Kathryn Emma Bryce (born 17 November 1997) is a Scottish cricketer and the current captain of the national women's cricket team. An all-rounder, she plays at the domestic level for the Watsonian cricket club, and for English teams The Blaze (formerly known as Lightning) and Derbyshire; she has also been drafted by Manchester Originals. Previously, she has taken the field for English teams Warwickshire, Loughborough Lightning, Lincolnshire and Trent Rockets. She also plays for the Warriors team in FairBreak Invitational T20 tournaments.
In December 2020, Bryce was named the ICC Associate Cricketer of the Decade. In June 2021, she became the first cricketer for Scotland, male or female, to make it into the top ten of the ICC Player Rankings. Her younger sister, Sarah, also plays international cricket for Scotland.
Early life, family and education Bryce was born in Edinburgh, into a cricket-loving family, and, together with her sister Sarah, developed an enthusiasm for all sports at an early age. "We played pretty much every sport growing up, throwing every sort of ball around in the garden," she told Cricinfo in 2021.
Bryce's earliest memory of watching cricket is watching the 2005 Men's Ashes series, during which the whole of her family would gather in front of the television, while Bryce and her sister would play cricket. As well as playing "a lot of hockey and tennis", Bryce joined a girls' cricket team at her school, George Watson's College. At the age of nine, she received a standard form letter from former Scotland international player Liz Smith, who was setting up the girls' team; after signing up immediately, she went through her first-ever experience of organised cricket training. Bryce does not know whether she would have taken up cricket if there had not been a girls' team at her school, and is thankful to Smith for introducing her to the game.
At that time, Edinburgh had no other girls' school teams, and so Bryce's school played against many University teams, made up of similarly inexperienced players. In 2015 and again in 2016, the girls' first XI team, with Bryce as a member, won the senior-level Women's Scottish Cup tournament.
Bryce's cricketing talent was evident from early on; she was later the first girl to take the field for the school's boys first XI. She also joined Watsonian cricket club: "... I was playing for the girls' first XI, basically as a fielder but having a great time." In 2019, she told The Scotsman:
Bryce left school in 2015, and has since been included in the school's sporting Wall of Fame. Becoming a full-time professional cricketer in Scotland was not an option for her. In 2017, after taking a gap year, she therefore moved to Loughborough University in Leicestershire, England. At Loughborough, where she studied Sport and Exercise Science, she was able to improve her cricket full-time in a high-performance programme, although she was only an unpaid student, and participating only during the academic year. She credits the university for supporting her in balancing her studies with playing sport at a high level.
Bryce's sister later joined her at Loughborough University. The two sisters have also usually played cricket for the same team. Bryce has described their relationship as 'probably quite unique'. She has also said:
At Scotland, Bryce has been team captain since April 2018, and her sister is her deputy. However, the two sisters have sometimes played for opposing teams, both in English domestic competitions, and in FairBreak Invitational T20 tournaments.
Bryce finished her sport science degree in June 2021. By then, there was sufficient professionalism in women's cricket for her to be able to make a living as a Scottish international cricketer, without having to have another job as well.
Domestic career Scotland In 2017, after leaving school, Bryce won the third of a hat-trick of Women's Scottish Cup winner's medals with the GWC girls' 1st XI team. She has also played women's club cricket for the Watsonian club for many years. As she has explained to the Edinburgh Evening News, she appears for the club when around and available to play; she continued:
In July 2019, Bryce played and enjoyed her first match for Watsonians men's first XI, when she took the field in an CSL Eastern Premier Division clash with Stoneywood-Dyce at Myreside. She had previously turned out for the men's second XI. Although she scored 25 runs and took a wicket in her maiden first XI match, Watsonians were defeated by six wickets.
England: County cricket Bryce's first taste of county cricket was as a very young player for the Scotland team, which participated in the Women's County Championship.
In 2015, Bryce played only three matches in that year's Women's County Championship, in which Scotland finished last in Division 2 and was relegated to Division 3. In the 2015 Women's Twenty20 Cup, by contrast, she played in all eight of Scotland's matches. In five innings, she was dismissed only once, and made an aggregate of 141 runs at an average of 141.00, with a top score of 53 against Buckinghamshire; she also took a total of 8/130, with a best performance of 3/11 against Oxfordshire.
In the 2016 Women's County Championship, Bryce played in all eight of Scotland's matches, and recorded the sixth-highest aggregate in Division 3, with 184 runs at 36.80, including a top score of 73*. In the 2016 Women's Twenty20 Cup, she similarly played in all eight of Scotland's matches, and took an aggregate of 8/79, including 4/5 against Devon, as the team went undefeated to win Division 3 and achieve promotion to Division 2.
In 2017, when Bryce first relocated to England to attend Loughborough University, Warwickshire's Division One county team captain Marie Kelly was also a student there. Bryce joined Kelly at Warwickshire for three seasons.
During the 2017 Women's County Championship, Bryce opened the batting for Warwickshire with Amy Jones, which she felt really helped her game. She scored 241 runs at 30.13 including a half-century against Nottinghamshire, as Warwickshire powered its way to third place in Division One. In the T20 Cup Division 1, her best performance for Warwickshire was a 49-ball 73* against Surrey. She also played four T20 Cup Division 2 matches for Scotland A, scoring a total of 114 runs with a top score of 50*.
In 2018, Bryce again played for Scotland A in the Women's Twenty20 Cup Division 2. In eight Division 2 matches, she scored 202 runs at 40.40, with a top score of 41*.
The Women's County Championship was last held in 2019. That year, Bryce yet again played for Scotland A in the Women's Twenty20 Cup Division 2, and she made fewer than 100 runs in six matches. The next season, 2020, the Women's Twenty20 Cup was not held, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ahead of the following season, 2021, Bryce joined Lincolnshire. In six matches in the East Midlands Group of that season's Women's Twenty20 Cup, she scored an aggregate of 141 runs for her new County team, including the highest individual score in the Group's matches, 65* against Leicestershire; additionally, she recorded the Group's best individual bowling performance, of 4/8, also against Leicestershire.
Bryce then moved to Derbyshire for 2022. In four matches for the county in Group 1 of that season's Women's Twenty20 Cup, she scored an aggregate of 133 with a high score of 79* against Lancashire.
England: Regional cricket In 2019, Bryce was added to the Loughborough Lightning squad for the final season of the Women's Cricket Super League regional franchise competition. She was described by Women's CricZone as a "good find". Ahead of that competition, the England and Wales Cricket Board amended the tournament's regulations to allow Scotland players to appear without having to register as overseas players. Over a six-week period that year, Bryce took advantage of the amendment to become a regular opening bowler in the competition, and took a total of eight wickets.
Even at the start of the next season, 2020, Bryce was still something of an unknown quantity, after having played just one season in the then newly defunct Super League. However, she was appointed as captain of Loughborough's replacement team, Lightning, which covered a larger area, the East Midlands, and her sister, who had not yet played for a regional team, was recruited to play alongside her.
The sisters were signed on the basis that they would be released for international duty with Scotland as required; both were already ranked in the top 20 in the world in T20 internationals.
Bryce then took 14 wickets for Lightning (including best figures of 5/29), with an economy of 3.88, in six matches in the inaugural 50-over Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy competition. These were the most wickets bagged by any of her team's players in the competition, and the second-highest number taken overall; as a batter, she finished third in her team, with 141 runs.
The standout performance from Bryce that season was during Lightning's RHF Trophy match against Northern Diamonds at Durham. Bryce claimed a 5-wicket haul, and made 71*, but even that effort was not enough to overcome very strong opponents.
In December 2020, Bryce and her sister were awarded full-time contracts by Lightning, in recognition of their highly successful performances that year; of the 41 players nationally who were given a full-time regional contract, they were the only ones from an ICC Associate member nation.
As was observed by Emerging Cricket at the time, the full time contracts not only "... supported [the Bryce sisters] financially...", but also gave them "... increased access and opportunities to develop their game as professional cricketers beyond their lives as students and without having to potentially sacrifice representing their nation to earn a living overseas." Bryce herself had told Women's CricZone in September 2020 that playing domestic cricket professionally made it "... more of a possibility to be able to play regional cricket, but also be able to play for Scotland at the same time."
The following year, 2021, Bryce excelled in the second RHF Trophy. As well as being the second-highest run-scorer overall, with 353 runs at 50.42 including her List A high score of 162 against Central Sparks, she took 10 wickets and was named Player of the Year.
In that year's inaugural Charlotte Edwards Cup Twenty20 competition, she was much less successful with the bat, making only 29 runs in three appearances, but also took five wickets.
In the 2022 RHF Trophy, Bryce scored a more modest aggregate of 233 runs in five appearances, but at a higher average of 58.25. She was also the only player in that season's RHF Trophy to score two centuries, 109* against Thunder and 104 against Sunrisers in what turned out to be Lightning's only wins. In the Charlotte Edwards Cup, she made 129 runs including a half century, and took seven wickets, in six appearances.
Late in 2022, the Lightning team parted company from Loughborough University, was rebadged as The Blaze, and was relocated to Trent Bridge, Nottingham, to become the East Midlands' new regional side. Both Bryce and her sister remained as contracted members of the squad.
England: The Hundred Bryce was recruited by Trent Rockets for The Hundred in 2021. In April 2022, she was re-signed by the Rockets ahead of the 2022 season. She did not play a prominent role in either season.
For the 2023 season, Bryce was drafted by Manchester Originals.
Australia During the 2015–16 Australian season, Bryce spent three months at the Darren Lehmann Academy in Adelaide, South Australia, and played for Southern Districts in Adelaide's Premier Cricket league.