The weekend of 15-16 June saw four matches completed. That now leaves one more mid- week round before the finals take place at Derby on 22 June.
Here are the bare results:
1 SE Stars 153-4 Blaze 111-5
SES won by 19 runs (DLS method)
2 Southern Vipers 98 Central Sparks 99-5
Central Sparks won by 5 wickets
3 Northern Diamonds 146-3 Western Storm 118-7
Northern Diamonds won by 28 runs
4 The Blaze 84 SE Stars 89-5
SES won by 5 wickets
These results leave the top of the table looking like this (9 rounds played):
W L NR Pts
Blaze 8 1 0 35
SES 7 1 1 34
CS 6 3 0 26
SV 5 4 0 21
It’s strange but heartening to see Vipers, once the queens of all they surveyed, struggling to qualify for the day of glamour.
There were some stunning results. Blaze lost their first match of the series (at Derby again) by a street to their leading challengers.
SES had played the day before too, against their cross-Thames rivals, Sunrisers. The margin of victory looks far narrower on paper than it did on the ground (the Oval), where the visitors never seemed likely to match a commanding total of 153 off only 18 overs.
Diamonds picked up their second win of the tournament by beating Storm comfortably. Storm have lost a lot of ground since their palmy days of success.
Vipers continued their less than exalted run by losing decisively to Sparks at Worcester. (I’m so pleased to be able to add that location still!)
They lie five points behind Sparks, so need those five more to stand a chance. Then we have the tricky matter of net run-rate (NRR) to decide the issue. At present Sparks stand on +0.483, Vipers on +0.459; it’s exceptionally tight.
I’ll leave you to do the higher mathematics and the probablities. In any case, we have one more round to help decide the issue, to be played on 19 June. It looks like this:
1 Sparks v Blaze, Birmingham
2 Diamonds v Thunder, Chester-le-Street
3 Vipers v Stars, Hove
4 Sunrisers v Storm, Chelmsford
So the two most anxious sides face these challenges:
Sparks take on the leading team in the competition (-). They play at home (+); Blaze lost their last
match (+?)
Vipers also play at home (+), but against the form team of the moment (-), who have just inflicted
a first defeat on the leaders (-).
