Exciting opening fixtures see women's season underway

As expansive sunshine suggests summer across the country, women cricketers are preparing for the 2002 cricket season which starts on Saturday 27 April with the preliminarily rounds of the Knock Out Cup. Day one of the Premier League follows on Sunday 28.

Hoping to emulate the exciting early matches of the Frizzell County Championship, the top women's players in the country will resume play with their clubs; the elite having spent a winter training and touring India with England Head Coach, John Harmer, and many top players joining four regional coaches across the country.

The first round of matches has produced potentially thrilling fixtures, with Clare Connor's Brighton and Hove travelling to face the young England guns of Collyer, Harper and Hawker at Somerset Wanderers.

Premier League holders Gunnersbury face Kent Invicta, who welcome back a fully fit Charlotte Edwards following a year's absence with cruciate ligament damage to her knee.

In the North, Thrumpton LCC - fielding three England internationals - will face Wakefield, Cup winners last year and themselves benefiting from two young bowlers involved in the England winter set-up, as well as the vastly experienced Clare Taylor, England's leading wicket-taker of all time.

The much-improved bowling of her England team-mate Lucy Pearson should see Wolverhampton LCC slide comfortably past new recruits Jacobs. Pearson has reaped the benefit of training with Harmer, and cites her recent good form in India to the Australian's revolutionary techniques.

The top women's players will be keen to find form early in the season, with the new domestic competition 'Super Fours' starting on May 18 at Shenley Cricket Centre, Hertfordshire. Super Fours will provide the selectors with an opportunity to finalise the England squad to face New Zealand and India this summer, and expose players to top competition before the International matches start in Jersey on July 8.