Cricket: Lancashire Women win the double

The Red Rose Women’s 1st XI hosted Nottinghamshire at Heywood and resulted in an impressive win by 63 runs

Lancashire Women have won the two domestic county women’s competitions to take the double, with victory in the NatWest Women’s County T20 earlier in the season, and now the Royal London Women’s One-Day Championship.

The Red Rose Women’s First XI went into the final round of fixtures in the Royal London Women’s One-Day Championship Division One with a slim chance of lifting the title needing to win both of their games and hoping for results elsewhere to go their way.

Lancashire Women defeat Notts

The first game of the weekend saw them host Nottinghamshire at Heywood and resulted in an impressive win by 63 runs to keep their hopes alive.

Having won the toss and batted Lancashire Women got off to a solid start as Emma Lamb and Evelyn Jones added 62 for the first wicket before Emma was caught for a fine 33.

Amy Satterthwaite then came in to join Jones and together they took the score up to 107 when Amy was dismissed for 21.

Wickets then started to fall with some regularity and despite Jones hitting an excellent 62 they found themselves on 145-9.

Rachel Dickinson joined Shachi Pai and together they took the score up to a more useful 171 all out with Dickinson making 18.

The Notts reply never really got going as they lost wickets at regular intervals and soon found themselves on 22-5.

Sophie Ecclestone bowled superbly to take 4/19 with the rest of the bowlers backing her up well, and it was only thanks to a last wicket stand of 40 that Nottinghamshire managed to edge over the 100 mark to finish all out on 108.

Lancashire Women victorious against Warwickshire

Bank Holiday Monday saw the girls travel down to the Edgbaston Foundation Ground knowing that they effectively needed to get a maximum points win over fellow title chasers Warwickshire and hope that Nottinghamshire could do Lancashire a massive favour by defeating Yorkshire comprehensively.

Warwickshire won the toss and decided to bat on a glorious sunny day against the bowling of England pair Sophie Ecclestone and Heywood's Kate Cross.

Ecclestone bowled quite brilliantly and was soon among the wickets quickly taking four wickets and adding a catch off Cross for good measure to leave Warwickshire 27-5.

Cross then took a second before a seventh wicket stand of 26 which threatened to start a recovery.

Natalie Brown cut that short before Ecclestone returned to help mop up the tail and finish with remarkable figures of 10-5-12-6.

Cross taking the final wicket to finish with 3/33, Warwickshire were dismissed for just 88.

Warwickshire came out fighting and took 3 early wickets to leave the game in the balance at 21-3.

Ellie Threlkeld joined Eve Jones and together they took the score to 59 before Threlkeld was stumped for 15.

Cross came in and rattled up a quick 19 before holing out and it was left to Ecclestone to administer the final blows with 2 quick boundaries.

Jones had played an invaluable unbeaten 35 to anchor the innings.

Confirmation of Lancashire Women as champions and double winners

An anxious wait for news from Welbeck then ensued as Nottinghamshire chased Yorkshire’s total of 178. Eventually word came through that they had won by six wickets and Lancashire were confirmed as champions.

Dan Atkinson, head coach for Lancashire Women, said: “I am incredibly proud of this group of women who have worked so hard all year.

"It is probably fair to say that we weren’t expecting to finish the season with any silverware, as our primary aim at the start was to consolidate our position in the top tier of the Royal London 50 overs championship, but to win both the NatWest T20 and now the Royal London county championship is an unbelievable achievement.

“Going into the last game, we knew what we needed to do to stay in contention and challenge for the title but so much was out of our control relying on Nottinghamshire to beat Yorkshire by a healthy margin.

"We played excellent cricket against Warwickshire to secure our win with full bonus points but it made for a very nervy journey home, checking social media every ten seconds to see how the Notts girls were getting on.

"When news came through that Notts had defeated Yorkshire by six wickets the feeling was amazing.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the women for their hard work and determination over the summer, to Meg Fairclough for her leadership on the pitch this year and thanks to everyone else who has contributed in the background to this season.”

Lancashire Women won the Royal London One-Day Championship by one point, ahead of Yorkshire. The team led by captain Meg Fairclough, backed by coach Dan Atkinson and his staff, has pulled off the double as both 50 and 20 over First Division champions – the first top level trophies ever won by Lancashire Women.