The South East Stars will be looking for their first piece of silverware since 2021 as they head to finals day in the Charlotte Edwards Cup. Beating Northern Diamonds in the inaugural edition of the Lottie Cup, the Stars got a taste of victory but the trophy cabinet has been barren since.
Recruiting experienced WBBL star, Georgia Redmayne, the South East Stars bolstered their squad with trophies in mind. Redmayne was already set to come over to England this summer, being retained by the London Spirit in the Hundred. However, an offer from the Stars came up and now Redmayne is set for yet another finals day.
Richard and Polly Starkie of the Noughtie Child Podcast caught up with Georgia ahead of the big day.
“The offer came up in April or so and I think they initially wanted me to come over straight away for most of the season,” Georgia said, explaining how her Stars journey came about. “I'd just come back from about a month and a half of complete holiday, and no cricket and I was like look, I'm going to need at least like five or six weeks to at least get my body ready,” she added.
In November 2022, while playing for the Brisbane Heat in the WBBL, Georgia ruptured her Achilles – the consequence being a 10-month gruelling period of rehabilitation. “Considering all the rehab that I did the season before, I didn’t wanna come in fresh and do something straight away, I just wanted to get a little bit of prep behind me before I came over,” she said.
While women’s domestic cricket has come on leaps and bounds in its level of professionalism in the past five years or so, it is still very much in its infancy in many ways. Crowds are usually minimal, and the wider general attention paid to it is poor.
Often Australia is looked to as a leading example however, in this case, England are leading the way for women’s T20 domestic cricket. Other than the Women’s Big Bash League – comparable to the Hundred – there is no T20 domestic competition, for example between states.
Speaking about the Charlotte Edwards Cup, Redmayne said: “It's what we were hoping to have in a new state based T20 comp before that competition got canned recently. It's probably more comparable to the WNCL if we had a T20 comp than say the Hundred or the Big Bash, obviously when you get the internationals come in and you get the crowds and the atmosphere.”
“But it's been really great, the couple of games that I've been to so far, the crowd got really into it today. We had thousands of school kids, even at our game at the Oval the other day, it wasn't a double header, but there was a lot of kids and groups that have come which is really cool,” she added.
A key part of South East Stars’ success in the Lottie Cup has been 16-year-old Tilly Corteen-Coleman. Debuting in the competition, she has taken 14 wickets so far, the fourth highest wicket taker. Georgia waxed lyrical about her new teammate. “She's brilliant, she's so impressive,” she said.
“She's only 16 years old, and I’ve following a few of the scores and I think she only maybe started playing midway through the season. In all the games I've watched and been around since then, she’s just become our best bowler and she's 16. [Against the Vipers], par score was 170+ and we were getting hit around everywhere. I think we had an over that went for 20 plus runs and she came in and bowled a maiden and it just looked like a completely different game.”
“For someone that age to have that kind of composure is so impressive. She's the go to bowler for from my perspective, it looks like whenever there's a pressure moment or we need to slow the run rate, she comes on,” she continued.
Another player whom Georgia is familiar with is Brisbane Heat and Queensland teammate Charli Knott. Redmayne and Knott will go head-to-head as they play for South East Stars and Southern Vipers respectively in the second semi-final in the Lottie Cup. Come Saturday, they will be opponents, but Georgia only has praise for the 21-year-old all-rounder.
“I could rave for hours about Charli!” she said. “She made her debut for Queensland, she was 15 or 16, so young and so it feels like she's been around forever. She's only 21, but she's so mature and really calm. She's got a great cricket brain and obviously all-round skills for an off spinner.”
“I know keeping to her, she gets more revs and turn than most, but she’ll be almost the hardest to judge when they come back in. It’s really good to see how she's been going over here. She's one of the top wicket takers in the comp so that's been awesome to see.”
“To see her with the bat getting really great opportunity at the top of the order is really good too for her development. I'm just so excited to kind of see where her career goes as well, hopefully in a few years, we'll see her playing some international cricket too. Don't wanna hype her up too much, but I think she already knows I think she's pretty good.”
The Southern Vipers set 180 to win against the South East Stars in the final round of Lottie Cup fixtures before finals day. The Stars were skittled for 66 within 14 overs – an uncharacteristic result given Stars’ form in the competition. Following that game, it was confirmed that the sides would meet in the Lottie Cup semi-final.
“Yeah look, we were just luring them into a false sense of security today, it's all about the long game and you just gotta win matches when it counts,” Redmayne said.
“I'm really happy that we're playing the Vipers because they are historically that really strong team and I think if you wanna be the best, you gotta beat the best so I'm really excited to play against them.”
“We'll hopefully have a really strong team on Saturday and I hope that they're a bit nervous to play against us because we like to think we can beat anyone on our day so I think it will be a really good game.”
The full episode with Georgia Redmayne can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0VDB8BDxRcGAnpREidxc9I
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