The Blaze Reach Final as Bryce Sisters Dominate Essex
The Blaze’s charge towards a domestic treble rolled on at Queen’s Park, Chesterfield, as they brushed aside Essex Women with a ruthless nine-wicket win to seal top spot in the Metro Bank Women’s One-Day Cup table and a place in the final.
They did not just qualify. They dominated.
Hampshire Women’s win over The Blaze at the Utilita Bowl on Wednesday had briefly knocked the East Midlands side off their perch. With Hampshire’s fixtures complete, The Blaze arrived in Derbyshire knowing that simply avoiding defeat against bottom side Essex would be enough to reclaim first place.
They chose to make a statement instead.
Gordon leads the squeeze
Opting to bowl first, The Blaze never allowed Essex to breathe. Bryony Gilgrass, just 19, opened with a handful of attractive strokes in the powerplay alongside captain Grace Scrivens, hinting at a platform. Cassidy McCarthy ended that early promise, skidding one through to pin Gilgrass in front, then striking again as Jodi Grewcock cut straight to backward point.
Essex rebuilt through Scrivens and Sophie Smale. Smale counter-punched, taking McCarthy for back-to-back boundaries, only for the revival to stall again. Lucy Higham trapped Smale on the back foot, then induced a top edge from Jo Gardner that was safely pouched on the leg side.
From 80-2, the innings unravelled. Kirstie Gordon, the left-arm spinner and Blaze captain, tightened the noose. She trapped Mollie Adams, another 19-year-old, lbw playing back, before Kathryn Bryce joined the attack and bowled Liberty Heap. Essex, once steady, suddenly slumped to 89-6.
Scrivens stood firm. The skipper’s 70 from 116 balls was an innings of defiance and patience, the only one of real substance as wickets fell around her. She found some support from Sophie Munro in a 41-run stand that briefly threatened to push Essex towards respectability.
Then came the chaos. A misfield tempted an aborted single, Munro stranded and run out to undo that hard work. Gordon, in the thick of it again, flung herself forward to cling on to a diving return catch and remove Esmae MacGregor. Scrivens’ vigil ended in frustration, a bottom-edge onto her stumps, before Bryce finished the job in the 46th over as Abtaha Maqsood holed out to long-on.
Essex were all out for 159 in 45.4 overs. Gordon’s figures – 3-25 – underlined her control, with Bryce, Higham and McCarthy each taking two wickets in a collective squeeze that never really loosened.
Bryce sisters shut the door
If Essex needed early breakthroughs to make a game of it, they had one moment. Only one.
Esmae MacGregor, erratic but dangerous, produced a beauty to bowl Tammy Beaumont, the former England opener, with a delivery that jagged back and clipped the top of off stump. It was the kind of ball that can tilt a chase.
Instead, it proved the last thing Essex had to cheer.
From there, the Scotland internationals took over. Sarah and Kathryn Bryce walked out together and simply dismantled the target. They did it with clarity, with tempo, and with an air of inevitability that drained the contest of tension long before the winning runs came.
Sarah Bryce was crisp and clinical, threading the field with 10 fours. Kathryn matched her authority, driving and pulling with power, striking 12 fours and the only six of the innings. The pair barely offered a chance as Essex’s attack struggled for discipline, line, or any kind of sustained threat.
The partnership surged past fifty, then a hundred, and still the scoring rate climbed. Fielders spread, heads dropped, and the chase became a procession. By the time Kathryn lashed the winning boundary, The Blaze had 185 balls to spare and an unbroken stand of 132 in the book – Sarah unbeaten on 70, Kathryn on 67.
A modest target had been hunted down in just 19.1 overs.
Treble dream stays alive
The Blaze have already lifted the Vitality Blast and the Vitality T20 County Cup this season. Now they stand one win away from adding the One-Day Cup to that haul.
Hampshire, who beat them earlier in the week, must first navigate an eliminator against the winners of Saturday’s clash between Surrey Women and Somerset Women. The prize for coming through that mini gauntlet is a shot at The Blaze in the final at the Utilita Bowl on 19 September.
On this evidence, whoever emerges will walk into a storm of form, confidence and a side playing like champions who have no intention of stopping at two trophies.
