Local girl, Slough-born Daisy Gardner has been bowling for Berkshire for 10 years now, having made her début as a 15-year-old in 2005. In that time she has become the mainstay of their pace attack, taking 62 County Championship wickets at an average of 31 – figures which actually understate her importance to the team these days, as the opposition often look to just “see her off” knowing that there are easier overs to come.

With her petite build Gardner isn’t your classic fast bowler, but she uses her stature to her advantage, delivering a piercing ball on a very flat trajectory that comes on surprisingly quickly. Now aged 25, and having never really been anywhere near the England setup, Gardner’s chances of ever playing international cricket are pretty-much zero; but she is definitely still one of the first players anyone should be looking to include in their Super League team.

However, there’s a problem.

As a first step towards a professional domestic setup, Super League intends to impose training requirements upon the players – 3 times a week, week-in-week-out. And it is true that this is needed – English domestic cricketers train a lot less than their Australian counterparts, and this might be starting to show in the results, as Australia sit-pretty at the top of the rankings in all 3 formats… albeit apparently self-appointed in Tests!

But players like Daisy Gardner – the County Pros of the women’s game – have always been amateurs, which means they need day jobs to pay the rent. They can’t just turn up to training “as and when”… and they sure can’t quit their jobs for a few hundred pounds in Super League match fees.

Of course there is an argument that: “If they really wanted to play, they could!” But in the real world, let’s face it they can’t, won’t and (to be honest) shouldn’t have to quit their jobs.

And yes, it creates a moral hazard to excuse them from training requirements. Younger players will ask why X plays when she doesn’t train; and then expect the same freedom not to train as they get older. It happens now in county cricket and it is a culture which we absolutely don’t want to carry over to the Super League.

But if the Super League right now really is going to be (as Clare Connor puts it) “the best verses the best”, then it needs its Daisy Gardners, probably more than its Daisy Gardners need it… and we need to find a way to accommodate that.

The Women’s Cricket Super League is a massive step in the right direction by the ECB and we are really excited by it. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t potential pitfalls and a big one is the player selection process.

There are basically 3 “pools” of players: England; overseas and The Rest.

The ECB have already said that they will allocate the 18 contracted England players around the 6 teams – that’s 3 each, if my maths serves; whilst teams will “bid” for The Rest!

Even leaving aside the overseas stars for a moment, there are already two interesting issues here.

The first is so blindingly obvious that I’m sure it won’t actually be a problem: the England players have to be fully assigned before the bidding process for The Rest gets underway, or you risk a scenario where (for example) a franchise selects England Academy glove-butler Carla Rudd, only to find they also get allocated Sarah Taylor from the contracted pool. Result: Rudd spends a lot of time carrying drinks, which isn’t going to do much good for her development as Taylor’s long-term replacement behind the stumps for England!

The second is that the process really needs to be round-robin, like the “draft” systems in place for US sports like NFL and basketball – essentially the equivalent of the old playground line-up where captains take turns to choose.

Anything else, however well you try to manage it, essentially becomes a free-for-all where the Best of The Rest all head in just one direction, preordaining the champions whilst everyone else is left fighting it out not to come last; which might be fun if you’re part of That Team, but will ruin Super League both as a vigorous competition for the players and as an exciting spectacle for the fans.

(It is worth adding here too that a glammed-up, draft-style “bidding day” would be a huge media event by-and-of itself; and could be a great way to launch the competition perhaps?)

So far, the issues we’ve brought to light are all within the capacity of the ECB to solve; but it is regarding the overseas stars that things start to become a bit tricky.

Firstly, their identities won’t be known until quite late in the day, so we will have the Rudd-Taylor problem described above all over again.

Secondly, however carefully balanced the draft system, a couple of overseas signings could seriously unbalance things again very quickly. A team with Charlotte Edwards and Anya Shrubsole and Lydia Greenway would be one thing… a team with those three plus Ellyse Perry plus Dane van Niekerk? Everyone else might as well just go home now!

But this will be especially tricky to manage because the overseas stars (being “stars”) will have demands which will have to be managed: “I’m not playing with X because she sledged me at the World Cup!” “I’m not moving to Y because it’s too far away from my girlfriend!” etc. etc. (Both of these have happened in the past two years in the Women’s County Championship – and in both cases it resulted in the signing falling-through.)

So it won’t be easy for the ECB’s newly appointed Super League General Manager, Jo Kirk. But she is an experienced sports administrator who knows her cricket, so hopes are high and we wish her luck!

Last night, we were asked on Twitter:

Well…

Super League

The Women’s County Championship has provided sterling service over the past twenty years, despite being played and run on a shoestring by an (amazing) army of volunteers and demi-semi-professionals. However, it has significant problems, the most glaring of which is that the best players are spread far too thinly around the 18 teams that make up Divisions 1 & 2.

The ECB tried to address this via a “loan” system, which attempted to concentrate all the very best players in Division 1, but this has been only partially successful, often because amateur players won’t (or to be fair can’t) just up-and-move at the will of an ECB pen.

This is why we’ve been calling for years for a new* elite tier to be created between county and country – a semi-professional “Super League”, which would have fewer teams and create a more competitive environment  for the very best players.

And… amazingly… this is exactly what the ECB announced earlier this year.

Super League is going to make a huge difference – it is going to shake things up and ruffle some feathers; and I do genuinely feel for those who have strived so hard to make the county system work, and whose efforts are now to be superseded… but it is what we need, and it is what is happening.

Abolish The Academy

Okay… okay – this sounds crazy; but bear with me – I’m not talking about tomorrow, or even next year; but ultimately we want to create a situation where we can abolish the Academy.

(For those who don’t know, the Academy is the “Women’s Lions” – a Loughborough-based tier which sits below the full England team – a young squad of future England stars, who train and tour together.)

The problem with the Academy is that it is monolithic – one program, one set of coaches, one way of playing. Currently, it is the only pathway to the England team, and if you don’t fit in, you’re out!

If the Super League is successful, it will create six localised centres of elite excellence, which all become “Mini-Academies”. There will be competition among coaches and coaching methods, and if a player doesn’t fit in at “A” she can move to “B”, where they might have a different approach. Diamonds will be found in the rough; the most talented stars will shine through; and tomorrow’s England will reap the rewards.

YOU!

Finally… one more thing that can improve the domestic game – YOU – by coming to watch a county match! (There are several on tomorrow – see the calendar here!) Then write a blog post and we’ll retweet it; or write a match report and we’ll publish it.

The additional scrutiny alone will make a genuine difference. Yes, the players (and their parents) will occasionally have to feel the sting of criticism, some of them for the first time; but they will also feel more driven because they’ll know people are rooting for them; they’ll feel the adulation that little bit more intensely when they win; and ultimately they will be better England players for it.

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* Technically, we’ve actually had such a competition all along – the “Super 4s” – but nobody paid it much attention, and more recently it has evolved into little more than a private training camp.

Jess Jonassen

Jonassen was named Man of the Match for her knocks of 99 and 54, ahead of Ellyse Perry’s 6-for; and although Perry’s name will be “On The Board” and Jonassen’s won’t, having tantalisingly missed-out on her hundred, it was still the right call because Jonassen really was the difference between the two teams – her innings totalling 153 were 95% of the margin of Australia’s 161-run victory.

Shockers All Round

From an England perspective, there were shockers all round today. In the right conditions earlier in the Test, Brunt and Shrubsole had looked super-human; but this morning with a little bit of sunshine creeping through, they suddenly seemed toothless and England quickly went on the defensive – first moving the field back and then turning full-on negative – calling on the spinners, even though Australia were hardly scoring at a rate faster than at any other point in the match.

When it came to the time to bat and Heather Knight hit the first ball for four, England fans might have allowed themselves a moment of belief; but the overly defensive mindset soon came roaring back in the period before lunch. And actually this could have been fine if (like Alex Blackwell) they had scored at 2/ over and kept their wickets intact; but they didn’t, and ultimately there was probably never going to be a way back after going into lunch 2-down.

Ultimately, no one exactly covered themselves in glory. Knight, Taylor, Edwards and Winfield all failed to deliver. Georgia Elwiss made a very pretty 46 – but unfortunately it was still only 46 – nothing like enough to save the game for England.

England’s Batting Order

You have to ask again about the batting order! Not batting Edwards “up top” means you are more likely to lose an early wicket, which brings in Taylor far too early in the innings, and none-down has become two-down in less time than it takes to make a cup of tea.

I do understand the logic of batting Edwards in a position where she feels more comfortable… but if it just leads to everyone else being more uncomfortable, that probably isn’t a win overall; and so it has proved, twice in the space of 4 days.

Australia Weren’t That Good

Australia will obviously be getting all the plaudits in the mainstream press, but… whisper it… the most depressing thing is that throughout this match, they weren’t actually very good either.

The superstars Lanning and Perry both failed twice with the bat; Perry got 9 wickets in the match, but she wasn’t able to generate much pace with the ball and England largely got themselves out to her. (Overall Schutt bowled better, albeit with less reward.) And ultimately, no Southern Star made more than England’s top scorer (Elwiss, with her 46) except Jonassen, which just emphasises that she really was the difference.

England Aren’t That Bad

If Australia weren’t that good, that can only mean one thing: England were really, really bad, especially with the bat.

And yet they are not a bad team. They can bowl, as we’ve seen; and they can bat, which we haven’t seen here, but we have seen all season, away from the spotlight at county and for the Academy.

Perhaps it is the pressure of that television spotlight that is the key to understanding England’s performance? To mangle a line from Joey in Friends:

England aren’t a bad team… they just seem to play like one on television!

Attack Australia Out

I said yesterday that England needed to bowl Australia out for a lead south of 250, and that’s still doable – they’ve taken 4 wickets for 90 runs, including the big ones of Lanning and Perry – they now need to knock the rest over for another 60. This means: attack, attack, attack. And Laura Marsh needs to have a very quiet morning – throwing the ball to her would be the exact opposite of attacking – “detacking”, if you will. [Note to Ed: There must be a better word for this?]

If England can bowl Australia out for 150-or-so, they’ll be looking at a target of 250. The weather forecast is okay, so they’ll have a lot of overs in-hand; and 250 in (say) 60 overs sounds eminently chasable.

All they need to do then is…

Defy History

In the whole timeline of women’s Tests, going back to 1934, no one has ever successfully chased more than 198 in the last innings. So history is against England; but Charlotte Edwards has broken a lot of records in her career – if anyone can break one more today, it is her – but it is going to be A Big Ask™.

Defy The Odds

The bookies have priced England at 13/1 on average, with Australia odds-on as favourites. Can the bookies be proved wrong? Maybe… but I wouldn’t bet on it!!

Defy Themselves

England haven’t scored more than 250 in an innings (all formats) since January 2014; although obviously they’ve won several matches with smaller totals than that. Inauspiciously however, that match in 2014 was the 3rd ODI of the 2013/14 Women’s Ashes in Hobart. England lost by 4 wickets.

Alex Blackwell

The Australian vice-captain took some stick on Twitter for her slow scoring rate, which at 18.5 was well below England’s much criticised rates from yesterday. (England’s lowest was Lauren Winfield’s 25.0.)

But I think Blackwell was playing the game Australia needed her to play – digging in, and giving everyone else the opportunity to express themselves around her; and as long as they were scoring runs at a lively rate (as Jonassen, scorring at 72.5 was) that’s okay.

Laura Marsh v Katherine Brunt

With England needing to force the pace of the game, bowling Laura Marsh for a quarter of the day’s overs was perhaps an “interesting” strategy. She had great economy as you’d expect, but she was never going to take wickets unless they really went after her, and it became quite clear quite quickly that Australia simply weren’t going to do so.

Of course, the question is… who else? Perhaps what England needed to do was rotate a little more between their quicks to keep them all going? It was interesting that Nicole Bolton commented afterwards that Katherine Brunt’s spells were the most hostile bowling she’d ever faced in a competitive match… and yet Brunt only bowled 9 overs. To me, that feels like a missed opportunity.

The Editor’s View

Finally today, I leave with a Random Thought from The CRICKETher Editor:

Seriously… I couldn’t have put it better myself!

Worse Days

England have had worse days – indeed they’ve had worse days in the past year… just! (It was a day short of a year ago (August 13th 2014) when they were bowled out for 92 by India at Wormsley.) But if this wasn’t a new low, it still plumbed awfully close to those depths.

It wasn’t so much the score – 168 certainly isn’t a number which comes with embarrassment automatically attached. It was more the manner of the performance that was just so abject. Lauren Winfield got a very good ball; but that aside, the Australians weren’t especially good; it’s simply that England were, frankly, pretty bad.

Pressure

The key to England’s shocker was their inability to deal with pressure. And the pressure was certainly upon them quite soon after lunch, as Sarah Taylor fell 100 runs short of that elusive maiden Test century to leave the side reeling at 7/2.

That brought Edwards to the crease and she alone among England’s batsmen looked comfortable out there, because she has the experience and the temperament to deal with Test cricket, which all the rest of the top-order seem to lack once they actually get out into the middle.

(And you have to ask again why Edwards wasn’t opening? Especially given that she basically did open today… just with 2 wickets already down!)

After Edwards departed, the only other England player who made any real headway with the bat in terms of strike-rate was a bowler – top-scorer Katherine Brunt. Why? Because by the time she came in England were already stuffed, so there was no pressure – she could play with a freedom apparently beyond everyone else higher up the order, whose collective strike-rates averaged just 23. (Which is fine if you stay in for 50 overs… but somewhat less fine if it’s more like 50 balls.)

Brunt v Jonassen

I think it is safe to say these two won’t be going on a hot date any time soon – there was a definite “daggers-at-dawn” moment from Katherine Brunt yesterday, which Jess Jonassen laughed off at the time; but it was Brunt who had the last laugh first thing this morning, clearly taking much pleasure in depriving “JJ” of her début century; and again in the late afternoon, as she came down the track and dispatched the Aussie spinner over mid on to give England’s supporters at least something to cheer about in what was otherwise as depressing a day as I can remember.

Lightning Once… Lightning Twice

The result against India last summer could be written off by England fans at the time as a freak. But lightning now seems to be striking for a second time – it is almost as if someone up there doesn’t like us; and it isn’t much fun.

Bowl The Australians Out For Under 300

Having had their declaration plans thwarted by Charlotte Edwards pulling back the new ball field last night, Australia will be keen to wrestle back the initiative – push on past 300 in the first hour, then declare. For their part, England must be desperate to stop them – they want to be batting by midday for sure, but on their terms!

Find A Centurion

England can’t afford to concede anything much of a first-innings lead – lets face it, they aren’t going to get Lanning and Perry and Blackwell all out in single-figures again – so they need 300; and 300 is very difficult to get unless someone stands up and scores big runs.

The lesson of Jonassen’s innings yesterday is patience – a word which Sarah Taylor in particular needs tattooed in large, friendly letters on the inside of her brain. The England glove-butler has yet to score even a fifty in 7 Tests, let alone a hundred. Today would be a good day to change that.

Play Day 2 Test Cricket

There was some criticism yesterday on Twitter of the way the game was being played at 2-3 runs per over; but this isn’t a T20 and England would do well to remember that – this is Test cricket, not ice-dancing, and there are no extra points for style. England can’t win the Women’s Ashes today; but they can lose them if they throw their wickets away chasing runs that don’t need to be chased. It is only Day 2 – lets go out and play Day 2 Test cricket!