Boundaries galore, fantastic running between the wickets, really good fielding and (by-and-large) good quality bowling - those were the ingredients of our win last night.

Betsy captained us last night, with good sense and a smile. She put North London into bat and immediately we bowled accurately and fielded tightly. We did not take a lot of wickets early on, against a very decent North London batting line up (I think there were three Middlesex players in their team), but when our wickets came, some of them were truly spectacular: (1) Niah swooped in from extra cover to where a ball was running about eight metres away from the stumps, she picked up the ball one-handed and threw it at the one stump she could see at the umpire's end. Boom! She smashed the stumps to effect the run-out, and - and this is very important to me - our team were all over the moon! (2) one of North London's best batters struck a beautiful on drive to (I think it was!) Dillan at deep mid-on who threw the ball back accurately to Amelia at the bowler's end, who deftly diverted the ball onto the stumps to achieve another run-out by centimetres. Again, we were delighted.

Millie took two wickets, and caught one of their batters off Betsy. Dillan and Yasmin also got dismissals, Yasmin's a very confidently-taken caught and bowled.

Our display in the field had been really confident and very effective. For years I have moaned about how North Middlesex players have not thrown themselves into fielding quite like North London teams do. Last night, everyone was focused, energetic and generally backed-up properly too. I was really proud of my team of what they had done.

But the North London total was a pretty decent challenge to us, and a storm was beginning to gather. I had a sense of foreboding that things might go wrong for us from here. When I spoke to the girls just before we batted I said that they should go and enjoy themselves.

My goodness, they did. Yasmin and Maddy opened the batting for us - sensibly and safely at first, and then much more expansively. Maddy, in particular, hit two powerful fours and then - off the last ball - the partnership managed to pressure the fielders into two bad overthrows. Tara and Niah built on their strong foundations with some aggressive hitting, Tara getting two fours and Niah three. Niah also played a back foot cover drive that drew gasps of appreciation from the North London coach and scorer, who were very near me at the time. Betsy and Naisha played sensibly and effectively, before Dillan and Lauren came in as the rain started to fall really quite heavily. Dillan wasn't having the weather steal this from us, and hit her first ball for six and then another couple of fours afterwards. We had an anxious moment as we worried about the game being called-off, but we were soon going again as Millie and Amelia strode to the wicket. Millie hit five fours and two sixes, and Amelia ran as hard as she could to make sure Millie was on strike as much as possible.

North London did something really nice at the end, and chose a player of the match from our team. They chose Niah, and although everyone in our team did something to be proud of, Niah's run-out, batting, and general play was ample justification for them to do so.

I really enjoyed the girls' performance last night, and they did too. We have only got two games left in this league in this summer - back-to-back on 7 and 8 July. I know it is difficult to accommodate two games like this, but we are having a lot of fun. Try and be available - and let me know over Pitchero.