As Shakespeare might have put it: “nothing in this match became it like the leaving it”.

Except in this instance, the leaving it was rubbish.

With 20 balls left, Brave needed 14 runs from 20 balls with 7 wickets in hand; and it was still just about possible to believe that Spirit could turn it around. Just 5 (legal) balls later and the ask had become 2 from 15, almost entirely due to some utterly inept bowling from Deandra Dottin. Of the 11 runs that came off her final set, just one came off the bat, with 4 byes and 6 wides going down in the scorebook.

But it somehow then took Brave another 8 balls to get over the line, losing two wickets in the process. Sophie Molineux was kept in check for three dots by Charlie Dean, before having a huge mow, missing it completely, and scrambling through for a single. One needed. So what does Maia Bouchier do, with one needed from 11 balls? Well… she was on 46 so obviously she also had a huge mow trying to get her 50, missed it completely and was ignominiously stumped.

Lesson learned, right? Oh no! After the change of ends, Molineux was back on strike and decided she needed to try to go aerial over mid on, didn’t get quite enough on it and was (admittedly brilliantly) caught by Dottin. With one run still required, Naomi Dattani just needed to get a bat on it, but she couldn’t even do that from her first delivery, resulting in a huge LBW appeal (and boos from the crowd when it wasn’t given) followed by a review that wasn’t too far off; before Brave finally got through for the win with 7 balls remaining.

It was a dispiriting end to a pretty dispiriting game. The crowd through the gate for the women’s match was a group-stage record of 17,537. We have often been told that The Hundred is for new fans who don’t know much about cricket – we can only hope that was the case today, because if they knew anything about the game, they’d be asking for their money back.

Batting first, Spirit scraped past 100 thanks to a late assault from Nadine de Klerk, who suddenly woke up having been meandering along on 12 off 18 balls at one stage. She took advantage of the much shorter boundary on the Mound Stand side to wallop two 6s off Sarah Glenn and another off Tilly Corteen-Coleman, and though she eventually perished trying the same thing again, at least she ended up with a respectable(ish) 38 off 28.

Dottin, batting with de Klerk, managed 5 off 10, before becoming Molineux’s 3rd victim, though I’m not sure she should be writing home about that either – all 3 were batter error. As for Dottin, she is lucky she isn’t playing for MSG – they dropped Grace Scrivens for “only” making 9 off 11 in a similar situation!

Chasing a low total, Brave would have figured that if they could see off Marizanne Kapp, things ought to have been pretty straightforward. That was obviously Lizelle Lee’s plan, but she is such a one dimensional player that she doesn’t have anything in her locker except the big shots, and she was soon walking back, having fended off a catch back to Kapp in a hapless attempt to defend.

Laura Wolvaardt played a nice shot down the ground; but looked very scratchy again for the other 17 balls she faced, scoring only 13; and while Bouchier (46) and Molineux (23) did put the runs on the board that were needed, they should both be taking a long hard look in the mirror tonight for the way they got out and nearly made a horrible mess of things at the end.

I just hope all those paying customers get a decent men’s game to make up for this. Because this was rubbish.

London is blue tonight, after the Blue Team blew an 82% chance of victory with 10 balls remaining, allowing the Blue Team to claw back a final-ball tie in the “Blue Derby” at the iconic Blue Stadium.

The Blue team, coached by Jon and Trevor Blue (AKA the Blues Brothers), needed just 12 off the final 10 balls, with Nadine de Blue and Deandra Blue at the crease and plenty of batting still to come. But neither batter was able to find the boundary in a tight penultimate 5 bowled by Nicola Blue, leaving Hayley Blue to defend 9 off the final 5. Deandra Blue pummeled the first of those 5 balls inch-perfectly through the ring for 4; but a single off the next ball put the pressure on Nadine de Blue who tried to hit big but could only find the hands of Melie Blue on the boundary at Blue Albion Corner.

Blue Team captain Charlie Blue scrambled a single off the next delivery, leaving Deandra Blue to face the final ball with 3 needed. Blue was the first woman ever to hit a T20 international hundred, back in 2010 – an innings that included 7 4s and 9 6s – but she couldn’t find the boundary she needed today, with the batters (just… by millimeters!) scraping safely home for a second run that saw the match finish in a tie.

A total of 150 looked a long way off for the Blue Team going into the final phase on 95-3, batting first on a pitch that looked somewhat better than that used on Blast Finals Day, but was still not a typical Blue Stadium Belter. Having scored 32/31/32 in the first three quarters, they needed to add significantly more at the death. Melie Blue had been going along at a Strike Rate of 135, but lifted this to 183 in the final phase, whilst Chinelle Blue smashed 33 off just 12 balls to give the Blue Team the lift they needed to get to 151.

In reply, Grace Blue was well caught by Hollie Blue off the first ball of the innings, but that brought Marie Blue to the crease who swept and slog-swept her way to 49 as the Blue bowlers continued to feed her only shot! At the other end, England wicketkeeper Amy Blue struggled early-doors – at one stage, with Marie on 44 off 26 and Amy on 9 off 14, if I’d told you one was an England player with over 250 caps, whilst the other was a county stalwart with none, you’d have believed me… just not about who was who!

With Marizanne Blue looking in good touch after Marie Blue had played one slog-sweep too many and was caught on the rope, you’d have put your money on the Blue Team to cruise to the win; but they stuttered in the face of some half-decent death bowling and ultimately buckled under the pressure, leaving… honestly… one side looking rather bluer than the other.

PS: Now do you see why the BBL has always strictly enforced the requirement for all 8 teams to wear the same different and distinctive colours all these years? (Although… let’s see what happens when the IPL take over Renegades next year!)

By Richard Starkie*

Kent (309/8) beat Middlesex (306/7) by 2 wickets with 8 balls to spare

• Middlesex set a challenging 306/7, but innings tails off in final 5 overs
• Artemis Downer scores 67, one of three half-centurions
• Sydney Gorham (1/45) is the pick of Kent’s bowlers
• On loan Rachel King scores a century for Kent
• Wayward Middlesex bowling sees the total chased down in penultimate over

26 July is a good day for Middlesex. It was on this day last year in Northampton that they won the Vitality Blast in the most comprehensive way imaginable – batting through their semi-final against Leicestershire and the final against Yorkshire without losing a wicket. On that occasion Issy Routledge and Finty Trussler scored all the runs for a team who went through the whole season unbeaten until their final game: the One Day Cup semi-final, which they lost to Yorkshire.

This season has not been such plain sailing for the county from the north side of the Thames. Three defeats in the Blast and failure to win their final game with a bonus point meant that they did not even make it to Finals Day in the T20 competition.

Their early season form in the One Day Cup, however, was imperious: Derbyshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire were comprehensively defeated in April and May, leaving Middlesex the clear favourites at the top of the table, alongside tier-one bound Glamorgan.

If this season has been a mixed bag so far for Middlesex, Kent exceeded expectations by reaching T20 Blast Finals Day. On top of that, their One Day Cup form was promising early in the season, mainly thanks to the phenomenal batting of Coco Streets, who scored 78, 108, 104 and 89 across the four games they played, although they only managed to win two of those (against Sussex and Derbyshire).

So today was always going to be an interesting match-up. Could Kent take encouragement from their Blast performance and transfer that energy to the One Day Cup?  Was the Blast a blip for Middlesex or have they really lost their winning mojo?

Middlesex won the toss and decided to bat. Despite not using the loan market to bolster their team, Middlesex have some seriously good batters right down to number 8 (who today was Routledge), so with plenty of strength in depth, they can bat with freedom.

Pippa Sproul and Scarlett Hughes had to be cautious early on, as the pace of Hannah Hardwick and the loop and swing of Sydney Gorham demanded patience and solid defence. Having nudged, nurdled and defended parsimoniously to accumulate 41 runs through the powerplay, a very avoidable mix-up meant that Sproul, in not so spritely fashion, ended up sprawled, spread-eagled on the pitch as she dived for safety when attempting a run. The Scot was dismissed for 21 and almost immediately, her opening partner Hughes followed her, caught by a remarkable cart-wheeling catch by Streets at mid-wicket.

With the score at 43/2, Middlesex needed a re-set. Riva Pindoria and Saskia Horley began slowly enough, but soon were moving through the gears, both regularly going onto the back foot to muscle the ball to the boundary through an arc from extra cover to midwicket. Together they added 130 runs in 20 overs, but then both got out: Pindoria caught at cover and then next ball, Horley going for an overthrow that was never there, was easily run out.

Another re-set was required, with two new batters. Trussler soon departed, edging behind, but it was Artemis Downer and Abbie Whybrow who added the extra oomph that was need in the late middle overs, regularly finding the boundary. Whybrow at one point knocked over her own stumps after hitting a four. The umpires discussed it at length, before concluding, much to Kent’s chagrin, that the ball had already crossed the rope at the point the stumps were broken, therefore she was not out.

It was a good total for Middlesex as they closed on 306/7, Whybrow dismissed for 48, but Downer unbeaten on 67. However, there was a sense that they had possibly left a few runs out there. Nevertheless, it was a very challenging total for Kent to chase, but having scored 314 earlier this season at Beckenham, it was a total they knew they had within them.

The key to success for Middlesex was surely to get Streets out early. And sure enough, in the sixth over, Kent’s prodigious run scorer was gone. Layla Judge, bowling fast and not always accurate left arm seam, was occasionally getting it right. As the ball was swinging a lot for her, she managed to send down at least one wide per over, but in her third and fourth overs, she got the ball to swing viciously back in to the right handers, removing Streets’ middle stump, then repeating the trick to Kelly Castle.

Maddie Blinkhorn-Jones and wicket-keeper Rachel King, on loan from Surrey, then combined for an exciting and productive 10-over spell in which they took the game to Middlesex and started to make the Londoners feel a little nervous and uncomfortable. It seemed that Kent, after all, could actually bat well without a major contribution from Streets. Blinkhorn-Jones eventually edged behind for a run a ball 44, but Elsa Barnfather came in and carried on in exactly the same aggressive vein. Alongside her, King was still there, muscling her way ever closer to a century, which she duly achieved as she joyously smashed the ball back over Siya Nanavati’s head.

Suddenly, with 10 overs to go, Kent needed 61 with six wickets in hand and a set batter with a century to her name. The pendulum had swung. This game was Kent’s to lose.

Horley, desperate for a breakthrough as the game slipped away, brought herself back on. Almost immediately, she dismissed the centurion King, who dragged herself from the field distraught at a job unfinished. As the target got closer, first Hardwick, then Hollie Young were dismissed. Kent were seven wickets down with 30 runs still needed.

It was the unlikely combination of Genevieve Jeer and Izzy James who brought Kent to the edge of victory, needing just 10 from the final 3 overs. A four and a two from the first two balls of the 47th over meant that Kent were within one strike of a win. However, Izzy James skied a catch to Saskia Horley at extra cover. 8 wickets down. 4 runs needed. Were Kent about to pluck defeat from the jaws of victory?

It was the second ball of the penultimate over. Saskia Horley to Genevieve Jeer. The ball was sent tantalisingly outside off-stump. Jeer reached for it and delicately played a late cut down to the backward point boundary. Kent had won by two wickets. Middlesex had lost their second ever One Day Cup game.

Post-script: So why did Kent win and why did Middlesex lose?

This is the third time I have seen Middlesex in this season’s One Day Cup. The impression that they gave me in their wins over Derbyshire and Gloucestershire was of an energetic, chirpy and well-organised team. Their stand-out ability was their fielding. They had this way of denying the oxygen of runs to the opposition which added pressure and brought about mistakes. They were particularly adept at catches and run-outs. Their batting line up, as previously mentioned, has a depth unusual in Tier Two.

All of this was missing today. Any chirp out there seemed to have little effect on the opposition. Their fielding was poor. King, who scored 106, was dropped four times during her innings. Any of those fairly regulation catches would have changed the course of the game. Their poor running between the wickets cost them two of their most important batters at a crucial time – Horley’s dismissal was the most bizarre. She ambled through for an overthrow as if she didn’t care and watched the bails being removed from a distance without much of an attempt to get home.

I came away from the game feeling that Middlesex are a much better collection of players than Kent, but showed little hunger to win and demonstrated the sort of complacency which often brings about unnecessary defeat. They clearly felt that 306 was enough, whereas 320 or more surely would have been. Middlesex, when batting, scored only 32 runs from their last five overs – and it feels that this was the turning point of the game. Kent were pleased to have restricted Middlesex to a gettable total, whilst Middlesex believed that they already had enough runs.

The influence of loan players is also a key factor. Middlesex don’t have any, Kent have two. Hardwick was surplus to requirement at Warwickshire, but picked up a contract with Hampshire last summer. She still looks like a bowler who sits between Tier One and Tier Two, but her 1/52 today was a better economy than all but one of her Middlesex counterparts.

King’s innings was ultimately the difference between the two sides. The 21 year old, on loan from Surrey, comes from the agricultural school of batting – safe to say she’s no Smriti Mandhana – but she was highly effective today, without being faultless and secure at any point.

Middlesex’s bowling was poor. 19 year old Siya Nanavati was their opening strike bowler, delivering right arm medium pace. She had a bad day, conceding 10 boundaries in her nine overs. The spin of Routledge and Hannah Davis was similarly punished. However, Middlesex didn’t have or were unwilling to use a sixth bowler to mix things up.

On the positive side, Judge was a really interesting left arm pace bowler. The 23 year old caused genuine discomfort to the batters, but was not quite consistent and accurate enough to deliver a match-winning performance for her side. Her figures of 2/51 were by far the most economical in her team, but included seven wides, as she struggled to control the swing of the ball. Her dismissals of Streets and Castle were spectacular and if she could do that more regularly, she would be playing in Tier One.

The most effective bowler on show today, however, was Kent’s Sydney Gorham. Her seemingly innocuous and slightly loopy medium pace proved difficult for the Middlesex batters to get away and her 37 dot balls caused immense frustration – the sort of bowling that buys wickets for other bowlers, as batters try to compensate for Gorham’s over with more risky shots against others.

Middlesex’s next game is against Sussex at Arundel on Sunday 2 August. Kent travel to Redditch to play Worcestershire on the same day.

*No we haven’t poached him. The editor of Noughtie Child is on holiday.

This week:

• Terrible batting in The Hundred… why?
• New team names & new players – does it matter?
• Women’s Ashes schedule announced
• Em Arlott heads to Yorkshire – but should there be a transfer window?

Our new Prime Minister Andy Burnham was apparently a bit of a cricketer in his youth – a recent Instagram post shows him as a teenager in some very 70s-looking “Devon cream” cricket whites. Prior to becoming PM, Burnham enjoyed considerable popularity as Mayor of Manchester, and his governing philosophy has therefore been dubbed “Manchesterism”. What “Manchesterism” actually means is really quite tricky to pin down; but it can in part be defined as the antithesis to what might be called “Londonism” – an end to direct rule from the centre and more power to local and regional authorities. London is over: Manchester is the new black!

So if Mr Burnham was keeping half an eye on The Cricket this afternoon, he might have allowed himself a satisfied smile as Manchester’s freshly rebranded Super Giants squished the London Spirit with a whopping 41 balls to open their account in this year’s Hundred at Lord’s.

The result, it has to be said, owed less to MSG being good than to London Spirit being really really bad. A Jon Lewis team having a batting disaster, you say? 2025 called – they want their England coach back!

Indeed, as the wickets rained-down at the Home of Cricket, London Spirit General Manager Heather Knight and Head Coach Jon Lewis sat at the back of the dugout sharing a joke, perhaps reminiscing about the old times – Bondi… Coogee… losing by an innings at The ‘G’ – thems were the days!

To be fair to London Spirit, the first ball went pretty well – a loosener from Grace Ballinger was driven down the ground by Grace Harris for 4, to whoops from the large Spirit social media team who had set up camp in the Media Centre. But that was about as good as it got. Harris holed out 4 balls later, and Marie Kelly should have been following her back to the pavillion shortly afterwards but was dropped by Richa Ghosh behind the stumps. (It wasn’t the easiest chance for the Indian wicket-keeper, but having got a good glove on it you’d expect her to have held on.)

After scoring a brace of 50s here in the Test against India, normal Amy Jones service was resumed with a golden duck as Richa reprieved herself the following ball. And then Spirit’s problems really started!

Ryana MacDonald-Gay was the main beneficiary, taking 4-17 as Spirit collapsed in a heap to 80 all out. If it hadn’t been for Marizanne Kapp taking Maitlan Brown to the cleaners, hitting two 6s and a 4 off one set towards the end of the powerplay, it would have looked a lot worse too. Probably not quite down there with the time Birmingham Phoenix were bowled out for 54 by the Northern Superchargers… but not far off.

Defending just 80, London Spirit’s bowlers were on a slow train to nowhere. Marizanne Kapp took two wickets in two balls to get rid of Smriti Mandhana and… someone else! (Ok… ok… it was Grace Scrivens [BINGO].) But she was bowled out within 30 balls, having sent down two double-sets; and although Hannah Rainey was finding a bit of swing under the first clouds we’ve seen in London for about two months, Meg Lanning and Paige Scholfield were happy to just knock it around. Rainey did eventually pick up Lanning for a maiden Hundred wicket; but Richa was soon out there doing Richa things (ie. hitting 6s), and not to be outdone, Scholfield joined her at the end, walloping Josie Groves into the Mound Stand to finish the job.

If I’m being honest, I’m yet to be convinced that Manchesterism is the answer to all our problems. And… we have many – including a widening gap between rich and poor, and our public assets being sold off to overseas billionaires! (Remind you of anything?) Similarly, the jury’s still out on whether Manchester Super Giants are the answer to anyone’s cricketing problems; but this is such a short competition that momentum is everything, and as they top the table tonight on NRR, they are the ones with the ball.

This week:

• Blaze win the Blast!
• Why was Finals Day on a Friday?
• Is The Oval the right ground for it?
• Afghanistan Refugee XI put on a World Cup pathway
• Will ICC World Cups continue to grow for the women?
• The Hundred: a whole new world