King & Cross lead Lancs to crucial win over Essex

Alana King conceded 17 runs in her two overs but collected two Essex wickets

Women's Vitality T20 Blast, Emirates Old Trafford

Lancashire Thunder 55-2 (6 overs): Lamb 21, Jones 17

Essex Eagles 47-7 (8 overs): Winfield-Hill 13; Cross 2-9, King 2-17

Lancashire (5 pts) beat Essex (0 pts) by eight wickets

Match scorecard

Ashes rivals Kate Cross and Alana King shared four wickets to set Lancashire Thunder up for a convincing rain-affected T20 Blast win over Essex Eagles at Emirates Old Trafford that kept the hosts' Finals Day hopes alive.

England seamer Cross and Australia leg-spinner King struck twice apiece in the space of 10 legitimate balls in the sixth and seventh overs of what turned out to be an eight-over Essex innings as they slipped to 38-6 before finishing on 47-7.

A two-hour rain delay ravaged a fixture that both sides realistically needed to win to maintain hopes of a top-three finish.

It was Thunder who claimed the crucial five points as they reeled in a revised target of 52 in six overs thanks largely to opener Emma Lamb's 21 off 17 balls.

Thunder's fourth win in nine games - this by eight wickets on the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method - means they leapfrog Essex into fifth place but are still 11 points behind third-placed Bears, whom they host on Sunday (13:00 BST), with five games left.

Essex, meanwhile, lost for the sixth time in nine games and have a mountain to climb, beginning with Sunday's trip to league leaders Surrey at The Kia Oval (12:00).

Thunder, who importantly won the toss and elected to bowl first, made a fast start with the ball either side of the two-hour delay.

Firstly, they reduced Essex to 24-2 after five overs. Seamer Phoebe Graham, making her first competitive appearance of the summer for Thunder, struck in the fourth over when she uprooted the leg stump of Lissy MacLeod.

Left-arm swing bowler Tara Norris then had the other Essex opener Lauren Winfield-Hill well caught low down at cover by Ailsa Lister. Only four more balls were bowled before play was halted.

Then, upon the resumption, with an eight-overs per side game now in motion, Thunder struck four times in the first 10 legitimate balls back to all but end any realistic chance Essex had of winning.

King had compatriot Maddie Penna well taken low down at square-leg by Lister off a full toss before getting Cordelia Griffith caught behind cutting later in the sixth over.

In the seventh, Cross uprooted Jo Gardner's off stump and had an attacking Eva Gray caught behind. Amara Carr was then run out off the final ball of the innings.

Opener Winfield-Hill was the only Essex batter to reach double figures, with 13.

Eve Jones (17) set Thunder on their way in the chase with an eye-catching straight driven boundary off Esmae MacGregor's seam before dragging Gray to mid-wicket as Thunder slipped to 29-1 in the fourth.

England's Lamb hit three leg-side boundaries before being run out with only four runs required, with King (1no) and Lister (4no) completing the formalities with two overs to spare.

Report supplied by the ECB Reporters' Network, supported by Rothesay