Southern Brave won The Hundred at the third time of asking, as Rhianna Southby capped-off a dream August with another brilliant performance behind the stumps as Superchargers slumped to 105 all out in the showpiece final at Lord’s.

It seems barely plausible now that Southby was dropped by Southern Vipers (coached by… er… Brave coach Charlotte Edwards) earlier in the summer for the entirety of the Lottie Cup – she didn’t play a single game in the regional T20 comp, with Vipers continuing to prefer Aussie import Nicole Faltum.

And to be fair, there was some logic to the decision – Vipers were struggling for runs in the early part of the season, and Southby is not a batter – she was carded to come in at 10 today, and was only that high Lauren Bell’s reputation precedes her as a ‘Genuine No. 11’. Southby had also arrived at Vipers over the winter with something of a rap sheet for making a lot of basic errors due to lapses in concentration – a reputation she didn’t quite dispel playing in the RHF Trophy at the dawn of the summer.

So it is probably safe to say that she wasn’t top of the list in many people’s fantasy picks when it came to selecting a wicket keeper for The Hundred.

But the one thing Southby has always had in spades however is moxie – even in her early days at Surrey, she was always the one person she could depend on to believe in herself – so whilst back at the start of August no one else might have imagined she would be lifting that big ‘H’ today, you can bet your life that she did.

Brave v Superchargers was the key turning-point – not the game today, but the one that took place back at the start of the comp, on August 6th at the Ageas Bowl. Southby took 2 catches and 2 stumpings, dismissing 4 of Superchargers top 5, earning herself a Match Hero medal – a rare feat for a wicket-keeping performance. Suddenly people were looking at her differently – talking about her as a possible successor to Amy Jones.

That may or may not come to be – it is a big call for an international side to consider picking a specialist keeper who can’t bat in the top 6 – but if there was any doubt that in terms of pure keeping, that Southby is the best we have right now below England, that was dispelled this afternoon.

During yesterday’s abandoned semi-final eliminator, we had lightning in the skies over The Oval; but here we had lightning behind the sticks at Lord’s, as Southby pulled off 3 smart stumpings to break the back of the Superchargers’ middle order, including the wicket of rival “Future England Keeper” Bess Heath, who landed on her behind both literally and metaphorically trying to beat Soutby’s glovework.

The other crucial role today for Brave was played once again by Danni Wyatt, as it had been in Viper’s Lottie Cup win earlier in the season. After a start which definitely wasn’t what they’d have wanted – losing both Smriti Mandhana and Maia Bouchier cheaply, there were just echoes of Brave’s collapses in the two previous Hundred finals.

It left Wyatt with a lot of responsibility on her shoulders, and she had to rein in her game just a little during the front half of the innings, but in the late middle phase she opened up and it was the period that decisively  turned the game in Brave’s favour as the strike rate hit its highest heights at a ground where big scores have proved somewhat elusive.

One can only wonder what the final score would have been if Wyatt hadn’t been taken out by one of the unluckier dismissals we’ve seen of late – run out at the non-strikers end after a Georgia Adams drive rebounded off Wyatt’s glove and straight to Kate Cross who took the gift presented, thank you very much!

Some late hitting from Freya Kemp, which wasn’t pretty but was pretty effective, got Brave up to 139, and left Superchargers with work to do, but it wasn’t an insurmountable total. At least… it wasn’t until Southby got involved.