The Essex Women's cricket team is the women's representative
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...
. They play their home games at various grounds across the county, including Toby Howe Cricket Ground,
Billericay
Billericay ( ) is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Basildon, Essex, England. It lies within the London Basin and constitutes a commuter town east of Central London. The town has three secondary schools and a variety of open spaces. It i ...
Southend-on-Sea
Southend-on-Sea (), commonly referred to as Southend (), is a coastal city and unitary authority area with borough status in southeastern Essex, England. It lies on the north side of the Thames Estuary, east of central London. It is bordered ...
. They are captained by Kelly Castle. In 2019, they played in Division Two of the final season of the
Essex Women played their first recorded match in 1949, against Buckinghamshire Women. Over the following years, Essex went on to play various one-off matches, most often against local Second XI teams.
2000– : Women's County Championship
Essex joined the
Women's County Championship
The Women's County Championship, known since 2014 as the Royal London Women’s One-Day Cup,2001, competing in Division Three, in which they came third, with two victories. They played in the bottom tier of the Championship until
2008
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, when they were promoted to Division Two. In Division Two, Essex performed strongly, finishing third and second in their first two seasons before being promoted in 2011. In a rain-hit
2012
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season, Essex then finished second in Division One, behind
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
. After this, however, Essex fell away, being relegated from Division One in
2014
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, and then again from Division Two in
2016
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. They managed to bounce straight back, winning Division 3C in
2017
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, and playing in Division Two ever since. Meanwhile, in the Women's Twenty20 Cup, Essex have been a volatile side: when the tournament was regionalised in its early years, Essex bounced between Divisions One and Two of the South section. Since, they briefly fell into Division 3 in
2018
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, but apart from this have played in Division 2, achieving their best finish of 3rd in 2015. In
2021
File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...
, they competed in the South East Group of the Twenty20 Cup, but finished bottom. They topped their group in the
2022 Women's Twenty20 Cup
The 2022 Women's Twenty20 Cup, known for sponsorship reasons as the 2022 Vitality Women's County T20, was the 13th edition of the Women's Twenty20 Cup, an English women's cricket Twenty20 domestic competition. It took place in April and May 20 ...
, but lost to Suffolk in the group final. The side has also competed in the
Women's London Championship
The Women's London Championship (WLC) is an English women's cricket competition. It was created in 2020 following the introduction of the regional Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy as the highest domestic competition in women's One Day cricket. The c ...
since 2020.
Players
Current squad
Based on appearances in the 2022 season. denotes players with international caps.
Notable players
Players who have played for Essex and played internationally are listed below, in order of first international appearance (given in brackets):
* Lucy Doolan (2008)
* Sian Ruck (2009)
* Beth MacGregor (2010)
* Beth Langston (2013)
*
Kristen Beams
Kristen Maree Beams (born 6 November 1984) is an Australian former cricket player. Beams played one Test, thirty One Day Internationals and eighteen Twenty20 Internationals for the Australia national women's cricket team between 2014 and 2017. ...
(2014)
*
Leigh Kasperek
Leigh Meghan Kasperek (born 15 February 1992) is a Scottish cricketer who plays internationally for the New Zealand national team. She previously played for the Scottish national side, but switched to New Zealand in order to play at a higher l ...
Heather Graham
Heather Joan Graham (born January 29, 1970) is an American actress. After appearing in television commercials, her first starring role in a feature film came with the teen comedy '' License to Drive'' (1988), followed by the critically acclaime ...
Women
A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...