Super Fours
| Administrator | England and Wales Cricket Board |
|---|---|
| Format | Women's limited overs |
| First tournament | 2002 |
| Tournament format | League (50 over) Semi-final, Final (Twenty20) |
| Number of teams | 4 |
| Current champion | Rubies (50 over) Sapphires (Twenty20) |
The Super Fours is a women's limited overs cricket competition which has been played annually in England since 2002. Designed to bring together the leading 48 players in English women's cricket, it originally composed solely of a 50-over tournament, but in 2004 a Twenty20 competition was added. The tournament, which was created to bridge the gap in quality between the Women's County Championship and international cricket, first featured non-English players in 2008, when Australians Alex Blackwell and Leah Poulton were invited to take part. The competition was not held in 2009 or 2010 due to a busy international schedule caused primarily by the ICC World Twenty20.
The two competitions consist of four teams, originally named the Braves, the Knight Riders, the Super Strikers and the V Team, but renamed to the Sapphires, Diamonds, Rubies and Emeralds in 2006. The Sapphires (previously the V Team) have been the most successful team, winning both the 50-over and the Twenty20 competitions on three occasions. Charlotte Edwards dominated the first four years of the competition, finishing as the leading run-scorer each time.
In the inaugural tournament, a team-building exercise was initially held at Trent Bridge, at which four teams were selected from the 48 players invited. These teams; the Braves, the Knight Riders, the Super Strikers and the V Team, then faced each other in six contests held across five weekends. The Braves won four of their matches to win the competition, captained by Clare Connor, who also captained the England women's cricket team. The batting was led by England team-mates Charlotte Edwards and Claire Taylor, of the Knight Riders and the Super Strikers respectively, who both scored in excess of three hundred runs. Connor had the best bowling average in the competition, taking her seven wickets at 9.28, but Gill Richards of the V Team claimed the most wickets, taking eleven in total.
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