When Amelie Munday signed her first professional contract with Somerset in late 2024, it marked the culmination of years of hard work. Yet the contract offer itself came with a period of uncertainty. "I was about to fly out to Australia. It was about three days before I flew," Munday recalls. "I knew there were conversations going on. I knew they were going into meetings to decide contract or no contract and I was like, 'Guys, I literally fly in three days. Can you just tell me?'"...
For someone who has already achieved so much so quickly, Sophia Smale spends surprisingly little time talking about what comes next. The conversation drifts instead towards old bats stacked up at home, a childhood medal won in Newport, and a ticket from her professional debut that she still keeps tucked away years later. “I like things like that,” she says. “I like to think about the journey I was on.”
There’s something fitting about the way Phoebe Turner tells her story. No grand declarations, no overcomplication, just a clear, grounded sense of where she’s come from and where she’s going. It mirrors her cricket. “I try to keep my game really simple,” she says at one point. It’s a line she returns to more than once, and it might just be the key to understanding one of the most exciting young bowlers in the English domestic game right now. I sat down with Turner ahead of the 2026 season to talk about her journey, from street cricket in Yorkshire to a breakthrough year with Durham, a new long-term contract, and a growing sense that she’s only just getting started.
Surrey CCC have confirmed that 29-year-old quick Tash Farrant will retire from professional cricket with immediate effect after a long-running lower back injury failed to respond to treatment.
19,527. I’ll let that number sink in for a minute. That was the number of people who filled Edgbaston in Birmingham to witness the first IT20 of this year’s women’s Ashes series. England vs Australia, the absolute pinnacle of cricket. They weren’t disappointed, with a last over thriller which went the way of the Aussies.… Continue reading Women’s Domestic Cricket – The Elephant in the Room
