Women's One-Day Competition: Update #1
Lea Tahuhu just takes them wickets.
Last weekend saw the National Women's One-Day Competition get underway with each team playing two games across the weekend. Canterbury grabbed two wins and sit at the top of the table as they were the only team to win both games, while Otago, Auckland and Northern all won a game each. Central and Wellington are both without a win, although the game between Central and Otago was rained out.
This weekend will see another round of back-to-back games, sending us domestic cricket nerds into a frenzy as we ponder the Women's One-Day comp heating up just as the Super Smash T20 competition gets underway for the lads.
Down in Alexandra, Canterbury (1st) will take on Otago (2nd) in the highlight of the Saturday fixtures. Auckland (3rd) will host Central (5th) and Northern (4th) will host Wellington (6th) up in Whangarei. Sunday will then see a repeat dosage with the same fixtures in the same locations which is a pretty smart move in terms of scheduling.
With the White Ferns turning out for their domestic teams, we are being treated to the top-shelf of women's cricket in Aotearoa mixing it up with the domestic battlers. Canterbury sit at the top of the table and that's largely thanks to the ever-impressive Amy Satterthwaite as she backed up her freakish performances for the Ferns with similarly dominant displays against Wellington, albeit with some support of Frances Mackay.
Satterthwaite took 2/17 and 2/23 in the two games, while also hitting 81 in the Sunday game. This means that Satterthwaite's last nine innings' look like this: 53, 53, 18, 137*, 115*, 123, 14, 21, 81. With 4 wickets in two games, Satterthwaite sits in 3rd for wickets and she's 2nd to Mackay for runs with the opening pair hitting three half-centuries between them last weekend. Mackay doubled up on impressive scores, hitting 95* on Saturday and 79* on Sunday. With 19 ODI caps for the White Ferns (last was in 2014), Mackay could be someone to pay close attention to as the Ferns look for some depth at the top of the order; Mackay hit 19 boundaries last weekend and doesn't have an average thus far.
Other players who hit half-centuries were Wellington's Amelia Kerr and Liz Perry, along with Northern pair Sam Curtis and Natalie Dodd. Aside from Mackay - who has two not-out innings - the highest batting average goes to Satterthwaite (51) while Dodd is next up on 50.
Canterbury have two wins, the two top run-scorers as well as the leading wicket-taker Lea Tahuhu. The White Ferns opening bowler took 5 wickets in the opening round (2/42 and 3/36 against Wellington) which has her slightly ahead of a chasing pack, all of whom have 4 wickets.
Millie Cowan is at the front of that chasing pack after the Otago seamer took 4/31 in the Saturday game (Sunday was rained out), with the rest of the bowlers on 4 wickets taking their wickets in two games. That obviously includes Satterthwaite and she has conceded the least runs against her bowling of the top wicket-takers, conceding just 3pro (Cowan - 3.10rpo, Tahuhu - 3.90rpo).
Regina Lili'i (Auckland) also took her 4 wicekts in one game, taking 4/47 and then hitting 31* in the Saturday game against Northern. Canterbury seamer Hayley Jensen took 2/15 and 2/36, with Jensen playing four ODI's for the White Ferns (last in 2014) and Lili'i representing Samoa, Cowan is the only bowler who hasn't played international cricket with over 3 wickets so far.
After this weekend's double-header, the competition takes a break until later in December. That break can only mean one thing as the Women's Big Bash League gets underway across the ditch and you already know we're gonna be all over that.