Women’s Softball Indoor Cricket Festival 2026 – Winners

Saturday 23rd saw the Folkestone ladies open their season at the Kent Cricket Softball Festival in Canterbury.

First up was The Mote who decided to bat. After months of inactivity the bowling attack was ready to go and Kevin, Michelle, Ali and Lottie put the pressure on with a great display of line and length bowling. Supported by Leslie and Alice in the field we restricted the Mote to a net 32 which felt too few. Michelle and Alice set the platform early with controlled batting, followed by some big hitting by Leslie and Ali leaving Kevin and Lottie just to bring it home it what was a comfortable victory in the end.

Next up were Chestfield and we were asked to bat first. The batting performance reflected our observations of other games as we worked harder at using the walls and running between the wicket. We lost a few wickets to the Chelsfield attack and had around a net 45 runs before Kevin and Lottie strode to the wicket, and destroyed the bowling taking us to over 70 runs. Tight tidy bowling, supported by good fielding again put us in control early on, before a late scare from some aggressive hitting by one of the Chestfield batters cause a few nerves but the damage was done early on with Chestfield losing too many wickets as they ended up on 48.

And so we arrived at the final against old rivals Hythe. This was to prove a tighter game. We batted first and built on the previous performances with a good all round batting effort taking us to 75-1. Hythe were in contention all the way, but three wickets and tight fielding restricted them to 65-3 leaving us overall winners on the day.

It was an all round team effort with all players making a significant contribution throughout the day under the steady guidance of captain Michelle. Alice’s two catches were a highlight and showed how much our training has paid off.

A great start to 2026 for the ladies with only one bottle of Prosecco in sight … it is not even the end of January and the have been crowned Kent Cricket Indoor Women’s Champions.

Next it is the Indoor league campaign over the next 5 weeks.