New Season, New Hopes, New Sponsor, New Linda
- Roving Reporter
- May 5
- 4 min read
In a world where change is seen as sceptical and new things are frowned upon, the Fleckney Women's Softball team bucks that trend and embraces all that is new.
We have a new season - the 2025 East Midlands Women's Cricket League Division One South began with matches against Oakham and North Kilworth.
We have new hopes - a good winter of training at Kibworth Mead Academy and then a victory over Ilston Abbey in the pre-season match. In that particular game, we posted 267 - a 33 for Rachel Seneschall-Jones and 20 from Lucy Bateman. The pick of the bowlers was our own Jo Hennell, who picked up 2-19 guesting for our opponents. In response, we limited our friends from the other side of the hill to 252 - Lucy picking up the key wicket of her "bestie" Hennell - despite being great mates, she still celebrated in Bateman style.
We have a new sponsor—the wonderful Leicestershire Craft Centre. This is not an #Ad as we fully endorse their brilliance—to such an extent that we have done two parties at the centre, and I've been able to produce some Christmas decorations and a Candle. For some context, me and crafts go together like metal and microwaves. In high school, it took me 6 months to try to build a wooden block and still fail. My role at home is assistant instruction reader whenever any DIY furniture is bought.
And finally... we have several new players - including one who is constantly new. Joining the fold over the winter have been Debbie Molyneux and Sarah Skinner, both are welcome additions, and we await their league debuts. On the pitch on Sunday were Rachel Seneschall-Jones and our new Linda, in fact our only Linda to date, Linda New. Both Linda and Rachel were making their league debuts after only playing friendlies at the back end of last season.
That was a long introduction for the first game.
Regular readers will note that we don't do hyperbole at Fleckney, but our batting performance against Oakham was country miles better than anything we have done previously. A solid foundation from Jo Hennell back in Fleckney colours and Kinaari Shah was built upon by some great running and intelligent batting from Jodie Coleman and Linda New. Luna (Anna Roberts and Lucy Bateman - Vice Captain and Captain respectively) added some further oomph to the score - a 4 from Anna was enough to get the entire crowd purring - before some absolutely quality biffing from Rachel Seneschall-Jones, who scored 37 off 19 deliveries in the final 4 overs. She worked alongside Katharine Wright, who kept rotating strike.
127 runs off just 16 overs is proper power hitting.
We went into the break knowing that we had the momentum but needed to back it up with a strong bowling attack to ensure that we didn't allow Oakham a sniff. But no fear, we have Hennell, we have Shah, these two both got 4-0-10-1, so that's 20 off 8 of the overs and 2 wickets (so 10 runs back to us) - the level of consistency that these two provide is nothing short of sensational. Anna Roberts picked up a wicket as well, and there were a couple of run-outs.
I think we would have won this game last season, but the level of victory (85 runs) puts a real statement out that this group of ladies mean business this season.
The 2nd league match was a quick affair. North Kilworth only had 4 players, so conceded the points but were keen to play cricket - they are a good lot - so we played a friendly.
We batted first and got 92 runs and didn't lose a wicket - Kinaari Shah and Rachel Seneschall-Jones did what they do but it was Katie Wood's innings that pleased the reporter the most - good intelligent shot placement to rotate the strike - and this was after waiting in the freezing cold whilst the first match was played.
In response, we had Linda New getting her first two wickets for the club (2-0-5-2), Jo Hennell becoming our leading wicket taker - she now sits on 22 wickets - she gets a wicket every 17 deliveries she bowls. Both Katharine Wright and Jodie Coleman played for North Kilworth and were, of course, their best players. We restricted them to 21 runs.
A fabulous day for the team - 3 wins - on what was a fantastic weekend for the club - we're only a small club but we played 10 games from Friday to Sunday - the U10s and U11s went to (and beat Leicester Ivanhoe, a special day for me as my boy made his Fleckney debut in the U10s), the 1s went to Kibworth in the league on Saturday, the 2s beat Market Overton at home, the U13s had a close games at Countesthorpe and the friendly side went to Kibworth on Sunday.
We are All Fleckney Ain't We...
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