Many commentators have described the north-west regional team – whether they have been known as Lancashire Thunder, Thunder or Manchester Originals – as the perennial underachievers of the regional era that began in 2016 with the launch of the Super League.
The match against Diamonds where Thunder made just 90 was supposedly from the regional era, yet almost all of that day’s eleven hailed from Lancashire, even with most of that year’s home matches being played at grounds in Cheshire.
The ironic thing is that, with the team free to call themselves Lancashire this year, and with the regional era supposedly consigned to history, last Monday’s win in the final of the Vitality County Cup owed a great debt to the north-west region as a whole.
Of the eleven Lancashire players in the final, four are products of Cheshire’s county system: Sophie Ecclestone, Sophie Morris, Tilly Kesteven and Seren Smale. Grace Potts has played in the Cheshire Women’s League, while a sixth member of the team, Emma Lamb, has played a great deal of cricket in the Cheshire men’s leagues.
Morris is perhaps the breakthrough player of the year at Old Trafford, while Kesteven chose the perfect moment to make her first significant score of her professional career, making 77 from 60 deliveries in the final.
Of the Lancashire squad not involved in the final, Hannah Jones, Eve Jones, Danielle Collins and Olivia Bell are all no strangers to anyone who has followed women’s club cricket in Cheshire in recent years.
From a personal point of view, the question is, how much can I celebrate Lancashire Women’s newfound success? I was born and bred ten miles from Old Trafford and was introduced to supporting the Red Rose men’s team by my father at an early age. The fact that I’ve always lived ‘south of the river’ in Cheshire is not really an issue here, with Cheshire forever destined to be a minor county in the men’s game.
I was, however, heavily involved in the administration of the Cheshire women’s team between 2007 and 2013. In these heady times, Cheshire and Lancashire were actually rivals, indeed Cheshire won both of their 2009 matches against Lancashire by a significant margin. In 2011, Lancashire were back on the rise, but still only beat Cheshire by one run, and there was another closely fought match between the counties in 2012.
So, after all those years of seeing Lancashire as a deadly rival, can I now reconcile myself to supporting the county’s women’s team and celebrating their successes? I think I’ve decided that the answer is most definitely Yes. The number of players in the team with Cheshire connections makes my decision much easier for sure. Many observers have voiced the opinion that Cheshire still does women’s club cricket much better than Lancashire, and I have no doubt that the strength of the club game in Cheshire will continue to provide Lancashire with a steady supply of talented players for many years to come.
One also has to accept the fact that the women’s cricket scene continues to evolve rapidly. Lancashire are destined to be a Tier 1 county in perpetuity, while current indications are that Cheshire, and all of the other traditional ‘minor’ counties, cannot aspire to anything other than Tier 3. (Although it will be interesting to see if Tier 2 really does operate with just six teams once Tier 1 has expanded to 12 counties in 2029.)
While the smaller counties may no longer be able to aspire to reach the highest level, it must be considered that no one ever suggests that the Cheshire men’s team is not a viable proposition simply because it can’t be promoted to the main County Championship. Likewise, few cricket followers in the county see any issue at all with supporting both the Cheshire and Lancashire men’s teams.
In summary, the new era of county women’s cricket is something we have to accept as a necessary evil, so I see no conflict between celebrating what Lancashire Women have achieved, while also wishing the newly relaunched Cheshire Women every success.
Our first experience of the new Women’s County Cup takes place on a blustery, bright day in Northampton and concludes with something of an upset, as hosts Northamptonshire beat Worcestershire by 5 wickets.
We have an inauspicious start to the day when we arrive at the Northamptonshire County Ground 2 hours before play, to find the gates locked and the fixture board outside the ground merrily suggesting that this match was merely a figment of our imagination.
It turns out that we’re at the wrong gate. Once we find the right entrance, things improve: we are able to easily park at the ground, find the press box open, listen to the PA warming-up, and go to watch Chloe Hill batting ferociously in the nets. The only other person inside Wantage Road at this point is a particularly loyal Northants member in a tartan cap, tucked away at the top of the Turner Stand eating his sandwiches.
This is cricket’s first all-inclusive, all-levels knockout competition, involving 37 teams from across all 3 of the new “tiers” – a brave new world for player, spectator and journalist alike. Syd and I have perhaps got a bit complacent of late, having got used to watching players who we know well, with a live scorecard which always has the correct information, and a stream which at the very least allows you to watch all the wickets back.
But this? This is right back to the Golden Days of the Women’s County Championship, of scrambling for binoculars to see who just fielded the ball, of turning to each other to ask: “I missed that – did you see it?”
I also do something I haven’t done in years: count the number of spectators. I reckon 130-odd – presumably, that’s what happens if no one knows that a match is actually happening.
Worcestershire certainly win the “most confusing team for scorers” award, with 2 Davies’s (Gwen and Poppy) and 1 Davis (Ruby), as well as a Beech (Sophie) and a Beach (Jess). We enjoy a delightful, unofficial running commentary from two of the Northants old-handers (“Clare Boycott?” “No relation”, etc, etc), as Worcestershire unhelpfully collapse to 11 for 3 within the opening 3 overs. This is the team who made the early running in Tier 2 by beating Yorkshire on the opening weekend of the season, so it’s something of a surprise to see them struggling.
Seamer Bethan Robinson is zippy and accurate, clean bowling Bryony Gillgrass second ball before returning at the death to do the same thing to Phoebe Brett with a perfect yorker. There’s a smart piece of fielding from Abby Butcher on the deep backward square leg boundary, which not only saves four but results in the run-out of Poppy Davies, before off-spinner Lenny Sims tempts a leading edge from Hill up to mid-off and the Worcestershire batting effort gradually fizzles out.
Northants are left chasing just 97; and the county’s proactive approach to recruitment over the winter ultimately pays off, as former Hertfordshire duo Gemma Marriott (24) and Amelia Kemp (23) lay the foundations with some well-placed boundaries for an easy win.
Afterwards, I go pitch side and manage to speak to the winning skipper, Marriott, who is delighted with both the result and the entire concept of the County Cup.
“It’s a great idea,” Marriott says. “It gives exposure to so many more teams to play against different levels. We know next week we’ve got Shropshire, so it’ll be interesting to see what a Tier 3 team is like now, and then if we win that, we know we’re going to get a Tier 1 team to play against which, if we get there, is going to be a great experience.”
She admits, though, that it is a little strange to not actually know where they will be playing in just 5 days time. “The Steelbacks will play Shropshire in the next round. Please check the website for details of the fixture,” says the ground announcer, helpfully, as we depart.
Welcome to the era of the Women’s County Cup, where uncertainty and opportunity sit hand in hand.
After all the kerfuffle of last year’s domestic restructure, we’re about to find out what it is all going to look like in practice. There has been a reasonable amount of player movement in the off-season (Durham, after all, had to build an entire team from scratch!) so for some teams, it will also be a chance to see how these new squads are hanging together… or not, as the case may be.
Our Big Plan here at CRICKETher Towers is to try to attend at least one home game of each of the eight Tier 1 counties this season, partly to try to get a genuine sense of how well teams are being supported behind the scenes. So watch out for a more even geographical spread of match reports than usual!
In the meantime, here are some predictions for the season (full squads at the bottom of the page):
Who’s going to win the One-Day Cup?
Raf: Counties were told by the ECB that they had to offer contracts to a minimum of 15 players. The deep pockets at Surrey decided that wasn’t good enough and have offered out 17 full contracts – that’s in addition to the 4 contracted England players in their squad, who as we now know will be available for the first 6 rounds of the One-Day Cup. There could be a lot of thumb-twiddling going on, but it’s also hard to look past such a well-stocked team (which is almost identical to last year’s Stars squad) for silverware.
Syd: Don’t ask me… ask the data! I carved-up the impact stats (full data here and here) from the regional era and added up the scores for the best 11 players in each squad.
That brought a clear winner to the surface: The Blaze. With their England players likely to be available for the key fixtures at the start of the season, I’m backing them to build up a sufficient head of steam to power them through the group stages. There will still be the knockouts to come in September of course, but assuming the Bryces are not off to the World Cup (which unfortunately looks unlikely at the time of writing) I think they can still do it.
Who’s going to win the T20 Blast?
Syd: The data above shows the squads with their England players included, but of course they aren’t going to be available for a chunk of the season, which particularly affects the Blast. So I took the England players out and re-ran the numbers:
This paints a very different picture, with Surrey and serial-underperformers Lancashire at the front; so I’m backing Surrey’s power-batting lineup, led by Bryony Smith, to knock the Blast out of the park.
Raf: The Blaze are the reigning champions [Ed: are you still reigning champions when the competition changes its name?] and I can see them pulling it off again this year. Similarly to Surrey, they have the same core squad as 2024 – and this time they will have both Bryces available for the whole season. The only question is whether the trophy will be emblazoned (gettit??!) with the name “Blaze”, or whether Notts might put their foot down at that point!
Who will get the wooden spoon?
Raf: Rumour has it that negotiations were a bit tricky behind the scenes at Central Sparks / Warwickshire last year, with the upshot that the squad they’ve ended up with isn’t necessarily the one they thought they would get. That’s always a difficult dynamic to negotiate – players may feel aggrieved or anxious to prove themselves – so while they’ve got some brilliantly talented young players (I’m excited to see what Dav Perrin does this season), I think they might struggle overall.
Syd: The numbers don’t look good for Warwickshire, but they look a lot worse for Somerset especially without their England players. A lot depends though on what Charlotte Edwards decides to do with a certain Heather Knight – I think she’s likely to continue playing ODIs, but if she gets dropped from the T20 format she’ll play a lot more domestic cricket and could single-handedly haul Somerset to something like respectability.
Who’s our one to watch?
Raf: I’m intrigued to see how Rhianna Southby gets on for Hampshire. We got a sneaky peek at her in their warm-up against Surrey at the Utilita Bowl last week (she hit a run-a-ball 42) and her batting looks to have come on leaps and bounds over the winter. Her keeping has always been top-notch; it’s been her batting which has kept her out of contention as a possible Amy Jones successor – could this be the season where she defies those expectations?
Syd: The wicket-keeping succession battle is certainly an interesting one, and I’ll be keeping a close watch on two of the other contenders – Seren Smale and Bess Heath. Heath’s move to Durham is a sensible one, ensuring she is their first-choice with the gloves for the first time in her professional career, having played second-fiddle (second-glove?) to Lauren Winfield-Hill at Diamonds previously. Smale, though, still has that problem with Ellie Threlkeld playing first-glove at Lancashire, so will really need to kick on with the bat to nudge the eyes of England’s soon-to-be-appointed new selector.
Who’s our golden oldie?
Raf: Hilariously, Sophie Luff was already considered a “golden oldie” by Syd last time we wrote one of these previews in 2021. To be fair, she does seem to have been a mainstay of women’s domestic cricket for eons (despite only being 31), and has been the face of most of the “revolutions” we’ve seen in the past decade (the KSL, regionals, The Hundred… phew!) Even after the ECB tried to abolish county cricket via the back door in 2019, Luff continued to spearhead Somerset, so it seems only fitting that she now leads them into the professional era.
Syd: Let’s go back all the way to 2010 – Berkshire are playing in the final of the T20 Cup against mighty Yorkshire. The top scorer for Yorkshire is one Dani Hazell (you might have heard of her) but Yorkshire can’t overhaul Berkshire’s 1st innings total of 173, of which 61 (off 46 balls) were scored by an exciting young player called “Alice” Macleod. Arguably, Lissy (she’s a mononym these days, like Elvis with a cricket bat!) didn’t quite fulfill her potential. She never played for England, but she went on to win the KSL with two different teams, and when Sunrisers won the RHF Trophy last season, she was a big part of that too. Now in her 30s, she’ll be wearing an Essex shirt this season, and playing a valuable role there as the “senior pro” as well as skippering the side if / when Grace Scrivens gets her England call-up.
Who’ll be the overall MVP?
Syd: Possibly my most left-field cricket take (yes… even more left-field than that Grace Scrivens one!) is that Katie George could still end up with 50 England caps… but as a batter rather than a bowler! I agree with Raf that Warwickshire are likely to struggle this season, but if they don’t then George will have been a big part of why they didn’t. She has been much more in control of her bowling in the last couple of years, both in terms of consistency and looking less like a lower-back injury waiting to happen; and her batting is starting to develop from “late-middle-order” to “proper middle-order”. If she can fulfil that promise, it will make her a very valuable asset indeed as she enters her peak years between 26 and 30.
Raf: From a marketing perspective, you’d have to say Ellyse Perry! As the most high-profile signing ever in the history of women’s county cricket, she’s certainly going to get the punters flocking to the Utilita during July, which is why Hampshire are (we assume) paying her the big bucks…
And what about Tier 2?
Raf: Well, it’s going to be quite embarrassing for Yorkshire if they don’t manage to finish on top, given that they are meant to be joining Tier 1 in a year’s time! They are also the only Tier 2 county who are actually handing out paid contracts to their players this year (thanks to the, ahem, largesse of Colin Graves).
Syd: Tier 2 is going to be… interesting. Which, as the apocryphal proverb about “interesting times” implies, isn’t always a good thing. Yorkshire aside, the standards are not going to be anywhere near professional, because these aren’t professional cricket teams. That doesn’t mean it can’t be competitive and exciting, and huge for the players involved; but I worry that fans that come to watch Tier 2 expecting the kind of women’s cricket they’ve seen on TV at the WPL or the World Cup are going to experience a reality-check that could leave them with a bitter aftertaste on the way home.
Raf: One thing which is still very much TBC is how the dynamic will work between Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties. Will “benched” Tier 1 players be permitted by their counties to go out on loan? Even if they are, will Tier 2 counties get parochial and promote their own players ahead of loaned-pros? Hopefully the counties can find a way to work together to present the best face of the women’s game to “new” spectators lending their support from men’s teams.
“My daughter Lola has thrived under Darren’s coaching, had fantastic opportunities and made fantastic friends. We are so glad she found Darren and Twenty20 Community Cricket.” Louise, mum of Lola
Twenty20 Community Cricket are launching a brand-new coaching programme for girls, specifically designed to plug the gap in the development pathway for those curious about transitioning from soft to hardball cricket. The programme comes hot on the heels of MD and Founder Darren Talbot winning the Outstanding Contribution to Coaching award at the recent Surrey Cricket Foundation Cricket Collective event at the Kia Oval.
It is a course Darren dreamt up after much time spent in and around the girls’ cricket coaching environment, during which he noticed how female players are underserved in comparison with their male counterparts.
“Boys typically play cricket from a young age,” explains Talbot, “and come into a club environment where there is a long-standing progression pathway through which they can travel. In many cases for girls, those pathways are still being constructed, and though it is fantastic that the quantity of females coming in through the likes of the All Stars programme is so high, many drop off when faced with the proposition of hardball training.”
The Twenty20 Community Cricket “Transitioning to Hardball” programme is designed to entice these very players to stay in cricket, allowing them to make an informed choice in an environment tailored towards their needs. It takes place each Friday evening at RGS school in Guildford, running until December 13 and followed up with matches across the summer over and above club games, which take priority.
It is a logical extension of the girls’ development programmes that Twenty20 Community Cricket have delivered so successfully over recent years, as acknowledged at the aforementioned Surrey Cricket Foundation awards event. The Outstanding Contribution to Coaching award recognises those who have gone above and beyond in the county of Surrey, in the name of expanding reach and opportunity for people to play this great game of ours.
“I am very proud of the work we’ve undertaken to drive girls’ participation,” explains Darren. “Whilst the award is recognition for all of the hard work put in by the team, it is important that we recognise that there is more to do to truly level the playing field.”
The premise of Twenty20 Community Cricket is to bring quality cricket coaching to state school educated children, at a time when such provision has dwindled beyond recognition. The programme has now expanded to include the participation of over 50 girls across the 11-18 age range. Success has come not just in strength of numbers though; whilst several have gone on to play at county age group level and in adult cricket, Darren and his team also manage the MCC Foundation Guildford Hub, for which the girls won the national tournament at Lords in both 2023 and 2024.
More can be heard from Darren in a forthcoming exclusive interview on the Community Cricket Podcast from Tuesday 1 October: https://pod.link/CommunityCricketPodcast
Imagine you ran a small restaurant business and planned to expand. You might have a vision to have twenty or fifty restaurants across the UK in 5 years and a strategy for how to achieve your goal. But you’d also recognise that things won’t always go as planned and consequently you’d need to review progress and revise along the way.
Two factors: the public’s appetite for your product, and your ability to maintain standards as your business grows, will primarily determine how things turn out – hopefully better, possibly worse.
However, provided you’ve not expanded ahead of demand and you’ve maintained the quality (to keep existing customers happy), the end state will be a viable business. Conversely, if supply exceeds demand or if quality is compromised by being spread too thin then you risk the whole chain going bust, taking with it any viable sites and any loyal customer base.
In this example, for the entrepreneur to ordain exactly how many restaurants they’ll have in 2 years and where they’ll be – based on speculative future demand and requiring expansion beyond their hitherto-proven ability to maintain quality – would clearly be madness.
The ECB has mandated that there will be eight Tier 1 counties in 2025. Each will employ 15 full-time professionals. There will be 9 Tier 1 counties in 2026 and 10 in 2027. Can you see the problem?
In fact, the only thing which could make this scenario worse would be not to know (or to deliberately obfuscate) the current state of your business.
In my example, the aspiring restaurant owner will know how successful their business is. Beyond overall sales and profit figures, they will also understand how loyal their customers are, the impact and effectiveness of promotions, pricing flex points, etc.
Unfortunately, women’s cricket has very little equivalent data – and the ECB has prioritised positive optics and narratives over every opportunity to collect it. Marketing spin prevails to the exclusion of anything which challenges their messaging, notwithstanding that to plan effectively for growth obviously requires an honest and objective assessment regarding the current popularity of the women’s game.
Attendance at international matches? There were good crowds at many of the international matches, particularly at those venues with a tradition of strong support for women’s cricket. But, let’s be honest, ticket prices were much lower than for a Blast match (with thousands of free tickets also given away). The result may have been a great atmosphere and good optics – but the ECB has no idea as to what value these spectators place on attending these games.
Viewing figures? The ECB and Sky were eager to publicise record viewing figures for last year’s WAshes, but similar press releases haven’t been forthcoming for this year’s Pakistan and New Zealand series and it’s reasonable to assume they did less well.
Broadcast rights? Historically, the broadcasters haven’t had to pay for women’s cricket separately. This is beginning to change and ICC and several boards plan to run separate auctions for men’s and women’s cricket going forward. Having to pay for something which was previously ‘free’ (or almost free) will force broadcasters to put a price on the product – and these figures won’t be determined by good intentions but by a hard-nosed assessment of how much a broadcaster’s advertisers and subscribers will pay. Looking for positives, Viacom paid $112m for 5 years of the WIPL (although any read-across from the Indian market might be limited?) whilst, less encouragingly, FIFA hoped to get over $300m for the recent Women’s World Cup but in the end narrowly avoided broadcast blackouts when it settled for a figure around $50m.
The Hundred? This is the ECB’s principal platform for promoting women’s cricket. Virtually every game this year seemed to be accompanied by announcements for new record attendances at a women’s game. But viewing figures for the Hundred were down across both men’s and women’s games (except for the men’s final) – a dramatic 41% for the women’s matches on Sky (and 2% overall for the women’s games shown by the BBC but with the women’s final down 20%). A widely-touted explanation was the lure of the Olympics, but the Olympics were on throughout the day and evening and so this doesn’t explain the relatively-sharper decline in viewers for the women’s matches. Moreover, if this argument is true, it shows a worrying lack of loyalty amongst cricket spectators when presented with other options.
And, how accurately does the number of people in the ground halfway through the women’s game reflect an interest in the women’s game which could be monetised? A cynic might posit that you wouldn’t use a similar metric to determine the popularity of a men’s game. Surely a true fan wants to see every ball?
So, whilst there were unquestionably good numbers from the first ball of the women’s game at many grounds this year, many spectators arrived later. Why was this?
Were they genuine fans of women’s cricket unable to make the start time?
Were these people who enjoyed watching some of the women’s game and appreciated the skills on display, but watching the men’s game was the primary reason for attending?
Compared to The Blast many fans have to travel further to Hundred host grounds and a single match (completed in under three hours) might be too short to justify the journey, whilst a double-header constitutes a ‘good day out’?
Some might have no interest in the women’s game, other than as a backdrop to eating, drinking or meeting friends? Or they wanted to ensure they got to the ground in good time?
I obviously have no idea what the respective percentage for each category is, but more importantly nor does the ECB – nor seemingly does it want to. Because if they did, it would be easy to design a series of matchday scheduling / pricing permutations [combined with spectator surveys] to better establish “Where We Are Today” in terms of the fanbase for women’s cricket, their loyalty and their willingness to pay. The downside is that establishing these data points could be expensive, could result in some negative optics and would probably be opposed by both Sky and the host clubs who risk losing viewers and footfall respectively.
Some of the considerations could be:
Ticket prices for Hundred matches during the Commonwealth Games weren’t reduced – even though spectators only got to watch a men’s game. This created a cognitive anchor that the women’s game is a ‘free’ bonus.
Hundred tickets could be sold providing access to either both games or just the second game. (Obviously, a stadium couldn’t be cleared of people who only wanted to watch the first match.) This would thus allow a separate value to be assigned to the first match.
Grounds could host 2 men’s games or 2 women’s games (rather than the current double headers).
The women’s game could be played second more often. (Although past evidence suggests this impacts attendance and viewing figures especially for weekday games; reducing ticket revenue and impacting on-site food and drink sales, in addition to not looking good.)
Whilst these different permutations still wouldn’t generate a comprehensive data set, it would be far better than what we have today. And it would be real-life data, not PR nor the projections of a marketing consultancy, with no consequences for whether they’re right or wrong as to the popularity of the women’s game and the value which viewers and spectators assign to it.
Now, there’s talk of hosting double headers for the T20 Blast next year. (NB Whilst it would be possible to align the home teams, the women’s opposition would often be a different team.) Why do this? This would simply replicate the issues seen in The Hundred. At some stage, the women’s game needs to become financially sustainable – and core to this is growing a loyal fan base which is attractive to sponsors, advertisers and broadcasters. This is a chance for everyone who complains how the women’s game is currently marketed to come forward with their proposals. Women’s double headers? Weekend festivals (4 games over a weekend)? Selling the broadcast rights to a different company with a compelling vision for women’s sport? Focussing on the digital aspects and engaging with younger, new customers in a different way?
To end, let’s return to our example of the ambitious restauranteur.
It’s good to have dreams. And to aim to be better and bigger.
But it’s stupid to pre-ordain outcomes. Be flexible. Be good at what you do. Leave customers wanting more. Never lose control of quality control. Understand what differentiates you from your competitors. Don’t just copy another chain which offers a similar product. And (eventually) revenue must always exceed costs.
If you do all those things, the outcome will be the best it can be. A sustainable product with customers who love it.
CRICKETher 