Hampshire Women

The Rose Bowl sits outside Southampton with room for 15,000 for a county fixture, though the ground can take that up past 25,000 once England come to town, and it is here that Hampshire Women play in T20 cricket.

The team's own history stretches back further than any trophy cabinet suggests: a match against Surrey Women in 1811 is the earliest on record, long before the Women's County Championship existed for anyone to enter. Hampshire joined that competition at its founding in 1997 and picked up Division Three titles in 2002 and 2015, Division Two in 2017, and the top division in 2018.

Then, for the best part of a decade, the county's players effectively went to work for someone else. From 2016 the England and Wales Cricket Board grouped the region into the Southern Vipers, a regional franchise that won a Women's Cricket Super League title in 2016, the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy three times, the Charlotte Edwards Cup twice — while Hampshire Women itself stood in the background. The Vipers were dissolved in 2024 when the board handed control back to the counties, and Hampshire reformed as a professional side in its own right, keeping Charlotte Edwards as head coach and Georgia Adams as captain.

The rivalry with Sussex Sharks, known here as El Clasicoast, gives the T20 calendar its sharpest edge, while Surrey remain the opponents from that very first recorded fixture more than two centuries ago.

1811 is the year that match against Surrey was played.