cross who took the gift presented, thank you very much!

Some late hitting from Freya Kemp, which wasn’t pretty but was pretty effective, got Brave up to 139, and left Superchargers with work to do, but it wasn’t an insurmountable total. At least… it wasn’t until Southby got involved.

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.