Batting

Bowling

This week:

• Rockets win The Hundred… but which player has played in the most Hundred finals?
• Attendances down? We crunch the numbers!
• Has the comp been dominated by overseas stars?
• Who will play in the England v Ireland series?

The first movie in the rebooted “Hundred” franchise ended with rockets being fired into the rising sun, which probably sounded a lot more exciting in the initial pitch-meeting than it eventually looked on-screen.

SunRisers Leeds had got close to Trent Rockets when they met in the group stages, taking it to the final set chasing 139 and falling just 5 short after Annabel Sutherland hit a somewhat academic 6 (with 12 still required) off the final ball.

But SunRisers failed to bring any of that game to Lord’s for today’s final, never recovering from losing 3 wickets in the powerplay, and setting Rockets just 92 to win, which they achieved at a canter.

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Lord’s is the lowest-scoring of all the Hundred grounds, with an average 1st innings total of just 120 across the seasons, compared with Edgbaston at the other end of the scale, where a typical score is 134. But it’s hard to blame the pitch for today’s performance, given that Rockets chased down the target at a rate which would have seen them rack-up a massive 170 had they maintained it across 100 balls.

Bryony Smith’s role at the top of the order for SunRisers is obviously very much the same role she plays at Surrey, to go hard or go home – but this season in The Hundred has mostly been the latter, and Kim Garth clearly had her number – Smith had no clue what to do with a delivery speared in to her ankles, and gave up an easy catch to Nat Sciver-Brunt on the ring.

Lauren-Winfield Hill’s first delivery was a wide but that was as good as it got for her, as a “rocket” of a ball from Garth had her heading back to the pavilion for a golden (though perhaps that should be goldenish due to the wide?) duck. As she walked through the gate that leads up to the Long Room, Winfield-Hill took just a moment to look around her, in a manner which hinted that perhaps she might know something we don’t. I’m sure she will finish the season for Yorkshire, but perhaps she realises time is finally catching up with her in her 36th year?

Having therefore not got off to the accelerated start they’d have hoped for, it was all on Phoebe Litchfield and Annabel Sutherland to make the running for SunRisers. They have both had good Hundreds, with Sutherland being named Player of the Tournament after finishing as the leading run-scorer, with Litchfield just behind her in second place. But Litchfield, like Maia Bouchier, does seem particularly vulnerable to the odd brain-fade; and she was caught at short fine trying to ramp a ball from Charley Phillips that was never in a month of Sundays going to be travelling fast enough to play that shot.

And in many ways, that was… as our American friends (most of them still are our friends… I think!) say… “the ball game”. Sutherland obviously felt she needed to play a more conservative “anchor” innings and try to see it through; but with Deepti chewing up balls at the other end on her way to a pedestrian 12 off 16, it was leading them down a road there would be no coming back from.

Dani Gibson did eventually realise that risks needed to be taken, and took advantage of a run of leg-side deliveries to find the boundary 3 times in a row; but then went looking for the same shot again off a delivery on a very different line, and again was caught on the ring. The rest of the wickets fell like dominos, and 9 balls went unused as SunRisers were bowled out for 91.

It was another in a long list of under-par first innings scores in this comp, and they’ve generally been followed by the team batting second proceeding to drearily game-manage their way to the target in a fashion that calls to mind “that” Batman film – you know the one, starring George Clooney!

So we should at least be thankful that Trent Rockets responded by going out and playing positively. Sophia Dunkley led the way with a cracking 41, though it is a pity she didn’t finish the job – a mere 15 more would have put her at the top of the run tree ahead of Sutherland and Litchfield.

Nonetheless the start Dunks and Beth Mooney had given Rockets ensured that the result was so little in doubt that they spent the entire innings on 99% win probability, which the loss of those couple of wickets towards the end didn’t dent in the least.

It was, as Sutherland admitted afterwards, a win that Rockets deserved – they dominated the table and had the numbers to back that up, particularly with the bat. Dunkley was the standout, but beneath her it was very much a team effort with NSB, Sophie Luff, Beth Mooney and Ash Gardner all chipping in; whilst with the ball, Sam Bates (who, remarkably, has the same number of Australia caps that I do – ie. none!) finished as the joint leading wicket-taker, backed up by Ash Gardner, Kim Garth and Charley Phillips – the latter mixing it with the international stars in her first season in this (or any other) franchise competition.

Rockets had never made the final before this year, but assuming that teams will be able to retain most of their players for the next couple of seasons, following roughly the model of the IPL/WPL, they look like they will be the team to beat next season, and into the Hundred-Verse.

MI London kept alive their extremely slim qualification chances with a narrow win against London Spirit at Lord’s.

MI and Spirit are now in a very similar pickle, requiring a very specific sequence of results to make it through to the knockouts. Unless Phoenix beat SunRisers tomorrow they are both out; and if that happened they’d still need SunRisers v Fire to be rained-off (or a tie), not to mention a massive turnaround in their Net Run Rate in their last two group games.

And after the way both sides batted today, that doesn’t feel likely – despite the hottest, driest summer this country has ever known, I’d still rate the chances of SunRisers v Fire getting rained off as somewhat higher!

You’d be hard-pressed to describe it as a “good” game, but in front of another very decent crowd at Lord’s – over 15,000 turned up in time for the women’s game – at least it was an exciting one, going down to the final ball; though arguably it was the penultimate ball that was key. With Spirit needing 5 off 2, and the keeper standing back after MI had been subject to a fielding penalty, Deandra Dottin could easily have run a single that would have left Katie George needing to get a 4 off the final delivery. But Dottin chose to stand her ground, meaning she effectively had to hit it for 6; and with no short boundary today (unlike the game here last weekend) that was a bridge too far – she was run out looking for a second, meaning 17 wickets fell across the 200 balls… and largely not from brilliant bowling.

Put in to bat, MI were 23-5 at one stage, after Charlie Dean had taken 3 wickets in balls – the Spirit captain, who was the pick of the bowling across both teams today, finding enough spin to account for Hollie Armitage, Nic Carey and Alice Monaghan. At this point, everyone in the press box was typing “Lowest score in the Women’s Hundred” into Google; but after a summer which has almost (but not quite) rivalled Laura Wolvaardt’s for disappointment, Melie Kerr finally came to the party, hitting 69 off 41 balls to give MI the big finish they needed to make a game of it.

With wickets falling around her, Kerr waited until the last 10 balls to hit the “Launch” button, hitting 3 6s off Charlie Dean in the penultimate set. It was risky – she was almost caught off the first of those – but it was what needed to be done; and given how close the game turned out to be, it was the difference between staying alive in the competition and going out.

Although I’m not unaware of my reputation for a degree of cynicism, believe it or not I came to Lord’s today hoping to write about a good game of cricket. But with just 5 of the 20 players who batted today making double-figures (and one of them was Dottin, who made 11 and ended up making a terrible decision which all-but guaranteed Spirit lost the game) it’s hard to find the positives.

These players are being paid more than ever before, and most of them have been full-time pros for five years now, and yet…

Most of them can hit a ball, but their decision-making is shocking. The international superstars have had a long summer, and were almost certainly peaked for the World Cup in terms of their fitness; but that’s a minority – most of these are domestic pros, but they are playing like schoolboys (sic!) with an almost male level of self-delusion about their own (in)abilities to ramp their 7th ball back over the keeper, or clear the ring with a dinky chip. I’m not naming names here, because it is everyone; but if you were watching, you know who I’m talking about.

We can only hope that this is a low point; and that the semifinal and final give us something to celebrate and cheer – a bit of the magic Davina Perrin gave us in that semi at The Oval last summer. Because right now, Spirit might have been Kerr’sed; but this The Hundred… in its “reboot” season… feels cursed.