THE HUNDRED: SunRisers Leeds v Southern Brave – Fireworks Optional

Posted by Raf Nicholson

Earlier today, ECB CEO Richard Gould and MD of The Hundred Vikram Banerjee spoke to the media, displaying a staggering degree of denial about the problems which the total rebrand of The Hundred has generated.

Anyone who has followed this comp (and has eyes) understands there has been a drop-off in attendances. Anyone who has been on social media in the last few weeks will have witnessed the feeling of disillusionment many previous fans of The Hundred have felt in the face of brand new team names and shirt colours.

Gould, though, said he was “very, very happy with ticket sales” and mentioned seeing “loads of people” wearing MSG shirts out in Manchester earlier this week – shirts which the franchise are giving out for free, by the way. “I’ve seen a lot more positive engagement now that we’ve got this change of ownership,” Gould added. “Now that we’ve got engaged owners, engaged clubs, I think that’s rubbing off on the supporters.

When I asked about the disappointing decline in the percentage of fans who are turning up in time to watch the women’s match – crowd ratios between the women’s and the men’s games have dropped by about 3% – Banerjee basically didn’t engage with the question. Instead he pointed to an increase in broadcast viewership for the women’s matches and said that the competition has been “another really positive step forward for women’s cricket”.

In a way, it’s a shame we didn’t get to do this press conference after the Eliminator, which attracted an attendance of just 10,271 – the lowest in four years of the comp.

The public will draw their own conclusions; personally, I would have more respect if those at the top of the tree honestly engaged with what has gone wrong, given that this has clearly been (by many visible metrics) a disappointing edition of the Women’s Hundred.

(As usual, I’ve paid no attention whatsoever to the men’s, but I imagine many of the same issues apply.)

Anyway, onto today’s semi-final. It was always going to be difficult to live up to last year’s equivalent match, in which Northern Superchargers (remember them?) hit 214 runs and Davina Perrin whacked the innings of a lifetime. But arguably we got the Eliminator this competition deserved: Southern Brave put just 114 on the board, and SunRisers then almost (but not quite) made a mess of chasing it.

There were no fireworks before the women’s game (thankfully – we were all baking in the heat); and there were few fireworks to be found during the match either. Lizelle Lee dominated the strike in Brave’s powerplay, facing 20 balls to Maia Bouchier’s 5, in what was a very Lee innings: a lot of power, not quite so much brain, and she was eventually undone by a smart piece of bowling from Hannah Baker.

From there, Brave’s strike rate took a huge dip, only recovering right at the end as Charli Knott – who in many ways has been a fortuitous injury replacement for Brave, replacing an out-of-form Jemimah Rodrigues – hit 25 off 21.

The question is whether Lee’s rapid-fire runs with the bat make up for her slip-ups behind the stumps, which were pretty embarrassing today – of the 18 extras conceded by Brave, 8 were byes.

Brave have dug themselves out of several holes with the bat during this tournament by absolutely nailing it with the ball, and there were two windows of opportunity here to do similar. SunRisers quickly found themselves 13 for 2, with the tournament leading run-scorer Phoebe Litchfield one of those back in the dug-out after coming down the track to Issy Wong in a rare brain fade.

Then, with just 20 runs needed from the last 25 balls, there were a few nerves jangling when Wong found herself on a hat-trick, bowling Lauren Winfield-Hill with one that kept low and trapping Dani Gibson leg-before when she unnecessarily swiped at her first ball.

Even for Brave’s bowlers, though, defending such a low total proved a bridge too far, as Official Adopted Northerner Jess Jonassen and decent cameo from Deepti Sharma did the necessary.

Afterwards, Jonassen reflected that SunRisers had benefited from having a tougher route to qualification than Brave across the back-end of the competition:

“We essentially played four knockout games before we came to a genuine knockout match. So we knew that we were hardened under previous pressure, and we knew that we just needed to come out and try and play the same way that we had those other games and try hard not to do anything too different.”

For Brave, time to take stock and reflect on how they might tweak personnel next season to bolster their squad – recruiting another wicketkeeper might well be near the top of the list?

Hopefully, the conversations in their dressing room tonight are a bit more honest than the one Gould and Banerjee had with the media at the start of the day.

THE HUNDRED: MI London v Manchester Super Giants – That’s Not My London! Its Batting Is Too Terrible

Posted by Raf Nicholson

It’s not been the best weekend in CRICKETher Towers. Syd was pretty scathing about yesterday’s Spirit v Brave shenanigans and I can’t say I departed The Oval today feeling much more positive, after MI London were bowled out for 92 and proceeded to lose their fourth match in the competition by six wickets inside 72 balls.

MIL’s head coach Lisa Keightley seemed understandably shell-shocked after the match: “I’m still trying to work it all out.”

From here, MIL’s qualification prospects are down at 1% and all routes rely on them having a superior net run rate to teams close to them in the table – not great when your NRR is currently -1.540.

The Salty Manchester Elephants (MSG), meanwhile, continue to be well-placed to make the Eliminator, although captain Meg Lanning clearly needs to be referred to the CRICKETher Alligator after confessing post-match that she was finding her team’s route to qualification “too hard to work out”!

After being put in to bat, MI London quickly found themselves 1 for 2 after Sophie Ecclestone rattled the stumps of both Alice Davidson-Richards and Hayley Matthews. With Danni Wyatt-Hodge ruled out of the rest of the comp with a calf tear, ADR has been bumped up the order, on the basis (according to Keightley) that MIL want to “stretch it out a little bit and have some power hitters in the middle to the death”. Whether ADR will remain at no.2 after swiping across the line to the skiddy Ecclestone for a duck remains to be seen.

Matthews then inexplicably decided to go back to a fuller ball from the left-armer, and succeeded only in edging onto her own stumps.

If anything, things got worse from there – at the halfway stage, MIL had put just 37 runs on the board for the loss of 4 wickets. It honestly felt like watching women’s county cricket in about 2014. No disrespect to anybody involved at the time – those were some of my happiest days watching cricket – but in an amateur era many of the batters were not savvy enough to find the gaps, repeatedly hitting it straight to fielders. That was exactly the way MI London played here, set after set after set:

Ecclestone finished with a ridiculous 2 wickets for 7 runs. She also had a great day in the field, leaping up to take a catch at mid-off to see off Nicola Carey (a relief for everyone given how painfully slowly Carey batted) and running out Tara Norris with a direct hit as MI London threw their remaining wickets out of the pram.

The most entertaining moment for the crowd was probably when Chinelle Henry wellied a six over long-on and a bald bloke four rows back in the JM Finn Stand shelled it onto the row in front. (It’s OK – no one was hurt – except perhaps the feelings of bowler Kathryn Bryce!)

In reply, Lanning managed the chase perfectly. Syd compared her innings to the one against London Spirit at Lord’s 10 days ago, when she was in no hurry at all to chase down the required 81 runs – game-management from the world’s best at the art. I do think she was a BIT more aggressive than that this time around, hitting 43 at a SR of 138 including a swivel-pull for six against Henry before finally perishing to a sweep with 4 runs still required as MSG lost a clatter of academic wickets when the game was all-but won.

“We wanted to try and finish it as quickly as we could,” she said afterwards. “We want people to come out and take the game on.”

We talked on this morning’s CRICKETher Weekly about the new team owners prioritising “big name” overseas stars over and above domestic players. This is now a live issue for MIL: Melie Kerr (11 off 14) and Carey (17 off 24) both played innings at The Oval the like of which many an English domestic player has been dropped for in the past. To drop any of your overseas in a franchise comp is a huge call but intriguingly, MIL head coach Lisa Keightley strongly hinted after the match that she is prepared to do exactly that:

“We haven’t had our overseas play as well as we’d like. If they were firing, would things look a little bit different? I’m going to have a look at a few more options, and see what some domestic players who maybe haven’t had much opportunity – see if they can get exposed and see how they go.”

Credit to Keightley if she does make that call – it’s a brave one, and hopefully she has the backing of the owners in doing it. Things could hardly get much worse.

THE HUNDRED: Southern Brave v Birmingham Phoenix – Brave Victorious But Perrin Welcomes “Small Wins”

Posted by Raf Nicholson

On Wednesday, Birmingham Phoenix released a new poem to celebrate the team, written by the Birmingham Poet Laureate Ayan Aden: “This is Birmingham, where it’s your turf, your team. This is Birmingham, where we rise.”

Presumably rising from the bottom of the table wasn’t quite what they had in mind. Nevertheless, that is the position Phoenix now find themselves in, having lost Thursday’s match to Southern Brave by 24 runs.

This was a match which Phoenix really should have won – or more accurately, one which Brave should have lost. Brave’s batters went for 30 balls without scoring a boundary. They dropped three catches. They failed to take a single Phoenix wicket for 55 balls.

But Brave’s bowling depth once again proved the key factor, preventing Phoenix from accelerating across the final 30 balls, despite having 9 wickets in hand. “I think they were trying [to go harder]”, Sarah Glenn said. “The intent was there for sure. But we shut it off really with our bowling.”

Put in to bat, Southern Brave had earlier reached 140 for 3, though it should really have been more after a rollicking start from Lizelle Lee. Lee might not be the most adept at moving her feet these days, but she has enough heft in her arms to make up for it, smashing 43 from 28 balls.

In the end the pace-off approach from Alice Capsey worked – there wasn’t quite enough velocity on the ball for Lee to clear the rope at deep midwicket and Linsey Smith took the catch.

Brave’s run-rate had actually fallen off a cliff prior to Lee getting out – they had a poor early-middle phase. Slow spin was most effective on this wicket, which meant that Capsey was particularly useful, bowling her full allocation of 20 balls (she only bowled 10 in Phoenix’s first match of the comp).

As an aside, I still think making Capsey back-up keeper for England’s World Cup campaign was a bit silly. But it was always pretty obvious it was a temporary move, while Lottie tries to figure out who is Amy Jones’s long-term replacement, and that Capsey remains committed to her off-spin. In fact, she told me so when I interviewed her at the start of the tournament: “I really enjoy bowling. It’s still a massive priority of mine. It just means my training days are slightly longer than they used to be. Instead of doing bat, bowl, field I’m doing bat, bowl, field, keep.”

Maia Bouchier looked dangerous until she got out in unnecessary but sadly typical fashion, trying to reverse-ramp Lauren Filer five runs short of a half-century. Enter Laura Wolvaardt, who limped to 11 off 15 balls before being dismissed in two different ways off the same ball, simultaneously caught behind and stumped (yes I know this isn’t technically possible in the Laws).

Wolvaardt has just come off the purplest patch of her career, but for some odd reason looks a shadow of her former self since she arrived in England for the start of the World Cup, with a highest score of 45 against Netherlands. From the peakiest of peaks to the troughiest of troughs – it’s not clear quite what’s gone wrong or why?

Thanks to some punches from Jemi Rodrigues in the final set, Brave did eventually get up to a total which was towards the high end of a “typical score” in this competition according to the Ghost:

In reply, Davina Perrin played an innings dominated by wild hacks, offering up three chances – on 30, 32 and 34. Each time, Rodrigues dashed 100 yards across the field to comfort the culprit – Bouchier, Wolvaardt and Bell – before finally getting so fed up / exhausted that she decided to take a catch herself, running in from deep midwicket; although the batter out was Tammy Beaumont, not Perrin.

Heading into the last 35 balls, WIN-her had both teams neck-and-neck:

But then Alice Capsey chewed up nine balls for eight runs, and chipped a catch straight to Sophie Molineux at cover. It was the death knell for Phoenix, and Capsey knew it – she was so annoyed at herself that she threw her bat in the air, tried to catch it with the other hand, dropped it, and suffered the added indignity of having to bend down and pick it up before walking off.

Perrin did go on to get fifty, but was reluctant after the match to take any credit for an innings which was ultimately in a losing cause and perhaps wasn’t quite quick enough to make up for slow-ish scoring at the other end. “Missing the Blast and being injured, and having a lot of the season out, obviously means that when you come back to play, you’re just sort of finding your feet,” she said.

She admitted, too, that it feels like these days she is trying to live up to her magical Eliminator innings every time she is at the crease. “I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t cross my mind. But I think I’m also reminding myself, it’s the small things at the minute. Being back out on the pitch, having a healthy body, they’re the small wins for me at the minute.”

For now, the bigger wins will have to wait.

FEATURE: South Asian Cricket Academy Addressing Tier Two’s “Postcode Lottery”

Posted by Raf Nicholson

Next week is a big week for the South Asian Cricket Academy. In January, SACA launched their first ever women’s programme after receiving funding from ECB; after a rigorous recruitment process, the first cohort of 15 will take to the field for their first match, against Warwickshire.

SACA is a non-profit organisation designed to tackle the lack of British South Asian representation in professional cricket across the UK. For the first four years, it was a male-only undertaking – but given that SACA founder Tom Brown has a strong connection to women’s cricket, it was clearly only a matter of time before that changed.

“All my coaching journey was in the women’s game,” Brown says. “I was one of the senior coaches at Warwickshire and I met my partner Marie Kelly there, who’s at The Blaze. And I’m the lead scout for England Women as well. I’ve always had quite a big interest in the women’s game.”

Research undertaken by PhD student Hina Shafi has revealed that the representation of South Asian women drops drastically between involvement in the recreational game and entry into / retention in professional cricket. SACA’s programme aims to provide bespoke support, helping address those barriers.

Isa Guha’s Take Her Lead charity are collaborating with SACA to deliver the programme. “They take care of the coaching, but we’re there to give them the additional support that they need to be able to take those next steps in cricket,” Guha said.

“We’ve got a mental health practitioner on our board, Kay Baig. We’ve got some players & former players – myself, Sonia Odedra and Abtaha Maqsood, so there’s intersectionality across the board. There’s nutritional support, with Krushmi Chheda, the Rajasthan Royals nutritionist, who ran a few workshops which have been incredible. They did a session with Alison Mitchell around media training, because they recognise their role as role models in the sport.”

Originally, the idea was to recruit 6 to 8 women for the programme – but the calibre of applicants was so high that Brown and his team changed their minds. “We realised there was a lot of talent out there. We’re still getting applicants through at the minute but we’re going to keep it smaller to start with, because we want to give a lot to these girls, rather than be spread too thin – that’s a lesson we learned from the lads.”

It means that as well as workshops and coaching, the players have a full programme of fixtures against Tier One second XIs to look forward to this summer. For Nayma Sheikh, a leg-spinner and left-hand batter who represents Scotland and Leicestershire, that’s crucial.

“In Scotland, you don’t get that many games,” she says. “For me the reason I applied to SACA was to showcase my skills to major counties, for them to see that I am there.”

She adds that the environment is second to none in terms of support: “You have that connection with the other girls straight away. I’ve had loads of opportunities for one-on-one coaching sessions, and the coaches know so much about leg-spin.”

For now, the programme is a pilot, funded by ECB – but the hope is to be able to expand beyond this initial intake. Brown says one thing which has already become clear is that the new tiered women’s domestic set-up is falling short in delivering consistent opportunities for female players across the country. SACA is filling that gap.

“Tier Two is a little bit of a postcode lottery. Some of these girls, if they were just living in a different county, would be playing in Tier Two,” he says. “For some of them, this is their first experience of being in an environment where it’s built for them and it’s not a turn-up and have a net, it’s a real high performance environment. They’re quite green but they’re taking to it well.”

The aim, he says, is to replicate the success they have achieved in the men’s game: there are now 18 graduates of the SACA programme with pro contracts at first-class counties. “A couple of these girls are good enough for Tier One now. And therefore it’s on us to make sure that our networks are good and that we’re getting them the right opportunities.”

Here are the 15 players in the programme:

Bhoomika Bhat
Anusha Chauhan
Kashish Choudhary
Imaan Effendi
Maryam Faisal
Iqraa Hussain
Amarah Imran
Anjali Ketan
Sanya Khurana
Riva Pindoria
Zaynah Rehman
Rhia Sedha
Nayma Sheikh
Asmi Shembekar
Regina Suddahazai Khan

ONE DAY CUP: Surrey v Durham – Filer’s Flurry in Surrey

Posted by Raf Nicholson

Rumour has it* that Charlotte Edwards was at The Oval today (Ed: is she following us around?) although she didn’t actually prove visible to the naked eye – much like some of the balls in Lauren Filer’s opening spell.

After winning the toss under blue skies at The Oval, Durham had posted 256 for 8. A skipper’s knock of 106 from Hollie Armitage, a nifty half-century from Mady Villiers and a handy back-end cameo of 18 not out off 10 balls from Sophia Turner all played a role.

But it looked to be well light of a competitive total on a belter of a wicket at The Oval. That is, until Filer began her work.

It’s a bit of an open secret that Edwards has not yet settled on her World Cup Fifteen – hence pulling all the England contracted players out of the One-Day Cup earlier this week for an intra-squad camp. Some big decisions lie ahead, including what is likely to be a three-way fight for one spot in the World Cup squad between Filer, Issy Wong and Em Arlott.

Over in Chelmsford, Wong (0-21 off 4 overs) was being pummelled by Grace Scrivens, while Arlott (2-14 off 5) was economical but unspectacular.

Meanwhile here in Surrey, Durham’s powerplay bowling exactly epitomised Edwards’s dilemma: go with the safe option of Arlott, or throw caution to the winds and opt for the ferocity of Filer?

Filer started with an erratic no-ball beamer which hurtled over the fine leg boundary, costing a sum total of five runs. She also fell over in her follow-through three times in as many overs – a worrying habit which England confidently claimed last year that they had cured her of.

“The first couple of overs was a bit of a pick and mix,” Filer said afterwards. “I said to Hollie [Armitage], ‘I’m sorry mate, I’ve probably not bowled as straight as I can’ – but the balls that did go straight were wickets. So it was just taking the confidence from those balls into future overs.”

She blamed her falls on “a big divot in the foot holes” and joked: “It’s not Lauren Filer if I don’t fall over.”

In fact, the Surrey top-order looked genuinely frightened of her pace: a fear which translated into figures of 3 for 13 in her first three overs. Paige Scholfield and Alice Davidson-Richards both had their middle stumps pegged back; in between, Alice Capsey was hurried into a drive and got an edge behind – albeit reliant on a fantastic diving catch from Tahlia Wilson to pouch it.

Just how quick was Filer bowling in the powerplay? There was no speed gun in operation, but Filer reckoned: “There were a few balls that were pretty up there.” (A reminder that for Filer, that means high 70s – she’s apparently been clocked at 80mph in training.)

Kira Chathli fought fire with fire, pulling and crunching Filer’s next over for 14 runs. But when the England quick returned for a second spell, Armitage tapped Filer on the shoulder and indicated that she should put in a deep square leg. Sure enough, Chathli sent one down her throat, handing Filer a fourth wicket and Armitage some field-placement bragging rights.

Filer often only looks dangerous when fresh, so perhaps the most interesting part of today was that her third spell (which consisted of two overs, the 29th and 30th) proved almost as threatening as her first. She basically bounced out the 19-year-old Jemima Spence, who tried to keep her body out of the way while waving her bat around, and was bowled.

The upshot of it all was that Filer finished with 5-59 – a List A best.

Of course, a typically aggressive innings from Danni Wyatt-Hodge eventually saw Surrey win by 3 wickets, picking up a bonus point in the process. But if Filer earns selection in a home World Cup on the back of today, maybe she’s the real winner?

The question, as ever, is whether the guaranteed risk is worth the possible reward. Only one woman knows the answer – and for now, she is keeping her counsel.

*Later confirmed by Filer after the match.

WNCL: The season so far… and what to expect when it restarts on Sunday

Posted by Guest

By Helen Maynard-Casely

After a long pause for the 20-over season, the Women’s National Cricket League (WNCL) – Australia’s professional 50-over competition – restarts on 4 January. Not the quietest period of the cricketing calendar, the upcoming third and fourth rounds will overlap with the Women’s Premier League (WPL) in India, critically drawing away some key players from their state sides. After the amuse bouche of rounds 1 and 2 back in September/October, the majority of the season is still to play. And, while some teams have raced ahead in match points, a few have stumbled and will be keen to get their season back on track.

Standings of the WNCL after two rounds

Team	Played	Won	Loss	Tied	N/R	NRR	Deductions	BP	Points
Queensland Fire	4	4	0	0	0	0.794	0	2	18
NSW Breakers	4	4	0	0	0	1.077	0	1	17
Tasmanian Tigers	4	3	1	0	0	1.528	0	3	15
South Australia	2	1	1	0	0	-0.494	0	0	4
ACT Meteors	2	0	2	0	0	-0.802	0	0	0
Western Australia	4	0	4	0	0	-1.165	0	0	0
Victoria	4	0	4	0	0	-1.595	1	0	-1

After only a few games, it is already looking tight at the top of the table – with teams that have snaffled batting bonuses (from achieving victory with a run rate 1.25 times that of the opposition) at a critical advantage in the chase for the two finals spots. In the bottom half of the table, yes you’ve read that correctly, poor Victoria are actually in negative points after receiving deductions for slow over rates in their match against Tasmania.

Round 3 will see NSW taking their bye for the season, Tasmania will be hosting Queensland at Bellerive, ACT taking on Victoria at EPC Solar Park (Phillip Oval) and West Australia v South Australia at the WACA.

Tasmania v Queensland is likely to be the most important of this round to watch for the overall standings: with more bonus points in the bag from their trip to Victoria, the Tasmanians could jump to the top of the table even with a one win/loss combo. However, they have a frighteningly strong run of form at home in Hobart. Since 2022, Tasmania’s Women have only lost 3 out of 21 matches played at Bellerive. To top this, numbers 1 and 2 on the season run chart are currently held by Tasmanian players Lizelle Lee (323) and Rachel Treneman (241), reflecting the formidability of their batting attack. Queensland, in contrast, will be without gun youngster Charli Knott, who has taken a call up to the WPL, and reliant on Lauren Winfield-Hill to get runs on the board.

After a successful start at home at Karen Rolton Oval back on 26 September, South Australia will be keen to add to wins away at the WACA. They will have a significant boost in having a certain Australian vice-captain Tahlia McGrath back in the side for the next couple of rounds. McGrath has decided to sit out the WPL, presumably with a mind to find form in Australian conditions in advance of the Australia vs India multi-format series coming up in February.

ACT, a team very much in a rebuilding phase, will be keen to go for a win at home against the flailing Victorian side. The Meteors very nearly pulled off quite the surprise win away to Queensland in October’s round 2, only stopped by the indomitable Winfield-Hill’s gutsy century. That said, Victoria are a side with much to make up, having lost the opening four matches – and may hope that some of their contracted Cricket Australia players may be up for taking to the field in Canberra next week to help pull them into the points.

Round 3 WNCL matches

All matches will be streamed via the Cricket Australia app.

Date	Day	Home	Away	Ground	Start (AEDT)	Start UTC
04/01	Sunday	TAS	QLD	Bellerive Oval, Hobart	10:30	23:30
06/01	Tuesday	ACT	VIC	EPC Solar Park, Canberra	10:00	23:00
06/01	Tuesday	TAS	QLD	Bellerive Oval, Hobart	10:30	23:30
08/01	Thursday	ACT	VIC	EPC Solar Park, Canberra	10:00	23:00
08/01	Thursday	WA	SA	WACA, Perth	17:00	06:00
10/01	Saturday	WA	SA	WACA, Perth	17:00	06:00

Helen (Crystallised Cricket) is a writer based in Dharug and Gundagarra country and acknowledges the traditional owners of the lands that she writes from.

CLUB OF THE MONTH: Rushden & Higham Town Under 11 Girls

Posted by Raf Nicholson

Congratulations to the Under 11 Girls of Rushden & Higham Town, whose first season has just concluded. It was certainly an eventful one, including helping provide a guard of honour at the Northamptonshire County Ground, growing from 4 members to 12, and winning their last game of the season (against Earls Barton CC) by a single run!

The girls’ section was formed by Ben and Lisa Hodges. Ben had been coaching the under-9s for a couple of seasons and volunteering as an All Stars Activator, and could see that more girls were coming through but could also see that they were sometimes intimidated by the loud and over-confident boys. It was clear that there were girls with talent, but they needed their own space to find it.

The girls play at Short Stocks in Rushden, featuring an astroturf wicket, an astroturf net and a nice bar – always appreciated by parents during the Friday night training sessions!

Ben and the girls threw themselves into the deep end by entering a league in their first season, playing in the Corby and District Youth U11 League (East). Sadly one of the teams dropped out and fixtures were a bit erratic this season, but they held their own.

“Music and dance play a big part in the team!” says coach Ben Hodges. “Cartwheels in the outfield between overs can often be seen. We are fortunate (or unfortunate sometimes when we are trying to get the girls to focus) that six of our girls all dance together at Starlight Dance in Rushden. So, whatever the latest song is that they are dancing to, you can guarantee that it will be heard and the six will be doing their best to teach the others the moves.“

“Special mention to Jennifer, who during one training session was practicing singing her part as Anne Boleyn for her school’s performance of the musical ‘Six’ while bowling at her teammates.”

They were fortunate to be mentored by the Northants County Cricket Club Steelbacks in the Community Team who assisted with putting on the fixtures, including providing some of their girls from the Young Leaders programme to act as scorers and umpires.

They were also lucky to be successful in bidding for a Metro Bank Girls in Cricket Fund award this season, which funded 20 hours of mentoring from community coaches from Steelbacks in the Community. A big thanks to Liam, Patricia, Beth and Louise.

Meanwhile Ben continues to coach and manage the team and has secured funding through Northamptonshire Sport to top up his coaching qualifications before next season.

Ben says that his season highlight was the team’s first victory, which came against Earls Barton when Jess Hambleton-Clark hit a six in the final over: “It was the last game of the season and the victory felt incredible. Seeing how chuffed the girls were and seeing how hard they had worked all season, and it was finally paying off.”

He also wants to give a shout out to the Committee at Rushden & Higham Town Cricket Club for supporting and embracing the girls team this season, and to all the parents for ferrying their daughters to matches, helping set up, and adding to a great family atmosphere at the club.

Aims for 2026 include developing a women’s softball team, doubling the number of girls playing, and perhaps playing some hardball cricket. Good luck to all involved!

If anyone is interested in joining the club, they should contact Ben Hodges on womenandgirls@rushdenhighamtowncc.com

TIER 2 FINAL: Yorkshire v Glamorgan – Yorkshire “Rewrite Our Wrong”

Posted by Raf Nicholson

Two weeks ago, Lauren Winfield-Hill faced a decision: Yorkshire were through to the final stages of the Tier 2 One-Day Cup, which directly clashed with the Women’s Caribbean Premier League that she was due to play in.

Guyana or a freezing cold, rainy September day at New Road? What a choice!

Except that Winfield-Hill is Yorkshire through-and-through – to the extent that, even when it became apparent 18 months ago that they had lost their bid for Tier 1 status to Durham, she still chose to remain with her home county (presumably their automatic promotion into the top tier in 2026 helped sweeten the pill, but even so).

So she stayed in England, and kissed goodbye to something in the region of $16,000.

Last weekend, Winfield-Hill failed to make a definitive contribution with the bat in Yorkshire’s semi-final against Middlesex – leaving Sterre Kalis to bake a cheesecake in her stead.

But in Sunday’s final at Worcester, she made no mistake, racing to a 27-ball half-century as Yorkshire rode roughshod over Glamorgan to win a shortened 20-over match by 9 wickets with 8.4 overs to spare. One-sided isn’t quite the word.

When I asked Winfield-Hill about the WCPL afterwards, she was pretty unequivocal: “I’ve got a long-term contract with Yorkshire, and I’m very loyal to them. And to be honest it was a no brainer – Yorkshire is my priority, that’s why I wanted to stay.”

Minutes after lifting the trophy, surrounded by her Yorkshire teammates and about to crack open the champagne, she added: “It’s a blessing because I get to share these moments with the girls.”

Three years ago, at Lord’s, Winfield-Hill won the Rachael Heyhoe-Flint Trophy with ~~Yorkshire~~ Northern Diamonds. How does this compare?

“It’s a different feeling, it’s a very different group and a different occasion, but it’s really special. Today was about being able to do it when it mattered,” Winfield-Hill said.

It was an interesting decision by Yorkshire to agree to reducing this final down to 20 overs before it began, after consulting with the ECB – in defiance of the playing conditions, which state that if a full game isn’t possible then the trophy will be shared.

Back in June, Yorkshire lost their T20 Blast final to Middlesex by 10 wickets, after putting just 101 on the board. (As a reminder, they were full strength, with both Winfield-Hill and Sterre Kalis in their XI.) Agreeing to foreshorten a 50-over game therefore felt, to me, like something of a gamble.

Winfield-Hill, though, described it as “common sense”: “It was probably going to be one of those where you win the toss, you bowl 50 overs, then you didn’t get to bat, which as a batter really sucks.”

“So it just made sense to make it a T20. Both teams were very much in agreement that we wanted to get a game on today and get a result. You don’t want to share a trophy.’

I must say, I feel slightly uncomfortable about the decision. Yes, it hosed it down at New Road about 10 minutes after the match ended – and it was still raining when we left the ground at 2pm.

But if you aren’t going to follow the playing conditions, what’s the point of having them in the first place?

Once the decision was taken, and agreed by the ECB, the toss became all-important: with heavy rain forecast from 1pm, making it likely that the second innings would be cut short, the team batting second would know exactly what they needed to do to stay ahead of DLS.

In fact, the toss was so critical that when the umpires oversaw it prematurely, and the commentators requested it be repeated so that it could be shown on TV, Winfield-Hill put her foot down and said she wouldn’t redo it “because I’ve already won it” – fair play to her!

As it turned out, Glamorgan’s batting effort – which started so positively – eventually fizzled out, allowing Yorkshire to get ahead of the DLS from the second ball of their chase and stay miles out in front of it the whole way through. Winfield-Hill was in her element: “I strangely quite like the pressure of DLS to frame a chase.”

For Yorkshire, the eventual result was an important one in countering some of the embarrassment felt by both the players and the ECB when they failed to win the Tier 2 Blast back in June.

“A lot of these girls were hurting from that T20 loss,” Winfield-Hill said. “There’s a bit of subconscious, ‘you’re being invested in so you should be producing the goods’. And to be honest, on reflection, in that T20 final, maybe that was a bit of the added pressure as well, that people turned up and, ‘oh Yorkshire are here, they’re paid’. I think a lot of girls felt the pressure of that.”

“Whereas today was just a really nice continuation of what we’ve been doing. I couldn’t wait to rewrite our wrong.”

EXCLUSIVE: Middlesex To Go Pro By 2029

Posted by Raf Nicholson

Middlesex Director of Cricket Alan Coleman has told CRICKETher that the club intend to self-fund professional contracts by 2029, in order to ensure they are best-placed to progress into Tier One.

Last year, Middlesex failed in their bid to host a Tier One side, meaning they will be locked out of the top tier of women’s domestic cricket for at least the next 4 years.

But the club have embarrassed the ECB with their results this season, winning 18 of their 21 matches, beating Yorkshire twice, and finishing as inaugural champions in the Tier Two Women’s Vitality Blast.

“The game at Northants where we won the T20 was an astounding effort – I’ve never seen a team go through a whole Finals Day without losing a wicket,” Coleman said.

“It’s a challenge that the team have embraced, being amateurs, against professional teams – not only Yorkshire but Glamorgan, who are going to be Tier One in 2027.”

Middlesex’s challenge now is how best to keep together and develop a team of amateurs, many of whom are doing demanding full-time jobs – as typified by all-rounder Gaya Gole, who works long hours as a Management Consultant in the City.

For Coleman – who was present at Middlesex’s semi-final against Yorkshire on Sunday – the answer is for the club to directly invest in their women’s squad.

“Middlesex are incredibly ambitious and desperately want to invest in our women’s team,” he said. “There’s no greater deserving team for that investment.”

“Our challenge is to keep improving and keep developing across this period to ensure that we are as ready as possible for Tier 1 cricket as and when hopefully the ECB decide to open it up.”

“This is year 1 of a 4-year plan to be professional at the end of that period. And we almost want to, without sounding arrogant, take it out of the ECB’s hands and say, ‘You have to make us professional because of the performances that our players have put in, in Tier 2’.”

“So that’s the plan, and a part of that will be ensuring that our players are rewarded for the cricket that they play.”

The club are still working out exactly what that looks like, but we shouldn’t be surprised if we see the first tranche of part-time contracts awarded ahead of next season.

“We need to continue to invest in this very, very talented group of players to ensure they get the opportunity they deserve,” Coleman added.

COUNTY CUP: Northamptonshire v Worcestershire – An Eras Tour

Posted by Raf Nicholson

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.

CRICKETher

Women's Cricket News & Views

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