We can finally say goodbye to The Blaze - a nom du guerre no-one ever really got on board with, even in the regional cricket days of yesteryear (OK two seasons ago) - I think it was the use of the definite article that really grated. Blaze was not their moniker it was THE team name. From next season they will revert to Nottinghamshire or more frequently Notts. Thanks be to whatever deity floats your boat.
We are led to believe that The Blaze name was retained as the players wanted it. Presumably they don't anymore. Whatever the reason it has served them well over the past two seasons galvanising a team without the misnomered "superstars" into a team that somehow knows how to get over the line. A team with chutzpah.
Nothing epitomised that more than their One Day Cup campaign this year. Innumerable times at the beginning of the season their batting was bailed out by skipper Kirstie Gordon, coming in at 7 or 8 and hitting a measured 40 odd to get her team over the line, after her top order batting had gone Missing in Action. In the middle of the year it was the seasoned pro, Georgia Elwiss, that kept The Blaze at the top of the table, eschewing risk to claim the ultimate reward. And by the end of the season The Blaze's belief in their own individual and collective abilities had taken them deservedly to the top of the One Day Cup League table. They were champions......only they weren't. Now they had to play Hampshire in The Final.
Could the co-operative from the Midlands overcome the South Coast Sun Loungers at their own ground. The hundred or so Blaze supporters hoped so. The 2,000 Hampshirites hoped for a repeat of the previous week's demolition of the northern invaders, which had briefly taken Hampshire to the top of the table.
As is often the case with finals it was an attritional game until the last hour, when it looked like one team was going to win and then it looked like they weren't......and then....
Hampshire had posted a below par 251/9 based around a mature innings of 78 from 23 year Ella McCaughan, who was the unfortunate recipient of what can only be described as a shocking lbw decision. True the ball hit her on the front pad in front of the leg stump, but it had been delivered left-arm round the wicket from wide on the return crease and physics says it would have missed the leg stump by at least six inches (15 centimetres if I have any readers are below the age of 30). There are no reviews. That, and the dismissal of the ebullient Freya Kemp who pummelled another fine 52 before she missed a floaty off-spinner from Lucy Higham (4/49), took the wind out of the Hampshire sails, and they could only manage another 54 runs off the last 11 overs.
The Blaze knew they had time on their hands and proceeded serenely towards a hundred before Sarah Bryce became another victim of the sorcerer that is Amanda Jade Wellington. In times gone by she would either have been all-powerful or dunked in the river as a suspected witch. When Bryce sister Kathryn was also spellbound by Wello with the aid of a fine juggling slip catch from Georgia Adams, Hampshire at least felt the door was ajar. But slowly, ever so slowly, that door was pushed towards the catch that keeps it shut. Tammy Beaumont (74 off 122) almost bored herself to death, having initially got her 50 off a respectable 75 balls. Her partner was the aforementioned Georgia Elwiss, whose 64 off 74 belies the fact that she at one stage she had 42 off 59 balls. True Beaumont also interspersed her vigil by giving Hampshire the chance to catch her out. They spurned three of them, before the Sorcerer dipped a ball onto her toe in front of middle stump. Blaze still had no need to panic. They only needed another 59 runs and they had more than 10 overs to get them.
But when Elwiss lofted the Sorcerer's apprentice, Bex Tyson, to mid-off, the Hampshirites began to believe.
The Sorcerer was done by the 40th over - Tyson and Adams by the 47th. Blaze still needed 29 and they were 6 down. The swashbuckling Emma Jones seemed to be The Blaze's final hope. With a little help from Lucy Higham she took 12 off the 48th and then single-handedly took another 11 off the last five balls on Naomi Dattani's next over. The Blaze only needed 5 more to win.
Daisy Gibb, who had not bowled since the seventh over was thrown the ball by skipper Adams. She did not let her down. The Blaze could manage only 3 off the first five balls. Two were needed off the last with the sabre wielding Jones on strike. Her propensity to heave the ball to the legside dictated the field. With non-striker Grace Ballinger almost standing beside her as she stepped across, she swung her blade to leg. The ball careered away to the backward square leg boundary for the winning runs.
It was an outcome that seemed inevitable as The Blaze went down in a blaze of glory!
Martin Davies
20/IX/2026
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