After Finals Day on Monday, the Kia Super League will exist for just one more season, with ‘The Hundred’ set to take its place in 2020. During the course of the competition, the realisation has dawned ever stronger just how much of a shame that is. This year’s Kia Super League hasn’t just been the biggest, with double the games in the group stages, it’s also been the best.

The main reason that this year has topped the rest is that it’s the closest the tournament has come to satisfying its two most important but potentially conflicting aims – putting on a stage for the best players in the world to strut their stuff, attract crowds and engage new fans, while serving as a stepping stone between domestic and international cricket.

In 2016-17, and especially with the bat, it had felt that too much was being done by too few. From the very first game of 2018, when Sophia Dunkley smashed 66 from 43 balls from No. 6 against Southern Vipers to become the first non-international half-centurion in the KSL – she has since been joined by Lancashire Thunder’s Ellie Threlkeld and Eve Jones – it felt this would be the season the unknowns came out of the shadows.

Why Finals Day matters: Through the KSL Smith has emerged as one of the leading spinners in the country, but therein lies the issue, in that she is only one of a number of skilful slow bowlers England have to call on. Even narrowing it down to left-armers, there is Sophie Ecclestone and Alex Hartley, two of the leading exponents of their art in the world. In another era, Smith might already be playing for England. But as it is, she may well need an outstanding Finals Day performance to properly make a claim.

Then there’s that issue of being able to “perform when it really matters”. Smith has been a group stage god in the KSL, and it’s surely no coincidence that every team she’s played for has topped the table. But in two Finals Day appearances for Southern Vipers, she’s bowled six overs for 66 runs, and claimed just one wicket. She’ll be hoping a change in team colours will bring with it a change in fortune, because she is yet to show that she can handle the pressure of the big occasion.