Teenage Alice Capsey, 17, stars as Southern Vipers are knocked off top of their Charlotte Edwards T20 Cup qualifying group

The 17-year-old, who impressed in the Hundred for women’s champions Oval Invincibles, struck a boisterous half-century and took 2-9 as the South East Stars took over top spot with a 20-run victory at The Ageas Bowl, writes BRUCE TALBOT.

Stars will now win the group - and with it a place in next Sunday’s final - if they can beat Central Sparks in their last game on Bank Holiday Monday.

Vipers can top the group, though, if they beat Lightning and Stars lose.

The highest-placed group winner goes straight through to the final with the other group winner playing the highest-ranked runner-up in a play-off.

Capsey’s 61 from 46 balls, combined with useful contributions from Bryony Smith (42 from 25) and Phoebe Franklin (30 from 29), helped the Stars to 167-4 - the most runs conceded by Vipers in the competition.

Vipers desperately missed strike bowler Lauren Bell, isolating after close contact with a Covid-positive case, while Charlie Dean had been called up for England duty (but is also isolating).

In reply Vipers sunk to 32-3 in the powerplay, with both openers caught trying to hit out against Capsey - Georgia Adams at short extra cover and Tara Norris at mid-on.

Vipers recovered to reach 147-7 thanks to a smart innings from Georgia Elwiss (45 from 32 balls) and some late heroics from Alice Monaghan, who hit an unbeaten 30 from 17 balls and tonked the only six of the day over deep midwicket.

Vipers had won the toss and chosen to field but Stars teed off early - Aylish Cranstone (17 off 11) punishing Norris’s first over for 15 runs, before the left-armer trapped her lbw.

Smith took over where Cranstone left off, hitting the ball hard down the ground as Stars racked up 56 runs in the powerplay.

By contrast Capsey started slowly with five from 13, but the dismissal of Smith in the ninth over - caught at long-on, handing debutant Chiara Green her first wicket of the competition - seemed to galvanise her.

Two overs later she audaciously scooped Elwiss to the boundary, and followed that up by smashing three boundaries - including a lofted drive down the ground - from Norris’s next over.

Capsey shared a 64-run partnership with the fluent Franklin, helped by some uncharacteristically poor fielding in the deep from Vipers.

Franklin was bowled by Adams in the 17th but Capsey was unfazed, bringing up a 41-ball century with a single in the 19th.

She was eventually run out with one ball of the innings to go after a bad fall prevented her making her ground at the non-striker's end, and limped off clutching her quad. But she came roaring back to open the bowling for Stars to great effect.

Elwiss said: ‘We gave them 20 runs with the ball, and that has proved the difference. We’re missing a lot of key players and we’ve asked younger players to step up. The depth that we’ve got is really good and a lot of the girls who’ve played little knocks today can take confidence from that.

‘Credit to Stars - they played well, they played smartly, and sometimes we were trying to be too smart with our bowling. We need to bowl to our plans and we’re not executing them at the moment. As we’re playing on better pitches, there’s a smaller margin for error for the bowlers.

‘I’ve watched a couple of the men’s T20 games over the last few nights, and seen how if you stick in the game for a long period of time you can get closer than you think.

‘I thought 160 was probably chasable but unfortunately we lost too many early wickets - had we not had a top order collapse like we did we could have pushed them closer.’

Either Stars or Vipers will qualify for the Ageas Bowl final - next Sunday - if they top the group. If they both lose, Western Storm could qualify for the final as the highest-ranked group winner on run rate.

If Vipers lose and both Storm and Northern Diamonds win, the former won’t even qualify for the play-off.