Having had a rough ol' time against the English in T20 and ODI cricket recently, a bunch of our White Ferns stayed on in England to play in the Women's T20 Super League. All the Kiwi County Tour veterans and T20 superstars are in action with Sophie Devine, Suzie Bates, Amy Satterthwaite, Sara McGlashan and Rachel Priest also joined by Amelia Kerr who makes her first KCT/Super League appearance.

Can’t wait to start the season tomorrow with the @southernvipers in the Kia Super League tomorrow. Fun times ahead with this bunch 🏏☀️🐍

A post shared by suziebates (@suziebates) on Jul 21, 2018 at 1:04pm PDT

There have been six games so far and Yorkshire Diamonds take on Lancashire Thunder Saturday morning NZT. Southern Vipers have the biggest, baddest KCT gang on their books with Bates leading the team, along with veteran T20 soldier McGlashan and the youngster Kerr.

The Vipers won their first game vs Surrey Stars, chasing down a target of 142 in 17 overs. Despite the KCT firepower, this game didn't feature any notable contributions; Kerr took 1w in 4ov @ 5.75, Bates didn't take a wicket in her 3ov @ 10rpo and scored 9 off 12 while McGlashan did help steer the Vipers home with 9 off 5.

They then came up against Sophie Devine's Loughborough Lightning, which the Lightning won. Bates was trapped lbw by Devine for 0 and McGlashan managed 4 off 4, while Kerr hit 4 off 5 as the Vipers were dismissed for 105 in 19.3 overs.

Follow the 2018 Kia Super League here: www.ecb.co.uk/super-league Loughborough produced a dominant performance to dismiss the Vipers in this Kia Super League encounter at the Ageas Bowl. Sophie Devine and co bundle the Vipers out for just 105, before chasing the total down in 18.5 overs. This is the official channel of the ECB.

Despite 1w from 4ov @ 1.50rpo from Kerr, Loughborough reached their target with an over to spare. Bates concede 7rpo from her 2ov without a wicket, while Devine scored 11 off 14 opening the batting after taking 3w in 4ov @ 5.25rpo opening the bowling for Loughborough.

Devine is also captaining Loughborough, making this a grudge match between the two kiwi skippers with Bates captaining Southern. Devine got the bickies this time and this was her second win over a White Ferns comrade as the Lightning defeated Amy Satterthwaite's Lancashire Thunder in their first outing.

Satterthwaite could only manage 6 off 9 for Lancashire and 3w in 2.5ov @ 5.29rpo for Devine helped dismissed Lancashire for just 72. Devine hit 11 off 11 to start the innings and Loughborough chased down their target fairly easily in 15 overs.

Western Storm grabbed a win over Yorkshire Diamonds, with Rachel Priest opening the batting for the Storm. Unfortunately Priest was lbw first ball in the Storm's chase of 163 for victory, but Western still strolled to victory, scoring at 10.7rpo to reach their target in the 16th over. Priest hasn't featured in the White Ferns recently after being dropped, so this is an ideal chance for her to remind everyone what she can do with the willow. Not a great start though.

Priest did bounce back with a solid 21 off 20 balls in Western's next game against Surrey Stars, which ended up being the second highest score of their innings as they scored 132 in their 20 overs. Surrey made fairly easy work of their chase though, reaching their target in the 16th over.

Leading all wicket-takers is Devine, with 3w in each of her games so far. Devine is the only bowler who has taken 6w and although Kerr only has 2w from her first two games, she has only conceded 3.62rpo from her 8ov. That's the second-lowest economy rate of any bowler with 2+ wickets and the player with a better economy rate has only played one game, bowling 4ov.

Kiwi connection ready for KSL with the @southernvipers 🐍

A post shared by Amelia Kerr (@meliekerrr) on Jul 21, 2018 at 1:41pm PDT

Devine also leads the kiwis in runs, with 22 runs @ 88sr. That's good enough to have Devine ranked 15th in runs, with Priest 17th thanks to her knock of 21. Bates is battling with just 9 runs from 2inns and while McGlashan's only scored 13 runs so far, she has scored those runs with an impressive strike-rate of 144.44.

Overall, that's a pretty mediocre start from the kiwis on the KCT and hopefully they can start to have greater influence on their team's performances. The player to watch is Satterthwaite and it's not for good reasons as Satterthwaite is knee deep in a slump and far from her best. Satterthwaite has a top-score of 61 in her last 10inns, going back to an ODI against Ireland and other than that, through 6 T20 innings and 3 ODI innings, Satterwhaite has a peaked at 37 in a T20 vs England.

More specifically in T20 internationals, Satterthwaite has passed 40 just three times in 15inns since the start of 2017.

Take that further and since hitting four ODI centuries in four consecutive innings vs Pakistan and Australia in the summer of 2016/17, Sattherthwaite has not hit a century. In 2018, Satterthwaite has passed 50 twice in 9inns. By Satterthwaite's standards, this is an almighty slump. Perhaps the saving grace here is that Satterthwaite tends to do better in domestic T20 tournaments, over T20 internationals. Right now though, she's struggling to reach her lofty heights in all formats.

Hit an ad to support the Kiwi County Tour.

Or jump on Patreon and support the Niche Cache directly, we drop bonus stuff for the Patrons and take care of the homies.

Peace and love 27.