Sarah Jennifer Bryce (born 8 January 2000) is a Scottish cricketer who plays for the national cricket team as a wicket-keeper-batter. At the domestic level, she plays for the Watsonian cricket club, for English teams The Blaze (formerly known as Lightning) and Kent, and for Welsh Fire.
Previously, she has taken the field for English teams Nottinghamshire and Oval Invincibles.
Bryce is best known as a batter who has represented Scotland at cricket since she was fifteen years old. However, she is also an accomplished wicket keeper. Her older sister, Kathryn, similarly plays international cricket for Scotland.
Early life, family and education Bryce was born in Edinburgh into a cricket-mad family. She and her sister developed an enthusiasm for all sports at an early age.
With the encouragement of their parents, Bryce and her sister played hockey and tennis, and her sister joined a cricket club and took the field for its girls 1st XI team. Bryce always went to the club cricket matches, started watching them, and eventually joined in.
According to Bryce, her father played a "huge role" in exposing her to cricket. She has said that he was full of enthusiasm for the game every time the family played it, either in the back garden or on the beach, or watched it on television. That enthusiasm fuelled her own love of the game.
The Bryce sisters also played girls' cricket at their school, George Watson's College. Bryce joined the girls' 1st XI team when she was about nine years old, and the boys' 1st XI when she was about 12. At that time, Edinburgh had no other girls' school teams, and so the GWC girls' 1st XI team played against many University teams, made up of similarly inexperienced players.
In 2015 and 2016, the GWC girls' 1st XI team, with the sisters as members, won the senior-level Women's Scottish Cup tournament; Bryce co-captained the team in the latter year.
Bryce also played for the GWC 1st XI hockey team. However:
When not playing sport, Bryce learned to play the violin and piano, and was also involved in several choirs, bands and orchestras. She particularly enjoyed piano playing as "... an opportunity to switch off from cricket."
Upon leaving school, Bryce did not consider becoming a professional cricketer to be a viable option, but wanted to take the game as far as she could. She therefore began a maths degree at Loughborough University in England, where her sister was already combining the study of sports science with playing cricket as a professional. She completed the degree in 2022.
Bryce and her sister have done more than just study at the same university and play the same sport. They have also usually played for the same team. Bryce's sister has described their relationship as 'probably quite unique'. Bryce herself has said:
Bryce's sister has been Scotland's captain since April 2018, and Bryce is her deputy. However, the two sisters have also sometimes played for opposing teams, both in English domestic competitions, and in FairBreak Invitational T20 tournaments.
Domestic career Scotland Bryce plays club cricket for the Watsonian Cricket Club, which is based in Edinburgh. She joined the club as a young girl, and played initially in a boys' team as there was no girls' team at that time.
, Bryce was still playing club cricket alongside many of the same boys with whom she had played while growing up. She has said that the club, since even before it started fielding a women's team, has always been "hugely supportive" of her and her sister.
England: County cricket Bryce made her English County cricket debut for the Scotland team in 2015, against Somerset. In the 2016 Women's County Championship, she played five matches for Scotland in Division 3, and made 72 runs at 14.40, with a top score of 22. During the 2016 Women's Twenty20 Cup, Bryce scored the most runs of any of Scotland's players, and recorded the fourth-highest aggregate in Division 3, as Scotland went undefeated in eight matches to win the Division and achieve promotion to Division 2. In those eight matches, she made 191 runs at 27.29, with a top score of 62.
In the 2017 Women's Twenty20 Cup, Bryce played eight Division 2 matches for Scotland A, and scored 96 runs at 19.20, with a top score of 37*.
During the 2018 Women's County Championship, Bryce, playing for Scotland in Division 3 Group A, scored the most runs of any player in the Group. In six matches, she made 258 runs at 64.50, with a top score of 81*, against Durham. In the 2018 Women's Twenty20 Cup, Bryce took the field for Scotland A in eight Division 2 matches, and made 203 runs at 40.60, with a top score of 53.
In 2019, Bryce played for Nottinghamshire in the Women's County Championship, and was the fourth-highest run-maker for the team. In six County Championship matches, she scored 175 runs, took 10 catches and achieved four stumpings. In that season's Women's County T20 Division 1, she played six further matches for Notts, scoring a total of 175 runs at 29.17, with a top score of 60. She also played six matches for Scotland A in the Women's County T20 Division 2, making 272 runs at 90.70, including 101* against Cheshire.
Bryce signed for Kent in 2020. By then, the final edition of the Women's County Championship had already taken place, and in 2020 the Women's Twenty20 Cup was not held, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Kent did take part in the inaugural 50-over Women's London Championship (WLC), which was organised as "... the start of the county comeback." In two innings in the WLC, Bryce scored 78 runs at a strike rate of 93.98, including 51* in Kent's 10-wicket victory against Essex, which was enough for her to place fourth in the overall run chart, and be named as Kent's Batter of the Year and Women's Player of the Year.
The next season, 2021, Bryce played six matches for Kent in the South East Group of that year's Women's Twenty20 Cup, which Kent won. She scored an aggregate of 165 runs at 41.25, with two half centuries including 63* opening the batting against Middlesex, and was Kent's T20 Player of the Tournament. Additionally, she played in the 2021 WLC, from which Kent similarly emerged victorious. In the first of that season's WLC matches, she also captained Kent for the first time, in a 46-run win against Essex.
In April 2022, Bryce was awarded Kent Women Cap 55. However, she played only four matches for Kent in that season's Women's Twenty20 Cup, Group 6; she scored 74 runs in all at 24.67, with a highest score of 45* against Hampshire.
England: Regional cricket In June 2020, Bryce and her sister were signed to play for the East Midlands Regional Hub, which was then based at Loughborough University and was due to field the team Lightning in England's new regionally based women's elite domestic competitions.
The Bryce sisters were recruited on the basis that they would be released for international duty with Scotland as required; both were already ranked in the world's top 20 in T20 internationals. Even so, neither of them was well known in England at that time; Bryce had never played in the then newly defunct Women's Cricket Super League regional franchise competition, and her sister had played in that league for just one season.
In that year's inaugural 50-over Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy, Bryce ended up as the competition's second-highest run scorer. with 395 runs in six games at 79.00. Her innings included four successive half centuries culminating in a share in a partnership with Bethan Ellis of 148 runs in 33 overs against Central Sparks (a new record partnership for any wicket in the RHF Trophy), and then, a week later, a List A career-best 136* in her team's final match, also against Central Sparks.
In December 2020, Lightning awarded the two sisters full-time contracts, 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 [Bryce and her sister] 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."
In the ensuing season, 2021, Bryce played a much less prominent role in the second RHF Trophy, recording only 202 runs in seven matches at 28.85, with a highest score of 90. The following year, she made five appearances in the 2022 RHF Trophy and scored 115 runs at 23.
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 In 2021, Bryce was drafted by Oval Invincibles ahead of the inaugural season of The Hundred. In her 10 matches for the competition-winning Invincibles team that season, including a match in which, unusually, her sister was in the opposing team, she scored only 32 runs in four innings with a top score of 29. On the other hand, she headed the overall figures for wicketkeeper dismissals by taking eight catches and completing three stumpings.
Bryce was then signed by the Welsh Fire for the 2022 tournament. Her batting performance in that year's Hundred turned out to be much more satisfactory; amongst her teammates, she finished with an aggregate second only to Tammy Beaumont and an average second only to Hayley Matthews. However, the team as a whole ended up coming last in the competition.
In May 2023, Bryce was re-signed by Welsh Fire ahead of the 2023 season.
Australia In the WBBL03 edition of the Women's Big Bash League Twenty20 competition, held during the 2017–18 Australian season, Bryce was the Associate Rookie for Hobart Hurricanes under the ICC Associate Rookie programme.
International career 2011–2017: Early years Bryce became involved in Scotland's U17 program at the age of 11 years. A highlight of her U17 career for Scotland was an unbroken partnership of 336 with her sister, against Lincolnshire U17s in 2015. Bryce's contribution to that partnership was a score of 132*, her first ever century. Reminiscing to Female Cricket in 2020 about the occasion, she said:
Additionally, the partnership helped her to believe that if she kept working hard, it would be possible for her to make a debut for Scotland's senior women's team. Even though she had previously started training with the senior squad, she had found it overwhelming, and had felt that she was not good enough to be where she was.
Later in 2015, Bryce made her debut for the senior team, against Somerset in a county match. The same year, she was awarded her first international cap, against Papua New Guinea, in the ICC Women's World Twenty20 Qualifier in Thailand. During the latter match, which Scotland won by eight wickets with 26 balls remaining, she participated in two run outs of PNG players, but was not required to bat.
In July 2016, Bryce scored 109 runs and was "a very handy wicket-keeper" in the Europe qualifier tournament for the 2017 Women's Cricket World Cup in Essex, England. Only two teams, Scotland and the Netherlands, participated in the tournament. Scotland won all three of that tournament's matches, and thereby qualified for the 2017 Women's Cricket World Cup Qualifier, held in Sri Lanka in February 2017, in which Bryce also played. In the latter Qualifier, Scotland finished fourth in the five-team Group B.
2018–2020: WT20I player