In the 13th over of the Storm innings at Bristol on Sunday, Niamh Holland tried to play a sweep shot to a dreadful full-toss off Georgia Adams. The ball ballooned up into the air and 3 Vipers fielders descended upon it, only for it to equilaterally triangulate them perfectly and land safely on the grass between them. It was a moment that summed up a day when things didn’t quite click for Vipers.
And yet… they came away with the win nonetheless, thanks to an electrifying sprinting catch on the boundary by Alice Monaghan to dismiss Heather Knight, who was looking on course to notch up a One Woman Win for the Storm on their final visit to Bristol before they morph into Somerset at the turn of the season.
Had that catch evaded Monaghan’s outstretched grasp – as it had every right to do – it would have gone for 6, leaving Knight needing 18 off 11 balls – an ask which felt well within her, given the way she was dominating proceedings. Say what you like about the England captain (really… I have!) but she was a different class out there today, scoring 64% of Storm’s runs off the bat at a strike rate of 123. No one else was close – not for Storm (their next highest scorer was Sophie Luff who made 12 off 19 balls) nor Vipers.
The 137-9 that Viper had posted, having been put in to bat after Storm won the toss, didn’t feel par, even if it mathematically was – a typical first innings score in the Lottie Cup is 138. Oddly it was not top-scorer Georgia Adams who looked the most convincing of the Vipers batters, but Aussie overseas Charli Knott, who made 37 before having what might politely be termed a “senior moment” – dancing down the pitch to Amanda-Jade Wellington, and getting stumped as a consequence.
Wello is the Stump Queen – she has taken aroundabout 130 wickets in WBBL, with fully a quarter of them stumped. No one else comes close to that number – Alana King is closest, with 15% of 100-odd wickets stumped – so Knott needs to learn a lesson there, and… well… as Taylor Swift once so nearly said: Can you just Knott!
Vipers were kept at bay with the bat partly by a really positive performance from Lauren Filer, who took 3-8 from her 4 overs, with just the one wide in extras. They were good wickets too. She induced a poor shot from Maia Bouchier in her first over; forced Freya Kemp so far back into her crease that she trod on her own stumps; and finally did Nancy Harman for sheer pace. Filer outbowled her key rival for a slot in England’s T20 XI – Lauren Bell – with Jon Lewis there to see it too.
Both Filer and Knight deserved to be on the winning side, but with Dani Gibson still out injured, Storm just didn’t have the batting to finish the job, when all it would have taken was someone staying with Knight that little bit longer.
As for Vipers, how many times have we said about them that the key to success is winning when you aren’t at your best? Here at Bristol, we find ourselves saying it again.
