All About Eve

Eve Jones has won this year’s Walter Lawrence Women’s Award, for the highest score of the season, with an unbeaten 136 for Central Sparks against Thunder in the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy at Old Trafford on May 8. Captaining the side and chasing a formidable total of 284 for 7, Eve opened the innings and carried her bat to see Central Sparks to victory by 3 wickets with just 2 balls to spare. The 32-year-old all-rounder’s 136 was scored off 148 balls and included 15 fours. As if to underline her worthy status as this year’s winner, Eve also scored the season’s second-highest score, 130 , for Central Sparks against Western Storm in the same competition.

Born in Shrewsbury, Eve made her county debut in 2008 for Shropshire and quickly asserted herself as one of the county’s most successful players, becoming their leading run-scorer in both their 2010 and 2011 seasons. In 2012 she moved to Staffordshire where she continued her rich vein of form and was their top run scorer in the 2014, 2015 and 2016 seasons.

In 2017 she was on the move again, this time to Lancashire, where she was part of the side that won the County Championship and Twenty20 Cup double that season. She became captain of the side the following season, before joining Warwickshire in 2021.

Eve’s limited-over career has seen her play for Loughborough Lightning in 2016 and Lancashire Thunder from 2017-2019 before joining Central Sparks in 2020, where she was named captain and became a prolific run scorer. At the end of the 2021 season, Eve was named as the first-ever PCA Women’s Overall Domestic MVP for her performances in the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, Charlotte Edwards Cup and The Hundred, and was later voted the overall PCA Player Of The Year. Later that year she was named captain of England’s A squad for their tour to Australia, with the matches being played alongside the Women’s Ashes.

In addition to the aforementioned teams, Eve has also represented Manchester Originals, Birmingham Phoenix, Melbourne Renegades and Canterbury Magicians. In September she was loaned to Lancashire Thunder for the latter stages of the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy before rejoining them permanently after signing a three-year contract for 2025. She finished the season as the competition’s second-highest run scorer with 650 runs (avge.42.76) in 15 innings.

Eve graduated with a BA (hons) in Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University in 2013 and has an ECB Level 3 Coaching Qualification. She is the second Central Sparks player to win the Walter Lawrence Women’s Award, after Amy Jones in 2021, and will receive £2,500 plus a special medallion at the Walter Lawrence Trophy Presentation Dinner in the Long Room at Lord’s on November 6.

The Walter Lawrence Women’s Award is for the player who makes the highest individual score in a season from ECB domestic cup games and all England Women’s matches played on home soil.