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 HUNDRED FINAL: SunRisers Leeds v Trent Rockets – Into The Hundred-Verse
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.
THE HUNDRED: SunRisers Leeds v Southern Brave – Fireworks Optional
Earlier today, ECB CEO Richard Gould and MD of The Hundred Vikram Banerjee spoke to the media, displaying a staggering degree of denial about the problems which the total rebrand of The Hundred has generated.
Anyone who has followed this comp (and has eyes) understands there has been a drop-off in attendances. Anyone who has been on social media in the last few weeks will have witnessed the feeling of disillusionment many previous fans of The Hundred have felt in the face of brand new team names and shirt colours.
Gould, though, said he was “very, very happy with ticket sales” and mentioned seeing “loads of people” wearing MSG shirts out in Manchester earlier this week – shirts which the franchise are giving out for free, by the way. “I’ve seen a lot more positive engagement now that we’ve got this change of ownership,” Gould added. “Now that we’ve got engaged owners, engaged clubs, I think that’s rubbing off on the supporters.
When I asked about the disappointing decline in the percentage of fans who are turning up in time to watch the women’s match – crowd ratios between the women’s and the men’s games have dropped by about 3% – Banerjee basically didn’t engage with the question. Instead he pointed to an increase in broadcast viewership for the women’s matches and said that the competition has been “another really positive step forward for women’s cricket”.
In a way, it’s a shame we didn’t get to do this press conference after the Eliminator, which attracted an attendance of just 10,271 – the lowest in four years of the comp.
The public will draw their own conclusions; personally, I would have more respect if those at the top of the tree honestly engaged with what has gone wrong, given that this has clearly been (by many visible metrics) a disappointing edition of the Women’s Hundred.
(As usual, I’ve paid no attention whatsoever to the men’s, but I imagine many of the same issues apply.)
Anyway, onto today’s semi-final. It was always going to be difficult to live up to last year’s equivalent match, in which Northern Superchargers (remember them?) hit 214 runs and Davina Perrin whacked the innings of a lifetime. But arguably we got the Eliminator this competition deserved: Southern Brave put just 114 on the board, and SunRisers then almost (but not quite) made a mess of chasing it.
There were no fireworks before the women’s game (thankfully – we were all baking in the heat); and there were few fireworks to be found during the match either. Lizelle Lee dominated the strike in Brave’s powerplay, facing 20 balls to Maia Bouchier’s 5, in what was a very Lee innings: a lot of power, not quite so much brain, and she was eventually undone by a smart piece of bowling from Hannah Baker.
From there, Brave’s strike rate took a huge dip, only recovering right at the end as Charli Knott – who in many ways has been a fortuitous injury replacement for Brave, replacing an out-of-form Jemimah Rodrigues – hit 25 off 21.
The question is whether Lee’s rapid-fire runs with the bat make up for her slip-ups behind the stumps, which were pretty embarrassing today – of the 18 extras conceded by Brave, 8 were byes.
Brave have dug themselves out of several holes with the bat during this tournament by absolutely nailing it with the ball, and there were two windows of opportunity here to do similar. SunRisers quickly found themselves 13 for 2, with the tournament leading run-scorer Phoebe Litchfield one of those back in the dug-out after coming down the track to Issy Wong in a rare brain fade.
Then, with just 20 runs needed from the last 25 balls, there were a few nerves jangling when Wong found herself on a hat-trick, bowling Lauren Winfield-Hill with one that kept low and trapping Dani Gibson leg-before when she unnecessarily swiped at her first ball.
Even for Brave’s bowlers, though, defending such a low total proved a bridge too far, as Official Adopted Northerner Jess Jonassen and decent cameo from Deepti Sharma did the necessary.
Afterwards, Jonassen reflected that SunRisers had benefited from having a tougher route to qualification than Brave across the back-end of the competition:
“We essentially played four knockout games before we came to a genuine knockout match. So we knew that we were hardened under previous pressure, and we knew that we just needed to come out and try and play the same way that we had those other games and try hard not to do anything too different.”
For Brave, time to take stock and reflect on how they might tweak personnel next season to bolster their squad – recruiting another wicketkeeper might well be near the top of the list?
Hopefully, the conversations in their dressing room tonight are a bit more honest than the one Gould and Banerjee had with the media at the start of the day.
The CRICKETher Weekly – Episode 333: Colwall; Rockets Top 100; So Long London; Money, Money, Money
This week:
- Welcome to Colwall
- Trent Rockets on course to win The Hundred
- So Long, London (x 2) and Birmingham Phoenix – but what’s gone wrong?
- Huge salaries for women cricketers: have we lost perspective?
THE HUNDRED: London Spirit v MI London – Spirit Kerr’sed
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.
THE HUNDRED: MI London v Manchester Super Giants – That’s Not My London! Its Batting Is Too Terrible
It’s not been the best weekend in CRICKETher Towers. Syd was pretty scathing about yesterday’s Spirit v Brave shenanigans and I can’t say I departed The Oval today feeling much more positive, after MI London were bowled out for 92 and proceeded to lose their fourth match in the competition by six wickets inside 72 balls.
MIL’s head coach Lisa Keightley seemed understandably shell-shocked after the match: “I’m still trying to work it all out.”
From here, MIL’s qualification prospects are down at 1% and all routes rely on them having a superior net run rate to teams close to them in the table – not great when your NRR is currently -1.540.
The Salty Manchester Elephants (MSG), meanwhile, continue to be well-placed to make the Eliminator, although captain Meg Lanning clearly needs to be referred to the CRICKETher Alligator after confessing post-match that she was finding her team’s route to qualification “too hard to work out”!
After being put in to bat, MI London quickly found themselves 1 for 2 after Sophie Ecclestone rattled the stumps of both Alice Davidson-Richards and Hayley Matthews. With Danni Wyatt-Hodge ruled out of the rest of the comp with a calf tear, ADR has been bumped up the order, on the basis (according to Keightley) that MIL want to “stretch it out a little bit and have some power hitters in the middle to the death”. Whether ADR will remain at no.2 after swiping across the line to the skiddy Ecclestone for a duck remains to be seen.
Matthews then inexplicably decided to go back to a fuller ball from the left-armer, and succeeded only in edging onto her own stumps.
If anything, things got worse from there – at the halfway stage, MIL had put just 37 runs on the board for the loss of 4 wickets. It honestly felt like watching women’s county cricket in about 2014. No disrespect to anybody involved at the time – those were some of my happiest days watching cricket – but in an amateur era many of the batters were not savvy enough to find the gaps, repeatedly hitting it straight to fielders. That was exactly the way MI London played here, set after set after set:
Ecclestone finished with a ridiculous 2 wickets for 7 runs. She also had a great day in the field, leaping up to take a catch at mid-off to see off Nicola Carey (a relief for everyone given how painfully slowly Carey batted) and running out Tara Norris with a direct hit as MI London threw their remaining wickets out of the pram.
The most entertaining moment for the crowd was probably when Chinelle Henry wellied a six over long-on and a bald bloke four rows back in the JM Finn Stand shelled it onto the row in front. (It’s OK – no one was hurt – except perhaps the feelings of bowler Kathryn Bryce!)
In reply, Lanning managed the chase perfectly. Syd compared her innings to the one against London Spirit at Lord’s 10 days ago, when she was in no hurry at all to chase down the required 81 runs – game-management from the world’s best at the art. I do think she was a BIT more aggressive than that this time around, hitting 43 at a SR of 138 including a swivel-pull for six against Henry before finally perishing to a sweep with 4 runs still required as MSG lost a clatter of academic wickets when the game was all-but won.
“We wanted to try and finish it as quickly as we could,” she said afterwards. “We want people to come out and take the game on.”
We talked on this morning’s CRICKETher Weekly about the new team owners prioritising “big name” overseas stars over and above domestic players. This is now a live issue for MIL: Melie Kerr (11 off 14) and Carey (17 off 24) both played innings at The Oval the like of which many an English domestic player has been dropped for in the past. To drop any of your overseas in a franchise comp is a huge call but intriguingly, MIL head coach Lisa Keightley strongly hinted after the match that she is prepared to do exactly that:
“We haven’t had our overseas play as well as we’d like. If they were firing, would things look a little bit different? I’m going to have a look at a few more options, and see what some domestic players who maybe haven’t had much opportunity – see if they can get exposed and see how they go.”
Credit to Keightley if she does make that call – it’s a brave one, and hopefully she has the backing of the owners in doing it. Things could hardly get much worse.
The CRICKETher Weekly – Episode 332: The Hundred; Brave Top; Wolvaardt & Perrin Open Up
This week:
- Southern Brave top the table in The Hundred
- Laura Wolvaardt & Davina Perrin open up
- Is 4 overseas players too many?
- A new poem celebrates Birmingham Phoenix
THE HUNDRED: London Spirit v Southern Brave – DiSpiriting
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.
THE HUNDRED: Southern Brave v Birmingham Phoenix – Brave Victorious But Perrin Welcomes “Small Wins”
On Wednesday, Birmingham Phoenix released a new poem to celebrate the team, written by the Birmingham Poet Laureate Ayan Aden: “This is Birmingham, where it’s your turf, your team. This is Birmingham, where we rise.”
Presumably rising from the bottom of the table wasn’t quite what they had in mind. Nevertheless, that is the position Phoenix now find themselves in, having lost Thursday’s match to Southern Brave by 24 runs.
This was a match which Phoenix really should have won – or more accurately, one which Brave should have lost. Brave’s batters went for 30 balls without scoring a boundary. They dropped three catches. They failed to take a single Phoenix wicket for 55 balls.
But Brave’s bowling depth once again proved the key factor, preventing Phoenix from accelerating across the final 30 balls, despite having 9 wickets in hand. “I think they were trying [to go harder]”, Sarah Glenn said. “The intent was there for sure. But we shut it off really with our bowling.”
Put in to bat, Southern Brave had earlier reached 140 for 3, though it should really have been more after a rollicking start from Lizelle Lee. Lee might not be the most adept at moving her feet these days, but she has enough heft in her arms to make up for it, smashing 43 from 28 balls.
In the end the pace-off approach from Alice Capsey worked – there wasn’t quite enough velocity on the ball for Lee to clear the rope at deep midwicket and Linsey Smith took the catch.
Brave’s run-rate had actually fallen off a cliff prior to Lee getting out – they had a poor early-middle phase. Slow spin was most effective on this wicket, which meant that Capsey was particularly useful, bowling her full allocation of 20 balls (she only bowled 10 in Phoenix’s first match of the comp).
As an aside, I still think making Capsey back-up keeper for England’s World Cup campaign was a bit silly. But it was always pretty obvious it was a temporary move, while Lottie tries to figure out who is Amy Jones’s long-term replacement, and that Capsey remains committed to her off-spin. In fact, she told me so when I interviewed her at the start of the tournament: “I really enjoy bowling. It’s still a massive priority of mine. It just means my training days are slightly longer than they used to be. Instead of doing bat, bowl, field I’m doing bat, bowl, field, keep.”
Maia Bouchier looked dangerous until she got out in unnecessary but sadly typical fashion, trying to reverse-ramp Lauren Filer five runs short of a half-century. Enter Laura Wolvaardt, who limped to 11 off 15 balls before being dismissed in two different ways off the same ball, simultaneously caught behind and stumped (yes I know this isn’t technically possible in the Laws).
Wolvaardt has just come off the purplest patch of her career, but for some odd reason looks a shadow of her former self since she arrived in England for the start of the World Cup, with a highest score of 45 against Netherlands. From the peakiest of peaks to the troughiest of troughs – it’s not clear quite what’s gone wrong or why?
Thanks to some punches from Jemi Rodrigues in the final set, Brave did eventually get up to a total which was towards the high end of a “typical score” in this competition according to the Ghost:
In reply, Davina Perrin played an innings dominated by wild hacks, offering up three chances – on 30, 32 and 34. Each time, Rodrigues dashed 100 yards across the field to comfort the culprit – Bouchier, Wolvaardt and Bell – before finally getting so fed up / exhausted that she decided to take a catch herself, running in from deep midwicket; although the batter out was Tammy Beaumont, not Perrin.
Heading into the last 35 balls, WIN-her had both teams neck-and-neck:
But then Alice Capsey chewed up nine balls for eight runs, and chipped a catch straight to Sophie Molineux at cover. It was the death knell for Phoenix, and Capsey knew it – she was so annoyed at herself that she threw her bat in the air, tried to catch it with the other hand, dropped it, and suffered the added indignity of having to bend down and pick it up before walking off.
Perrin did go on to get fifty, but was reluctant after the match to take any credit for an innings which was ultimately in a losing cause and perhaps wasn’t quite quick enough to make up for slow-ish scoring at the other end. “Missing the Blast and being injured, and having a lot of the season out, obviously means that when you come back to play, you’re just sort of finding your feet,” she said.
She admitted, too, that it feels like these days she is trying to live up to her magical Eliminator innings every time she is at the crease. “I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t cross my mind. But I think I’m also reminding myself, it’s the small things at the minute. Being back out on the pitch, having a healthy body, they’re the small wins for me at the minute.”
For now, the bigger wins will have to wait.
THE HUNDRED: MI London v London Spirit – True Blue (I’m Asking You)
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!)
CRICKETher 