Somerset Women

For three decades there was no Somerset side to watch. A team had played since 1953, but by 1968 falling numbers cost it its affiliation with the Women's Cricket Association, and for the next thirty years the South West was represented instead by a composite West of England eleven. Somerset Women only reappeared in 1999, the year after the WCA merged into the England and Wales Cricket Board, and took their place in the Women's County Championship from 2000.

Since returning they have made a habit of topping Division 2 without breaking into the tier above it: county titles in 2004, 2005, 2013 and 2015, and the same again in the Twenty20 Cup in 2009, 2016 and 2019. Twice they have gone one round further in the short-format knockout, reaching the group final in 2013 and in 2022, and lost both times, to Berkshire and Warwickshire. A first-tier trophy has so far stayed out of reach.

Anya Shrubsole is the name the club points to: the first girl to join the Somerset Academy, she won the World Cup with England in 2017 and was added to the club's Legends Wall in 2024. Sophie Luff now captains a side that has also carried England internationals such as Heather Knight and Charlie Dean through its ranks. Matches against Gloucestershire carry the weight of a South West derby, the county's nearest and oldest rival.

The team's own ground, the Cooper Associates County Ground in Taunton, holds 8,500 and can be expanded to 12,500 when the men's international game comes to town. For Somerset Women, the task in front of them remains the one that has defined the last twenty years: turning Division 2 form into a Division 1 place.