PLAYER DIARY: Fi Morris looks ahead to first Roses clash of the professional era
The first battle of the Roses in professional cricket on Saturday, at Emirates Old Trafford, it’s going to be super-exciting. We can’t wait, and I’m sure the Yorkshire girls will be exactly the same.
We’ve actually played them three times already in warm-up games in Potchefstroom and at Mirfield in the last few weeks, and even they got pretty spicy.
It probably tells you all you need to know about the competitiveness between the two teams.
For someone like myself, I’m not from Lancashire or Yorkshire, but I still know how big the rivalry is.
I actually spent a little bit of time growing up in Yorkshire - certainly not enough to gain any loyalty, though.
We’ve played really well against them in the warm-ups, winning all three games. But it doesn’t mean a thing on Saturday.
Every year, the standard of this competition just gets better and better. It’s actually quite scary how quickly things are going in that sense. And Yorkshire beating The Blaze shows that anyone can beat anyone. It’s good for the competition.
Us winning a couple of trophies last summer, I think we’re under attack a bit this year. Teams want to knock us off our perch, like The Blaze and Somerset have shown over the last week. There are no easy games.
Yorkshire have quality, but they’re a young side.
Lauren Winfield-Hill up top, she’s a brilliant player. Jess Jonassen is a fantastic overseas signing with bat and ball. She’s so experienced and consistent. Then you have someone like a Sterre Kalis coming in in the middle order.
They’re perhaps a bit more inexperienced with the ball, but we will need to be at our best against them.
It actually surprised me a bit that Durham got the Tier 1 team over Yorkshire. But they’ve absolutely showed it was the right decision. Now, though, it’s good to have them in. They’re too big a county not to have a Tier 1 women’s team.
Although I know Olivia Thomas and Hannah Rainey, who were with us at Lancs, I don’t know too many of their girls. It’s going to be very competitive, for sure.
We head into that game on the back of a couple of defeats on Wednesday against The Blaze and Sunday against Somerset.
It was a really good wicket for the Somerset game - it always is at Southport - and a fast outfield. We probably felt a bit light with the bat in posting 259-8, probably 20 or 30 runs. We lost a few too many wickets at the end. I thought they actually bowled and fielded really well.
It was a good effort with the ball, but fine margins. Dani Gibson came in at the end and played brilliantly for her 60. She hit the ball super hard, which was very hard to defend in the end.
They’ve got a lot of experience in that middle order, with Heather Knight, Sophie Luff, Dani Gibson and Charlie Dean. Every time we took a wicket, we didn’t feel on top of them. They kept coming at us.
But, onwards and upwards.
We’ve set really good platforms again with the bat in all our games. It’s what we pride ourselves on as a team. I don’t really like the phrase ‘brand of cricket’. But I guess if I’m going to use it, that is ours.
We’re used to setting ourselves up in the first 30 overs to then hopefully go and explode in the last 20. We’re doing the first part of it well.
I also think our fielding has been outstanding. Against The Blaze last week, especially, I thought we were electric in the field.
I enjoyed the catch I took of Bex Odgers at mid-wicket off Mahika Gaur against Somerset. She hit it pretty hard, and I felt like I was going to be taken with it to the boundary.
It’s something I work really hard on, my fielding. That’s something which is controllable. There are many things which aren’t controllable in cricket. You might get a good ball against you or you’ll get someone who bats well against you. But your fielding is something you can control. It’s an attitude, and I think we’ve been brilliant so far this season.
Hopefully we can go into Saturday and pull everything together and get our second win on the board.
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