Marie Kelly praised her spinner after the Blaze’s nine-wicket victory over Essex in the T20 Blast at Chelmsford.

Lucy Higham ripped through Essex’s middle order alongside tidy spells from Charlie Knott and Maria Andrews as the hosts were restricted to 136 from their 20 overs.

Kelly and Knott then put on nearly a hundred runs together to knock off the total in brilliant style and earn their side the bonus point.

The captain lauded the contribution of the spinners in restricting Essex, saying, “We had to come into the game with four spinners. There was a lot of reliance on them. Lucy Higham, a great example, taking three wickets today.

“Young Maria Andrews, fantastic, Josie coming on, I always feels like she's in the game, and then having an overseas of the calibre of Charli Knott as well, who in most games has bowled at the death, which is kind of unheard of, an office at death, and she's taken that role on brilliantly, put it on her shoulders.

“It wasn’t ideal conditions, but I think we quickly realised to take all the pace off and make Essex try and do something with it, but it worked, and they all stood up. It was brilliant.”

Kelly showed a lot of ingenuity on the field, rotating her bowlers every single over so that no one bowled two in a row from the same end.

“I had a bit of an idea in the powerplay. I don't really like bowling the same bowler twice in the powerplay from the same end. I think batters nowadays just line people up.

Out of it [powerplay] is just trying to mix it up as much as possible. I think the batters that have one swing, we want to try and mix it up as much as possible, and to be fair, the girls were all ready for that.

“There's definitely no plan throughout the middle. It's just who I think in that moment is going to get me a wicket, and there's so many options that that's sometimes quite hard deciding who that's going to be.”

Essex never quite got going in the game, and Kelly admitted a target of 137 always felt light.

“I think on a pitch like this, and outfield being as dry as is, we knew kind of once you get the ball past the ring field here, it just flies away.

“We’d spoken about the start, preparing for a bigger run chase, and it to be a high scoring game. So for them to only get that total, we’re over the moon with that.”

The Blaze briefly moved back to the summit before Hampshire regained top spot with victory over Durham. Despite that, the bonus-point win sees the Blaze sit just two points behind the Hawks with a game in hand, despite being without several of their key players due to World Cup and England A duties.

“We've gone seven [wins] from nine games with kind of the wider squad stepping up. Lots of different people put their hands up at different times.

“It's been really impressive, and people have been doing different roles in different positions from what they’re used to.”