The sun may have set on women’s regional cricket, but Sunrisers pulled a fairytale win out of the bag at the last, beating South East Stars by 27 runs with a little bit of help from Duckworth-Lewis-Stern.
Sunrisers have spent three seasons as the competition’s perennial losers, unable to win a game, but lifted the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy at Leicester on Saturday at the final time of asking.
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Lightning forced the teams from the field 25 overs into Sunrisers’ chase and torrential rain came down shortly afterwards, with no further play possible. The rain fell at a fortuitous moment for the Sunrisers, shortly after off-spinner Kalea Moore took two wickets in the space of four overs – Cordelia Griffith driving into the hands of extra cover, Jodi Grewcock bunting a return catch – to leave them 121 for three at the halfway point of their chase.
But a sweetly struck half-century from Griffith and a sensible, unbeaten 39 from captain Grace Scrivens had ensured they were already well ahead of the DLS par. Loud whoops could be heard from their dressing room as the umpires informed them of the result.
The match marked the end of five seasons of regional cricket, which is being ditched partly due to consistently poor crowds. Sure enough, only 200 people were present to witness Sunrisers’ triumph and a very soggy end of an era.
Conscious of the weather forecast, Scrivens had chosen to bowl first, running the risk of Stars – who have one of the most powerful batting line-ups – racking up an enormous total.
Her bowlers rose to the occasion: Kate Coppack took career-best figures of four for 27, shattering the stumps of Alexa Stonehouse, Paige Scholfield and Phoebe Franklin with a combination of swing and seam movement, and reducing Stars to 21 for three in the first six overs.
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Alice Davidson-Richards followed up her match-winning 90 in the semi-final with 93 here, finishing as the competition’s leading run-scorer with 650 runs. But she was trapped leg-before by Mady Villiers and Scrivens sent down 8.2 overs of off-spin, conceding 21 runs as Sunrisers bowled Stars out for 212 in 46.2 overs.
Away from cricket, the 30-year-old Coppack is an employment lawyer; on Saturday she handed notice to Stonehouse and Scholfield within the space of three balls, bowling Scholfield with a hooping inswinger, before returning for a second spell to have the dangerous-looking Kira Chathli adjudged lbw.
Coppack was also instrumental in the run-out of the Stars captain, Bryony Smith. Back from a spell opening the batting for England against Ireland, Smith wandered down the pitch, only to be sent back by Davidson-Richards; Coppack fielded a slightly wonky throw-in from Villiers at midwicket and frantically dived, ball in hand, to remove the bails.
Sunrisers faced the prospect of a nervous chase but Griffith calmly continued the recent purple patch of four half-centuries in her past five matches as Sunrisers pulled off a magical win.
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