Thursday, 31 July 2025

The Jam in the Metro Bank sandwich

With the T20 Blast league games finished there has been just time to squeeze in two games of 50 over Metro Bank cricket, before the Hundred Circus comes to town for August. For those of you who may have forgotten the league table looked this last Wednesday. If you want to know how it got that way you can read my take on the first eight rounds here.


The big winners in this slither of a second stage in the competition were Surrey and Durham. They both won both of their games. Surrey, minus only Sophia Dunkley, managed to sneak a win against table-toppers Hampshire, after rain interrupted their run chase of Hampshire's 278. At the time they were 151/5 with 24 overs to go. As the rain eased they were required to score 63 off 4.5 overs, which they did with a ball to spare thanks to a measured 73* from Alice Davidson-Richards. Six days later, they beat Warwickshire more comfortably, despite 113 from 18 year old Davina Perrin, with Alice Capsey's 79 underpinning the chase of only 240. 
Surrey moved up from 5th to 4th in the table

Meanwhile Durham managed to extract both Lancashire openers, Emma Lamb and Eve Jones, before they had put together yet another hundred partnership, which opened the door to bowling out the team in red for just 168 within 40 overs. They had been chasing Durham's 257 built around Hollie Armitage's 111. In their second game Durham dispatched Somerset by a mere 105 runs, having posted 315/9 with Suzie Bates helping herself to 163 of them. 
Durham moved up from 6th to 5th in the table, just one point behind Surrey.

The big losers in this short phase were Warwickshire, who lost their fifth and sixth games on the trot, as they first came up short chasing The Blaze's 218/6 in a game reduced to 39 overs. Once again their top order were missing in action, but from 28/5 they did manage to get to 171 all out thanks to 50s from Abbey Freeborn and Nat Wraith. Against Surrey they were again 32/5 but recovered to post 239 thanks to Perrin's hundred, but it was never enough.

Having been pipped by Surrey Hampshire found themselves in a table-topping clash with The Blaze, who had leapfrogged over them in the table. In trouble at 34/3 with Southby, Bouchier and Perry all gone 20 year old Freya Kemp showed her progression as a batter with a mature maiden century, which, combined with 77 from Nancy Harman, took Hampshire to an imposing 291/7. Once again Hampshire's bowlers delivered, bowling out The Blaze in 45 overs for just 211, with 19 year old Daisy Gibb claiming 3/21. 
The win took Hampshire back to the top of the table. The defeat took The Blaze from top to third. 

Things did not improve for Essex who were grateful to get two points from a No Result against Somerset, who had 312 runs on the board when the rain came, but were then trounced by 138 runs by Lancashire. Essex failed to remove Emma Lamb (142) or Eve Jones (71) before they had added 162 for the first wicket. It set up Lancs' total of 306/4. In response only 20 year old Jodi Grewcock (52) put up any great resistance as Essex were bowled out in just over 35 overs for 168.
That win kept Lancashire in second place in the table and Essex firmly rooted at the foot of the table.

The current table looks like this

Each team has four games left to play which will be played in September. There will be an anxious wait to see the 15 names announced in the England World Cup squad in early September, as those players will almost certainly take no further part in the Metro Bank One Day Cup for their counties. 

With five teams within 8 points of each other it is all to play for.


Martin Davies
31/VII/25

Wednesday, 23 July 2025

Heading to the World Cup

I have just finished typing all the World Cup games into the WCB Women's Cricket Fixtures calendar [you will find them here if you need them], which got me thinking about how England might fare and how the tournament, as a whole, might pan out. It all starts in 8 weeks........and about 4 weeks later Australia will be World Champions for the eighth time.

Is it really that clear cut? Is it really that much of a foregone conclusion? Should I be putting my life-savings on Australia to win the 13th Edition of the Women's Cricket World Cup? Well, probably not.

Cricket, as they say, is a funny game, and the tournament is being played in the sub-continent, on pitches that should suit spin bowlers, and batters that are nimble of foot and agile in mind. It would not surprise me if Sri Lanka, Pakistan or Bangladesh cause a few upsets, but they are unlikely to win the tournament. Given that all the eight teams play each other, and then the top four go into the semi-finals, this is a tournament about consistency. You need to win more games than you lose. In fact in the last edition West Indies qualified for the semi-finals with a 3-3 record, having had one game called off. This time they have not even made the competition. 

Consistency should reward the "better teams". So you would expect Australia, India and England to win more games than they lose. I think the last slot might just go to Pakistan, who are playing all their games at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, in Sri Lanka, so do not have the travel issues that all the other teams face, and will be playing every game on the same pitch. This is a huge advantage. Some might say so big that it is unfair?

So from the group stage it becomes a simple knockout tournament, where the best team on the day will win. In T20 cricket this can often be on the performance of one individual, but that is less likely in 50 over cricket, although it can happen - Chamari Athapaththu, Harmanpreet Kaur and Anya Shrubsole spring to mind. One day cricket tends to be much more of a team performance and this favours Australia and India, so, provided they avoid each other in the semi-final, these would be my two teams in the final.

And so to the final. India playing in front of 40,000 screaming Indians in the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangaluru. The pressure on them will be enormous. It is not something they have dealt with well in the past, and despite the pressures of playing in front of large crowds in the WPL, it might just prove too much for them again. 

So what of England? They are a "new team", under a new coach and a new captain. The problem is that they are not really a "new team" at all. Unfortunately this summer has not seen the blooding of some new players such as Ella MacCaughan, Jodi Grewcock, Charis Pavely or Rhianna Southby. The West Indies series was a golden opportunity to experiment, but it just produced false hope in some of the existing players, which has subsequently been crushed, by not only losing both the T20 and the ODI series to India, but by looking second best in almost every facet of the game. With a genuinely "new team" at the World Cup England might be forgiven for not making the Final. The fact that they might struggle to even make it to the semi-finals with a squad that looks so similar to the one that lost 16-0 to Australia in The Ashes seems an opportunity missed.

But then who knows? England might just go and win the whole thing. I wouldn't be putting my house on that though.

Martin Davies
23/VII/25


Tuesday, 1 July 2025

Cricket is like Politics

Back in March I wrote a piece suggesting that England Women were in a lot more trouble, in terms of their standing in world cricket, than people would have you believe (you'll find it here). On Saturday I was at Trent Bridge to see England get hammered by India in the first match of their eight match tour. They were superior to England in every department. It was as I feared.

Charlotte Edwards was brimming with confidence and enthusiasm when she was handed her "dream job". I would expect nothing less from her, but I am concerned about what she has got to work with, and the fact that short-term goals - there is a 50 over World Cup in India in September, and then a T20 World Cup here in England in 2026 - determine the make-up of this current England team. The fact that there is a World Cup of some sort every couple of years, and an Ashes series every couple of years in between, means that every team is being picked with the next competition in mind, which is rarely more than 12 months ahead. In that time the team will probably play two or three series at the most. Short term goals are the be all and end all. 

This is no way to develop a great team. It is a pathway to mediocrity. To "safe selections". There is no chance for experimentation, for development, for trial and error. Players who know they will be selected week in week out no matter how they perform, whether they are fit or not, have no pressure to perform beyond the odd 50 here or there, or the odd decent bowling spell. It means when push comes to shove they are not hungry enough, and they are not good enough, and they don't want it enough. 

England need a shake-up! Even if those who come in to replace those who are dropped fail to perform, which many of them will. Playing international cricket is not easy. But players need to be given the opportunity to fail. And that does not mean the odd game here and there, with the "here is your opportunity to show us what you can do". The West Indies series was an ideal opportunity to give some youngsters their chance, particularly batters, but we went with the tried and tested and England won both series at a canter, but what did we learn from these series? Not a lot is the answer.

And here we are playing India with the same team and losing, well so far anyway. If Charlie Dean plays this evening in place of Linsey Smith, as I suspect she might, then the team on the park will not look very different from the team that got hammered by Australia in the Ashes. If Heather Knight was fit it would look even more similar. 

At some point England need to look beyond the next tournament or beyond the next Ashes series, and the coach needs to be reassured that they will be backed throughout that time. In my view now is the time for that reset, but I wonder if the opportunity has already passed. 

Martin Davies
1/VI/25