Leicestershire Foxes through to Round 3 after easing to win against Cheshire

Leicestershire Foxes (94/3) beat Cheshire (93 all out) by 7 wickets with 47 balls to spare.

Photo Credit: Leicestershire CCC

The Vitality Women’s County Cup came to the Uptonsteel County Ground today as Leicestershire, from Tier 2, entered the competition against Tier 3 side Cheshire, who had beaten Lincolnshire last Monday to earn this tie.

After winning the toss, the Foxes invited Cheshire to bat and the County from the North-West had a decent first over, scoring seven, with Emma Thatcher’s three wides gifting them early runs. After showing such generosity to their visitors, the hosts started to show a lot more control, building pressure with 17 consecutive dot balls, including the wicket of Emily Wilkins, caught at backward point by Flora Davis from Ellie Phillips’s second delivery of the day.

18-year-old Phillips, who previously came through the Warwickshire pathway, showed impressive control in her right arm medium pace bowling throughout, causing problems for the Cheshire batters with her accuracy, line and length. Thatcher, who signed for the Foxes from Derbyshire, ironically a leftie bowler, then found her rhythm and conceded only one run from her next two overs, leaving Cheshire on 14/1 after four overs.

Cheshire needed to start scoring some runs, and it was Ellie Mason, in her 10th season for the county, who got the score board ticking over for them with some well-judged leg side shots, particularly from Phillips’s bowling. By the 8th over, Cheshire had achieved some respectability with their score 29/1 giving them a platform from which they could attack the middle overs.

Leicestershire introduced leg spinner D’nica Roff. She has a delightful action, with a hop, skip and a jump run up, but her bowling was a little erratic today, with some sublime moments mixed with occasional half trackers and a chin high no ball. She did however, remove Cheshire captain Rosh Prince-Navaratnam, whose eyes lit up at a short ball only to sky it straight into the safe hands of Francesca Sweet, who had a brilliant day in the field for Leicester, making fine stops and chasing down everything with great energy.

Leicestershire’s other leg spinner, April Herathge has some significant cricketing heritage. Her uncle Chamara Kapugedera played over 150 times for Sri Lanka. She is a medical student at Nottingham University. The 24-year-old was very impressive. She seemed to have the ball on a string, landing it perfectly with plenty of loop and good variations. Her dismissal of Holly Mayers with the third ball of her first over was marvellous: pitching on middle, turning away and taking the outside edge on its way to Ellen Watson’s gloves. Her final figures of 3/11 was the outstanding performance of the match.

By the time Cheshire got to the 13th over, they had slumped to 59/5. Much rested on the shoulders of Gaby McKeever, who had top-scored for them in the first-round game against Lincolnshire. Some well-placed shots enabled her to accumulate singles and twos in order to progress Cheshire’s innings somewhat, but she only managed one boundary in her score of 21 from 24 balls. This made her Cheshire’s top scorer again, but in a final total of 93 all out which was going to be incredibly difficult to defend.

For Leicestershire’s reply, captain Becki Brooker and Francesca Sweet started aggressively, Brooker hitting two fours from Amy Seddon in the first over, Sweet taking two fours from Emily Page in the next. Page bowls what can only be described as very gentle medium pace. One can see the batter’s eyes light up as the ball makes its way slowly towards them, but timing the shot proved somewhat problematic for Sweet in the second over, when attempting to hit her third boundary, she instead hit fresh air before hearing the gentle sound of bails dropping. She was very annoyed with herself.

Page and Seddon seemed to be steering Cheshire nicely through the powerplay before a flurry of boundaries in the 5th and 6th overs suddenly pushed the Leicestershire score to 49/1. They were suddenly past the half way point in the chase. 

The introduction of slow bowlers Ellie Mason and Rosh Prince-Navaratnam after the powerplay did restore a modicum of control by Cheshire. Both bowlers used loop, flight and ultra-pace-off to frustrate the Leicestershire batters, including captain Becki Brooker who seemed destined to score a 50 until she swiped so hard at Prince-Navaratnam that she spun and fell to the floor as the ball passed her and just about had enough pace to hit the stumps.

It was left to Lucy Weston to steer Leicestershire to victory. She skilfully late cut Becca Othick to the third boundary to level the scores, Othick then sent the next ball down leg side for a wide. The game was over. Leicester had won by 7 wickets in the 13th over.

It was not a perfect performance by either side. Leicester will be happy to be in the next round, where they will face either Shropshire or Northamptonshire Steelbacks. The winner of that tie will play Glamorgan or Lancashire in the quarter final. Cheshire did well to get this far, but it was an interesting view of the gulf between Tier 2 and Tier 3.