2016 Women's Cricket Super League
The competition, run by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), consisted of six franchise teams playing in a Twenty20 format.
Three teams qualified from the league stage of the competition; the Southern Vipers went directly into the final, while the Loughborough Lightning and Western Storm met in a semi-final.
[8][9] A number of changes were made to the squads; before they were even officially announced, the Lancashire Thunder had to find a replacement for Jess Jonassen, who withdrew due to injury.
[11] The Lancashire Thunder suffered further disruption in the weeks leading up to the competition, when Sarah Taylor, who was initially named as their captain, confirmed that she would not take part in the tournament while she took a break from cricket to deal with anxiety and panic attacks.
[12] Another late change was necessitated by a shoulder injury to Meg Lanning, with Lea Tahuhu replacing her in the Surrey Stars squad.
[15] The following day saw two low-scoring matches; the Surrey Stars were restricted to 85 runs from their 20 overs by an economic Southern Vipers bowling attack.
[17] The Lancashire Thunder took on the Loughborough Lightning in the fourth match of the tournament, and the two teams combined to score over 300 runs.
In their reply, Tammy Beaumont, Bryony Smith and Nat Sciver all made good starts to help their side chase down the total and give the Stars a six wicket victory with 11 balls remaining.
The Thunder lost Matthews from the fourth ball of their batting innings, but then recovered with a 57-run second wicket partnership between Satterthwaite and Emma Lamb.
In their reply, the Western Storm lost Rachel Priest early, but two big partnership involving Stafanie Taylor, who scored 78 not out, helped them to victory with 13 balls remaining.
In Lancashire's chase, Danielle Hazell took four wickets, and Katherine Brunt took a hat-trick to bowl the Thunder out for 71 runs.
That meant that Yorkshire and Lancashire had each won once during the tournament, and irrespective of results in the last round of group matches, neither could qualify for finals day; both the Southern Vipers and Western Storm would join the Loughborough Lightning.
The Southern Vipers faced the Loughborough Lightning, and batting first a team effort saw them reach 156 for 4; Bates scored 38, Sara McGlashan got 34* and Lydia Greenway 29.
Despite scores in the thirties from Perry and Evelyn Jones, a strong bowling performance from the Vipers, in which Linsey Smith and Brindle each took three wickets, saw them to victory by 59 runs.
[30] The first match of the women's finals day, the Western Storm won the toss and decided to bowl first against the Loughborough Lightning.
The scoring-rate slowed further after Devine's dismissal for 21 runs, but a late surge from Perry and Thea Brookes helped Loughborough reach 124 for seven.
[32] The Western Storm opening batsmen, Stafanie Taylor and Rachel Priest started well, propelling the score to 71 without loss after ten overs.
[33] Heather Knight and Priest got out soon after one another, scoring 6 and 57 respectively, before the Storm's middle-order batsmen; Fran Wilson (16*), Lizelle Lee (6), Sophie Luff (2) and Georgia Hennessy (9*), added a few more runs to bring their total to 140 from 20 overs.
