Heat skipper Jess Jonassen was one of three players to join Molly Strano in the 100-wicket club in WBBL this year, marking her out as one of the most consistent performers across the seasons. Bowling mostly towards the end of the powerplay and in the early middle overs, Jonassen took 21 wickets at the respectable economy rate of 6.5 to top the season’s bowling rankings. Despite a long career and a cabinet full of medals, including two WBBL titles, Jonassen has always slipped slightly below the headlines – she was Player of the Match in a Test better remembered for Anya Shrubsole’s 47-ball duck; and she took 3 wickets in the T20 World Cup final at the MCG, but the only spinner on the back pages the next morning was Molly Strano, dancing with Katy Perry. But maybe this is the year “Jess’tice” will finally be served?

Should Jonassen not add a third WBBL winners medal to her shelf, Alana King will have been a big part of the reason why. Having moved to the Scorchers this year after 6 slightly glass-half-empty seasons at Melbourne Stars, the 26-year-old has blossomed. Bowling mainly in the middle overs, she was one of a cluster of players taking 15/16 wickets in the group stages, but beat them all out with a superior economy rate to rank second on the list. It’s a textbook example of what having the courage to move clubs can do for your career, especially if you’ve been a long time in one place – working with different coaches in a new environment can be the spark that relights the fire!

King was one of 3 Scorchers bowlers to make the top 10, alongside Young Gun candidate Lilly Mills and Heather Graham, who will play her hundredth WBBL match in the final next weekend, and also quietly passed the hundred wicket mark this year – as did another Scorchers player, Marizanne Kapp, who was slightly down the wickets column this season, but did post the best Economy Rate for the 5th time in 7 WBBL seasons.

The top-ranked overseas player… albeit only ‘technically’ overseas these days, was Irish woman Kim Garth. (Having lived in Australia for several years, Garth will qualify as a domestic player from next season.) Watching Garth this season has been a rollercoaster ride – she bowled three consecutive maidens (with 3 wickets) against Sydney Sixers; but also got tonked for 21 in a single over by Rachel Priest and Naomi Stalenberg against the Hurricanes; while unplayable wicket balls were sandwiched between rank half-trackers and long-hops that looked like they belonged on a breakfast buffet. But you know what? That’s ok – it’s in the script for a “strike” bowler, and if she can continue to excel in that quite specific role, and stay injury-free (which is looking like it is going to be the current Aussie incumbent Tayla Vlaeminck’s problem), there may yet be further international honours waiting for Garth in green… just this time with a little gold mixed in.

Bowling Ranking = Wickets / Economy

The leading run-scorer of all time in WBBL – Beth Mooney – continued the form that saw her named Wisden’s Leading Woman Cricketer in the World last year, topping our batting rankings with 528 runs at a Strike Rate of 132, including her second WBBL century – 101* versus the Renegades. The real challenge is still to come, in Perth next weekend: Mooney was brought in to the Scorchers last season to do the one thing Meg Lanning had been unable to do in her two seasons out west – win them a title – but the difference is that Mooney has won WBBL finals before, and she’s certainly in the form to do it again.

Harmanpreet Kaur has often flattered to deceive in franchise cricket, and arguably for India too. She is obviously capable of brilliance – there may be Australian friends reading this, so I’d probably best not mention the greatest individual performance of all time – but the highs are too often followed by lengthy slumps of nothing scores. This WBBL has been different though, as she ranked second, with no hundreds but a boot-full of decent scores averaging 67. (She still doesn’t like running though – over a quarter of her 399 runs came in 6s!)

Elyse Villani at No. 3 had another pretty decent season – she’s actually 4th on the all-time run-scoring list, and also scored her maiden T20 hundred – on 96, with the Stars needing one to win, she hit a maximum off what proved to be the final ball of the group stages, to bring up the landmark. Villani’s international career is probably over – she’s in good form, but she’s 32, and… who are you going to drop from a top six of Healy, Mooney, Lanning, Gardner, Perry and McGrath? (Bearing in mind that McGrath had a decent series against India; Gardner is a critical part of the bowling strategy; and Perry is… Ellyse Perry!) But hopefully she’s still got a couple more seasons of domestic cricket left in her, and you could actually see her doing a Rachel Priest – using the freedom that not playing international cricket gives you to build a late career as a T20 franchise specialist – if that’s what she wanted.

Passing over Sophie Devine, because we all know what she can do, Georgia Redmayne continues to blossom at No. 5 – up 4 places from No. 9 on last year’s list. Redmayne’s chances of international honours this summer look better than Villani’s – she was in the squad for the India series after all – but unless there are injuries in that top 6, it’s difficult to see where she fits in; and as a keeper-batter she’s got the same problem as Amy Jones had for years shadowing Sarah Taylor, but doubled with both Mooney and Healy ahead of her.

Eve Jones was the highest ranked English player at No. 21. (And yes – I extended the list from the usual 20, just for her!) When Jones has hit her stride, she’s been very good value – see her 62 off 46 balls versus Heat – but the issue remains that she takes her time at the start of her innings, in this tournament not hitting at a Strike Rate of over 100 until she has faced an average of 18 balls. This mean that if she’s dismissed in single figures, which she has been 5 times thus far this season, she has usually chewed up a lot of balls in the process, and I think that’s going to be the key concern when Lisa Keightley and Heather Knight sit down to consider whether she makes their Ashes squad.

Batting Ranking = Runs * Strike Rate

There’s been a bit of talk over on Facebook (or should I say “Meta”?) about how many points you need to qualify for the knockout stages in WBBL.

15 seems to be the consensus, and it is a pretty good rule of thumb – historically no one with 15 points has yet failed to qualify; and 14 isn’t usually enough, though two teams (or rather, one team twice – Scorchers in 2015/16 and 2020/21) have qualified with 14 points.

That said, at the time of writing, it is still mathematically possible for the Hurricanes (currently 7th, on 7 points) to qualify outright on 13 points, without rained-off games or Net Run Rate, if they win their 3 remaining games and other results go their way.

The following sequence of results – WWWwwWWWWwWWwW – where “W” is a home win, and “w” is an away win (fixtures in date order) gives this final table:

Furthermore, 15 points isn’t a “hard” qualify either – it is mathematically possible to get as many as 20 points and still not qualify! How? Well… I’m glad you asked!

Here’s an example end-of-season table, with 5 teams level on 20 points – so one will fail to qualify on Net Run Rate.

(This is just an example – no shade on anyone – the teams are in alphabetical order!)

What’s happened?

The bottom two teams – Strikers and Thunder – have won the home matches between them, and lost every other game, so have one win each.

Stars have beaten Strikers and Thunder twice each, but lost every other game, so have four wins.

Everyone else has beaten Strikers, Thunder and Stars twice (so a “base” of six wins) and then has won all their home games versus each other, giving them an additional four wins, to take them all to 20 points.

Of course, this is unlikely – the odds on the exact scenario described above are 523,347,633,027,360,537,213,511,521 (523 septillion) to 1 against, though there are other scenarios which effectively produce the same outcome – e.g. everyone in the top 5 winning their away matches against each other – that alone halves the odds to… er… 261 septillion to 1 against!

But what you need to remember is that every situation is unlikely. The situation we end this season on will also have been 523 septillion to 1 against.

So to return to the Hurricanes for a moment, the chances of them qualifying on 13 points are currently in the range of about 250 thousand to 1 against… but whatever way the table ends, the chances of that were massively against that too… and yet it still happened.

It may be mind-blowing but that’s mathematics, and as Tom Lehrer once said… try as you may, you just can’t get away from mathematics!

By A Roving Reporter

In men’s cricket, success at U19 level is no guarantee of subsequent success at county, franchise or national level, yet under the current structure any female player who hasn’t secured a place in a regional squad by their early twenties (or even their late teens) will have little realistic prospect of subsequently playing at the highest level.

This is not to detract from the tremendous progress of recent years, whereby a cohort of professional players, fringe squad players and Regional Development Centre (RDC) Academy players enjoy unprecedented support, great coaching and plenty of high quality match practice. Nor is this to suggest that those players don’t deserve their success.

However, what’s also been created is a self-fulfilling cycle whereby future stars will be drawn from a pool whose membership is decided at a incredibly early stage in most player’s development; ruling out the late developers, the players whose skills weren’t spotted, those who prioritised their academic studies during their teens, individuals whose parents couldn’t afford the time or money to get their child to training, the players who took longer to understand their game or didn’t seize their early opportunities, the players who responded to their coach’s plea to play ‘bold cricket’ and failed, only to see their more cautious colleagues rewarded. (Every cricketer understands that numerous failures underpin the experience to know how and when to play risky shots. Would a new Tammy Beaumont or Danni Wyatt be supported through several seasons of modest results over less exciting, but dependable players?) 

What, too, are the prospects for what will become a rapidly-expanding group of talented RDC Academy players who find themselves unable to secure professional contracts in competition with the incumbent beneficiaries of early contracts (who may aspire to 5, or perhaps 10, year careers)? What of franchise players who enjoy brief success but then find themselves released?

For all these players their future is club cricket with little coaching, no backroom support and mixed ability training and matches. And even if they perform well, who in the professional set-up will pay attention to their stats or watch these games? How many of these players, who were willing to make 4 to 5 hour return trips for junior county or RDC Academy matches, will be prepared to do so for premier club cricket? How soon before these players lose their ambition or drift away from cricket totally?

This early abandonment of talent, the squandering of investment and the consequent narrowing of the population from which the top echelons will be drawn can only be bad for the women’s game.

However, it’s not difficult to imagine an alternative universe where players at a level beneath the regions receive the coaching and support to ensure that late-developing and latent talent has the maximum chance to be discovered and flourish; where being released from a franchise wouldn’t effectively constitute a career-ending moment; and which additionally would provide early-career coaching and leadership opportunities in line with the ECB’s goal to increase the representation of women in the cricket workforce, and to support more women to take on leadership roles. All this would be built on existing structures and wouldn’t require a large budget.

The answer is the ignored and unloved county game. Surviving in name only, what is gained by the same professional players and local RDC players (all of whose talents are already recognised) playing against each other for a few games in May under a different badge? Instead, imagine a vibrant county scene fought between squads comprising players who hadn’t ‘made it’ by their early twenties, players who’ve experienced but not pressed their case at regional level, the fringe RDC players and good players who perhaps can’t commit to full-time cricket for family or work reasons. At a stroke there’d be hundreds of extra players playing quality cricket. How many overlooked or late-developing stars could be unearthed; the female Matt Milnes or Jake Lintott? How many more comeback stories like Tash Farrant’s would this facilitate? And good cricketers who won’t ever be in the ‘top 150’ could once again aspire to play for their county. All these players would be ambassadors for the game and role models for young players at their local clubs (who are unlikely to know or play with a franchise player).

Regarding coaching, contracted players could pass on their skills whilst developing skills and gaining qualifications for careers beyond their professional playing days. New administrators could gain their first experience, budding umpires could hone their skills, and supporters in sections of the country where there’s no franchise women’s cricket could see high-quality local matches.

The format should be T20 with games held every other week throughout the season; played on Saturdays (so as not to harm the nascent Sunday club scene which is already suffering from the removal of many of the best players). And it needn’t be expensive – players and officials wouldn’t need paying (although travel expenses would be nice), a commitment to delivering coaching could be made a requirement of professional contracts, and many fine school grounds are available. Only players who haven’t played regional-level cricket in the current or previous seasons should be eligible, and extensive efforts should be made to embrace older players before they give up or resign themselves to easy stats in local leagues. Conference leagues would minimise travel, but it could culminate in a round of matches to determine a national champion.

Let’s make 2022 the year when women’s county cricket is resurrected and restructured, to provide the vital missing step between club and region.

Talented teenagers Alice Capsey and Grace Scrivens have been handed new regional contracts for 2022, with the ECB funding an additional contract at each of the 8 regions, plus Northern Diamonds and Thunder funding 3 further contracts themselves, to bring the total number of professional domestic players to 51.

This may go up to 52 once Fran Wilson’s exact situation is finalised, though we may equally see Charlie Dean leave her newly acquired regional contract almost immediately for an England gig.

There have also been a couple of high-profile moves, with Abbey Freeborn moving across the Midlands from Lightning to Sparks, and Marie Kelly going the other way to join Lightning. Up north, Phoebe Graham has also moved from Diamonds to Thunder.

Not entirely unexpectedly, nobody has lost their contract this year, with the additional fully funded contracts allowing regional coaches and directors to bring in new blood without having to have a difficult conversation with someone else.

The full list for 2022 is as below.

Sparks

• Emily Arlott
• Ami Campbell
• Gwenan Davies
• Abbey Freeborn
• Eve Jones
• Issy Wong

Stars

• Alice Capsey
• Aylish Cranstone
• Alice Davidson Richards
• Danielle Gregory
• Tash Farrant
• Bryony Smith

Diamonds

• Hollie Armitage
• Jenny Gunn
• Bess Heath
• Beth Langston
• Katie Levick
• Linsey Smith
• Sterre Kalis
• Rachel Slater

Lightning

• Kathryn Bryce
• Sarah Bryce
• Bethan Ellis
• Kirstie Gordon
• Lucy Higham
• Marie Kelly

Vipers

• Georgia Adams
• Lauren Bell
• Maia Bouchier
• Charlie Dean
• Tara Norris
• Paige Scholfield

Sunrisers

• Amara Carr
• Kelly Castle
• Naomi Dattani
• Jo Gardner
• Cordelia Griffith
• Grace Scrivens

Thunder

• Georgie Boyce
• Alex Hartley
• Laura Jackson
• Hannah Jones
• Emma Lamb
• Ellie Threlkeld
• Phoebe Graham

Storm

• Dani Gibson
• Alex Griffiths
• Georgia Hennessey
• Sophie Luff
• Fi Morris
• Nat Wraith

England middle order batter Fran Wilson has announced her retirement from international cricket.

Wilson, who turns 30 in November, earned 64 caps for England in an 11 year career, scoring 837 runs and taking 21 catches, including arguably the catch of the century to dismiss Hayley Matthews at Chelmsford back in June 2019.

Wilson began her career at Somerset, making her debut in 2006. She scored her first List A century in 2010, against a Berkshire team that included Heather Knight, Claire Taylor and Isa Guha, and went on to make her England debut in November of that year versus Sri Lanka. She made 6 further appearances that winter, but looked to have been frozen out of the England setup, before a move to Middlesex in 2015 led to Mark Robinson handing her a second chance, with an England “re-debut” in the summer of 2016 culminating in her being part of the team that won the World Cup at Lords in 2017.

Typically coming in at 6 or lower, she generally found herself playing the role of “insurance policy” in both T20s and ODIs, and never really had a chance to build a big innings, making just two 50s in her career, with a highest score of 85* against Pakistan in Kuala Lumpur in December 2019.

Her last England appearances were in New Zealand in winter 2021; and although she remained part of the England squad through the summer of 2021, her role was reduced to that of specialist sub fielder. She had to remain in what was essentially a “bubble” in all but name for the duration, with all the mental hardship that entails, but without the reward of actually playing.

Domestically, Wilson enjoyed success with Western Storm, winning the Kia Super League twice, in 2017 and 2019; before becoming part of the Sunrisers setup in the 2020 reorg, and she will continue to play domestic cricket in the RHF Trophy, Charlotte Edwards Cup, and The Hundred.