Ahead of this year’s Hundred tournament, coach Jon Lewis called for his England players to “show up”. And to be fair, some of them have – Nat Sciver-Brunt and Danni Wyatt are the top two leading run-scorers, while Lauren Bell has 9 wickets to her name and has been one of very few bright spots for Southern Brave this season.
But if Lewis thinks that The Hundred has proved him right about his prospective World Cup squad, he should have been paying closer attention to Welsh Fire’s 9-wicket hammering of the Brave at the Utilita Bowl on Wednesday.
First, Fire bowled Brave out for just 103. As per, Hayley Matthews (4 for 14) and Jess Jonassen (3 for 21) proved good bang for their overseas buck, but the role of Freya Davies – keeping it tight in her opening set, sending down 11 dot balls out of the 20 she bowled, and coming good with 2 wickets at the death – was also crucial.
Fire then chased down their target of 104 in just 74 balls, thanks to a rollicking start from Tammy Beaumont, who smashed Freya Kemp’s first set of five for 18, to take her to 22* from 9 balls – a strike rate of 244. (She reached her half-century a tad more sedately, finishing on a strike rate of 148.) In the process, Welsh Fire became the first team to qualify for this year’s finals.
Davies was dropped by England last summer, and has gone on to outbowl every one of her international teammates (bar Linsey Smith) in this year’s Hundred comp. In the group stages, she has taken a wicket in every game bar one, and proven economical to boot, with returns of 1-19, 0-11, 2-19, 1-19, 2-12, 2-17 and 2-14. She has also demonstrated her ability to reliably bowl at any phase of the game, which is a rare ability in short-form cricket.
Beaumont hasn’t had the best Hundred with the bat – “I was due a few, I’ve been pretty rubbish so far!” she said on Wednesday – but the impressive array of strokes she whipped out against the Brave showed that she has still got it, despite having played very little T20 cricket for England in the past 2 years.
Perhaps more importantly, she has successfully turned the Welsh Fire brand from perennial losers into a genuine team who people actually enjoy playing for: a huge achievement in franchise cricket.
And finally, she was – once upon a time – England’s reserve wicketkeeper. The current candidate for that role is Bess Heath, who Lewis didn’t trust with the bat against New Zealand and whose highest score in The Hundred is 15.
If we’re honest, Lewis has basically already selected his World Cup squad. After England’s whitewash against New Zealand, he admitted as much, telling the assembled media: “My preference would be we get on the plane tomorrow.” A plane which neither Davies nor Beaumont would have been on.
The danger of that approach was always apparent: that far from “showing up”, players might instead show HIM up – exposing the flaws in some of his proposed selections, and with no more international cricket left in the interim to attempt to put things right.
Beaumont was as diplomatic as you would expect her to be when asked if, in Lewis’s shoes, she’d be getting on the phone to Freya Davies (not to mention herself!) right now – “That’s not for me, that’s on him.”
Fortunately, I’m the CRICKETher Editor and I can say what I really think: Lewis has backed the wrong horses.
CRICKETher 
Brilliant article Raf
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Do you know when you think something but someone says it much better and more eloquently?
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Glad to see my distant view of J. Lewis confirmed by someone much closer to the action. Did ECB pick the wrong Lewis, or should it have been a woman in the first place?
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Beaumont as a potential backup wicket-keeper is interesting. Heath doesn’t really look ready, either with bat or gloves, which puts England in a bit of a quandary.
If Tammy could get into the squad on bat alone it would be an easy decision but unfortunately she’s been struggling in T20s for a while now. One good innings against the Brave doesn’t wipe away what came before. She’s had a poor Hundred, a dire Charlotte Edwards Cup and was underwhelming both in her brief return to England’s T20 team in the spring and in her WBBL stint last November.
That said, if the World Cup does go ahead in Bangladesh, I would pick Beaumont ahead of Heath and pray her keeping skills haven’t atrophied completely. One concerning takeaway from the Hundred for me is just how lost many English batters look on slow, dry pitches. I fear players like Heath, Gibson and Kemp will be next to useless (at least as batters) in Bangladeshi conditions. England will need to depend on their elite and experienced batters like Knight and Sciver-Brunt, both of whom have had an excellent Hundred.
Freya Davies has been good this year. Perhaps, as we saw with Winfield-Hill two seasons ago, there is a post-England bounce that some players go through, determined to prove they’ve been unfairly overlooked. I can’t say Davies ever stood out to me when she was an England bowler and ironically her performances in the Hundred when she was centrally-contracted were much less impressive but it is undoubtedly a positive to have such depth options.
Ultimately, form is a fickle thing and I’m not sure we can get too waylaid by performances in a single edition of the Hundred, even if several England stalwarts have disappointed. After all, form alone would dictate that Levick, Paveley and Georgia Davis should be on the plane ahead of Glenn, Ecclestone and Dean.
Of course, whether ANY of this matters is debatable. I would suggest the biggest takeaway from the Hundred is just how far ahead Australia still are. For players like Perry, Sutherland, Litchfield, Jonassen et al to come over during their own off-season and dominate in the way they have suggests The Gap remains vast and perhaps is even still growing. Maybe it is just the proximity of the Oympics but I increasingly look at Australia in much the same way I look at Team USA basketball. Yes, others may have a superstar or three but Australia have eleven of them, at least. In that context, all discussions around marginal members of England’s World Cup squad feel moot!
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Great stuff. Been really enjoying both of your output during this Hundred; super insightful.
V good points re Beaumont v Heath. Does make me wonder: are this current England management picking principles rather than players?
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