The dust may have barely settled over “Battlefield Chelmsford”, but over at Lords thoughts are quickly turning to KSL 2.0, which has already been penciled-into the calendar, with the same six teams contesting a One Day competition in the weeks leading up to the World Cup, and the Twenty20s in a block afterwards.

Whilst the broad picture is clear, there are a lot of details still to be confirmed, as the ECB embark upon a “comprehensive review” of this year’s competition, taking feedback from everyone involved – including the fans, who can have their say by filling out the survey here!

Rumours abound that one thing we may see next year is a “reshuffle” of the teams, and CRICKETher can confirm that not only is this under consideration, but the ECB are also not currently ruling out the possibility of key players competing in different colours in the One Day and T20 competitions.

The desire to keep the competition balanced is a laudable one, certainly from the perspective of the ECB’s goal of “bridging the gap”; but one area where the KSL has been successful well beyond expectations is in building fanbases – plural!

Prior to the competition, we were asked what “success” might look like in terms of match attendances – we mused that an average “gate” of 500 would be pretty good, given that the number of spectators at a typical county match can often be counted on the fingers of one hand.

That the KSL has far exceeded that, is as much as anything down to the hard yards the players put in – visiting clubs, holding coaching sessions, and working the local media. Loyalties were created; but they are still fragile, and they could be torn apart in a moment – and the easiest way of doing that would be to “rob” a young fan of her favourite player; or (worse still) to give her a new favourite player in the One Day competition… and then snatch her away again in the T20s.

Not to mention that the players generally don’t want to move either – they’ve nailed their colours to their masts, as Charlotte Edwards made pretty clear to us in our interview:

“Don’t try and move any of us… everyone is firmly in allegiance with their team!”

Over the longer term, of course, it might have to happen, but moving key players should be a last resort – not least because right now it isn’t even clear that the KSL is “unbalanced” – no team lost all their games, and no team won them all either. Even Lancashire Thunder, who perhaps looked most in need of “bolstering”, having lost their key England player – Sarah Taylor – could so easily have been a very different story, if Danni Wyatt (average 8) and Hayley Matthews (4) had lived up to expectations with the bat.

Building a brand new competition from scratch is a massive challenge – you aren’t going to get everything right, but in the case of KSL the ECB have gotten pretty damn close. Now, like a fine wine, it just needs time to mature… and that won’t happen if you spend too much time opening up the barrell and mixing stuff around!

For our Team of the Tournament we’ve stuck to the same rules as the KSL itself: 3 overseas and 3 England, with the remainder selected from amongst the county and Academy players.

We’ve tried to pick players in their natural batting position – meaning (unluckily) no spot for Lancashire Thunder opener Emma Lamb – and to include a balanced bowling attack of seamers and spinners.

1. Stafanie Taylor (WS / O)
2. Suzie Bates * (SV / O)
3. Heather Knight (WS / E)
4. Nat Sciver (SS /E)
5. Arran Brindle (SV)
6. Ellyse Perry (LL / O)
7. Katherine Brunt (YD /E)
8. Carla Rudd + (SV)
9. Freya Davies (WS)
10. Alex Hartley (SS)
11. Linsey Smith (SV)

O = Overseas; E = England

The top of the batting order pretty-much picks itself – Stafanie Taylor and our captain, Suzie Bates, were the outstanding players of the tournament; whilst Heather Knight and Nat Sciver were the best performing England players in our batting rankings.

For the all-rounders, we’ve gone for Arran Brindle who had a great tournament with the ball and contributed some quick runs coming in late with the bat; Ellyse Perry, who started poorly, but whose class came-good over the competition as a whole; and Katherine Brunt, who showed she really is an all-rounder at this level, contributing vital runs as well as her usual wickets for the Diamonds.

Carla Rudd is our glove-butler, having had a very tidy tournament behind the stumps for the Southern Vipers, also contributing 4 dismissals – all stumpings.

Finally for our bowlers, we’ve selected a seamer – Freya Davies, who took 5 wickets at a very respectable economy rate of 7.4 for an opening bowler; and two spinners – Alex Hartley and Linsey Smith, whose 4-10 for the Vipers versus the Diamonds were the best figures for a spinner in the tournament.

Charlotte Edwards With The KSL Trophy

The inaugural Kia Super League has reached its conclusion, with Southern Vipers lifting the trophy. The key question now is: what next?

There have as yet been no pronouncements about what the competition will look like next summer, aside from the fact that it will be extended to a 50-over tournament which will take place prior to the World Cup.

This seems to raise more questions than it answers – not least whether the teams will remain the same for the 50-over competition as they are for the 20-over competition, given that very few overseas players are expected to be able to participate.

One person who is sure of where she will be next summer, though, is victorious Vipers captain Charlotte Edwards:

“I’m not moving anywhere!” she said after the final on Sunday. “I’m playing next year. Why wouldn’t you?!”

“I’ve loved having a slightly different role. I’m more of a mentor in this team and I’m enjoying the mentoring side off the pitch as much as anything…I’ve actually enjoyed the captaincy more than I have in the last few years.”

For Edwards, too, the idea that players might move between teams is a difficult one to swallow:

“Don’t try and move any of us! This is better than Super Fours where you got moved every week… Everyone is firmly in allegiance with their team.”

Indeed, the ECB might well look to Super Fours – the previous development competition, begun in 2002, which pitted the best 48 players in England against each other – as a learning experience; the teams were so unsettled that no side could really ever develop a proper fanbase, and the competition became purely a selection exercise towards the end of its life.

Edwards recognises, though, that trying to keep the teams stable creates a “headache” for the ECB:

“We [the Vipers] have lost two England contracted players so we’re going to actually gain two England players in our group. It’ll be interesting to see how they go about that, because there’s going to be certain players who don’t want to move.”

Certainly the need for a balanced competition will need to be balanced carefully by the ECB with sustaining the fan loyalty which has built up over the last few weeks.

It is going to be an interesting 12 months!

Yesterday’s KSL Finals Day was really the story of four captains.

Captain One: Georgia Elwiss, the Loughborough Lightning leader. For some KSL teams – Southern Vipers, Western Storm – their choice of captain was obvious; but for Lightning, it was coach Salliann Briggs who decided on Elwiss, after sitting down with a number of her players to talk it through. And who can argue it was the wrong choice? Briggs knows her players inside out; and Elwiss has the intelligence required of an excellent captain.

But she is also one of the least experienced captains in the competition – and inexperience, in a pressure situation, can find you out. There was one odd decision in particular that stood out: with Storm chasing 125, Elwiss chose to open the bowling with seamer Beth Langston, who conceded just 1 run off her first 2 overs – and then never came back on, even when Storm appeared to be cruising to their target.

“My gut instinct was to keep changing the bowlers around,” Elwiss said by way of explanation after the semi-final. It’s probably not the best maxim to live by. By contrast, Vipers bowled Arran Brindle for four overs straight in the final simply because she was clearly making life difficult for the batsmen.

Captain Two: England’s own Heather Knight. It was, of course, her fifty which guided Storm’s chase in the semi-final; and credit to her for that. But equally, after Storm had lost Stafanie Taylor halfway through their innings in the final, it was probably her responsibility to hang around and see them to a good total. She failed to do that, pulling the ball straight to Katie George at deep backward square leg in the 15th over, and you could tell from the way she slammed her bat as she walked off that she was furious with herself.

Then, after Vipers lost Edwards and Bates, Knight had the opportunity to turn the screw on her opponents as they slowly edged towards their target. With 3 overs to go, they still needed 20 runs, and they also needed their captain to keep her cool. But on the second ball of Anya Shrubsole’s over Knight picked up the ball and, without hope of achieving very much, shied at the stumps, earning Sara McGlashan and Lydia Greenway an overthrow. It was the mark of a captain who seemed to be out of options, and wasn’t quite sure what to do.

Shrubsole’s over went for 14 runs and Vipers surged to victory.

Vipers lift the trophy. Photo credit: Ruth Conchie

Captain Three: Charlotte Edwards – a legend if ever there was one; a player who captained England over 200 times, more than anyone else is ever likely to; a player who is used to captaining on the big stage. Edwards downplayed her own role in the post-match press conference – “This team runs itself; I just pull a few strings”, she said – but she also, tellingly, stressed that “I’ve really sensed the team behind me [during the tournament]”. Only the best captains inspire that kind of loyalty.

Edwards’ knowledge and experience mattered twice-over in yesterday’s final. Firstly, she made the decision to bring Arran Brindle into the attack in the 9th over, and bowl her for four overs straight – a spell in which she conceded just 15 runs, and removed both Stafanie Taylor and Knight from the reckoning. It turned things in the Vipers favour. Another captain might have hesitated to bowl Brindle; might have turned elsewhere. Edwards – good friends with her for so many years now – knew exactly what she was capable of.

And then, of course, there was her 24 off 18 balls to lay the foundations for Vipers’ successful run chase. While Edwards hasn’t shone with the bat during Super League, it showed what she so often displayed for England – that on the days when it really matters, she will come through. “I kept backing myself,” she said, after raising the trophy aloft. “I really enjoyed today. This is what I miss playing in and I love these sort of occasions.”

It’s not that Edwards was seeking revenge – she has said repeatedly that she is not bitter about Mark Robinson’s decision – but if she was, winning the inaugural KSL wouldn’t be a bad way to show Robinson and everyone else that she has damn well still got it. Just in case we ever doubted it.

The Victorious Captain. Photo Credit: Ruth Conchie

But I said four captains – and no, I didn’t lose count! Because Vipers didn’t just have one captain out there on the field yesterday, they had two.

Suzie Bates was instrumental in Vipers’ path to the final, both with the bat – with scores of 25, 15, 45*, 57 and 38 – and in the way she so calmly stepped into Edwards’ shoes halfway through the first game, even when Vipers had just seen their captain limping off the pitch with a likely concussion. Even since she returned to resume the captain’s mantle in the third game, we’ve seen the unfamiliar sight of Edwards – not the most collaborative of captains towards the end of her England reign – being instructed where to field not by a bowler, but by the current New Zealand skipper.

“When you’ve got experience around you,” Edwards said, paying tribute to Bates after the final concluded, “that’s what really helps.” Bates might have been just pipped by Stafanie Taylor for Player of the Tournament, but it was a close run thing. Vipers will surely be hoping that she’ll be back in orange for next year’s Super League.

Both this morning’s semi-final and this afternoon’s final followed a similar pattern – the targets set (124 in the semi-final and 140 in the final) looked slightly light, as the chasing side got off to a strong start; but wickets offered a glimmer of hope for the defending team… only to see that hope fall away at the end.

The semi-final was maybe a little scrappy as nervous players batted with perhaps slightly less positivity than we might have expected – for the Lightning, only Ellyse Perry, and Thea Brookes coming in right at the end, posted strike-rates in excess of 100.

In reply, the Storm appeared to be cruising, but perhaps it was all looking a little too easy, as losses of concentration saw a mini-collapse with 3 wickets falling in 9 balls. With 4 balls left, Georgia Hennessy and Sophie Luff were both on 0 from 0 balls with the scores level. Hope. But thankfully for the Storm, Hennessy had the one shot in her, and kept her head to drive them into the final with a 4 through midwicket.

The final began quietly for the Storm – just 2 runs apiece from the first 2 overs, as Stafanie Taylor (later to be named Player of the Tournament) played it cool before looking to accelerate later on. Such a tactic, however, only works if you are still there to accelerate later on, and once the Storm lost Taylor the run rate began to slow and the momentum never really came, at least partly down to Arran Brindle bowling her 4 overs straight for just 15 runs.

Nevertheless, the Storm’s total of 140 was a deal more than had won the earlier game, so there was hope there, even as Charlotte Edwards and Suzie Bates reached 78 without loss. The Storm needed wickets badly and they got them, with Edwards and Bates falling in quick succession. Again, hope. But with Sara McGlashan and Lydia Greenway coming to the crease together, with over 400 international caps between them, the experience was there in spades to guide the Vipers home.

Afterwards Charlotte Edwards reflected on a summer that began in the most difficult circumstances with the loss of the England captaincy, but has ended with her lifting the Super League trophy:

“I’ve had to deal with quite a lot this summer but the girls have backed me 110%. You hope you get to Finals Day and then put in a performance like that. I think it’s been brilliant to be part of this group for the last 3 or 4 months and watch them grow and develop as players and people has been really special. I’m sure we’ll enjoy tonight celebrating what was a brilliant win.”