Preview: Lancashire Thunder vs The Blaze, Vitality T20 Women's County Cup Finals Day
Lancashire Thunder squad to face The Blaze:
Ellie Threlkeld (c&wk), Darcey Carter, Danielle Collins, Kate Cross, Sophie Ecclestone, Phoebe Graham Grace Johnson, Tilly Kesteven, Emma Lamb, Ailsa Lister, Fi Morris, Sophie Morris, Tara Norris, Grace Potts, Seren Smale
Lancashire Thunder v The Blaze
Vitality County T20 Cup, Semi-Final
Monday May 26, 2025, 11am
The Cooper Associates County Ground, Taunton
Ellie Threlkeld is relishing the prospect of leading her Lancashire Thunder side out at Finals Day tomorrow in what she has described as a “pretty cool” Vitality County T20 Cup.
The first piece of silverware in county cricket - women’s and men’s - will be decided at Somerset’s Taunton home, with the Red Rose facing last year’s regional Charlotte Edwards Cup T20 champions The Blaze from Nottinghamshire in the second semi-final (2.30pm).
Warwickshire will face Surrey in the first semi, starting at 11am. The final is at 6.45pm.
Thunder have won through two rounds to get to this stage, beating Tier 2 counties Glamorgan and, most recently on Friday, Leicestershire away from home. They beat the Foxes by 109 runs at Kibworth on the back of a 180-4 total.
Seren Smale top-scored with 58 not out, Threlkeld herself contributed an excellent 45 off 27 balls late in the innings before Tara Norris and Sophie Ecclestone claimed three wickets apiece in bowling the hosts out for just 71.
Thunder now face a Blaze side who have done similar, beating Oxfordshire at home in round three and then Kent away in the quarter-finals yesterday.
“I feel like we’ve played some really good cricket this year, and it’s well deserved,” said wicketkeeper-batter Threlkeld. “But now we’ve hopefully got two big games ahead of us.
"These are the moments you train for in the winter as a cricketer.
“We started the season wanting to hunt down three trophies, and this is a stepping stone towards getting one of them.”
The County T20 Cup is a brand new knockout competition introduced by the ECB as a way of bringing together all three tiers in the new domestic structure of women’s cricket.
It’s also a forerunner to the Vitality Blast, which starts for Thunder against The Blaze at Emirates Old Trafford on Saturday lunchtime.
"I think the competition has something a bit similar to the magic of the FA Cup in football,” continued Threlkeld.
“The excitement around it is pretty cool, and the fact you can draw anyone is brilliant for those teams but also brilliant for us to play against different opposition and on different pitches.
“The fact we only had to win two games to get to Finals Day, and it's all quite condensed, is good too.”
Lancashire have now won eight of their 10 matches this summer across both 50-over and T20 cricket. They are undoubtedly on a roll.
"The good thing is we've built some really good momentum in the 50-over competition, and I think that will transfer across,” said Threlkeld, looking ahead to both tomorrow and the start of the Blast.
"We've spoken about how we've done so many things well in the 50-over stuff, and that in the 20-over stuff it just gets condensed.
“We don't need to change too much or go too far away from what we're doing.
“So hopefully we can do that, get over the line and win a trophy.”
Lancashire will have England quartet Kate Cross, Ecclestone, Mahika Gaur and Emma Lamb available for Finals Day, though three of those - Cross, Gaur and Lamb - will then link up with the national team ahead of the ODI series against the West Indies, starting on Friday.
A late winter knee injury means the England management want left-arm spinner Ecclestone to get some more game time under her belt in county cricket, so she is set to start the Blast with the Red Rose.
This is Lancashire Thunder’s second appearance at a Finals Day in the five-and-a-half-year professional era of domestic cricket in England having reached this stage in the 2023 Charlotte Edwards Cup. They are bidding for their first trophy in that period.
Opposition player to watch
Scotland international Kathryn Bryce is a talismanic figure for The Blaze, both with bat and ball.
Capped 59 times across 50-over and T20 cricket, she has hit 310 runs and taken 11 wickets for her domestic side in this season’s Metro Bank One-Day Cup.
She has all the experience in the world and is classy and composed with the bat and canny with her medium pacers.
The 27-year-old from Edinburgh is closing in on 3,500 career T20 runs and, in the win against Kent yesterday, claimed her 150th career wicket in that format.
How’s Stat!
Should Lancashire reach the final tomorrow evening, and - as expected - batter Seren Smale plays both games, she would make her 50th career senior T20 appearance.
The Wrexham born England up-and-comer, aged 20, first played in that format for Cheshire in 2019. She has gone on to play for Cumbria, Lancashire, Thunder, Birmingham Phoenix and England.
She has 770 runs to her name, including one hundred and three fifties. Her third fifty came against Leicestershire on Friday to help the Red Rose get to this stage.