Every autumn, The Cricket Society hand out the Charlotte Edwards Schoolgirl Cricketer of the Year award to the most promising young player in England and Wales. So let’s flashback to October 2022. Alice Capsey – a former winner of the award – has just made her international debut; and this year’s winner is a young lady from Birmingham – Davina Perrin.

Attending the awards ceremony at The Oval with her proud parents, Perrin herself is shy – almost demure – as she receives her plaque and mingles with guests.

Three years later, Perrin, now a professional cricketer with Warwickshire and the Northern Superchargers, and her parents are back at The Oval; and Perrin is receiving another award – the Meerkat Match Hero – following her performance in the Eliminator (AKA semi-final) for this year’s Hundred.

But this was a very different woman to the one who had received that award 3 years previously – all confidence and swagger, having become just the second woman to score a century in The Hundred, and doing it with all the pressure of a knockout game in front of over 10,000 fans.

For 5 seasons, Alice Capsey has been the poster-girl of The Hundred after making a half-century at Lord’s in only her second game. That innings ultimately catapulted Capsey into the England team, perhaps in retrospect a little too rapidly as her development seemed to stall. Capsey hasn’t had a bad Hundred in 2025 – 191 runs and two half-centuries isn’t a bad return – but today Davina Perrin dominated a match in a way Capsey never quite has.

This wasn’t just the best innings of the day, or even of 2025 – it was the best we’ve seen in 5 seasons of this competition. The Hundred now has a new poster-girl. Jon Lewis take note: this is how you inspire and entertain.

Coming into this match, there were still a few question marks over Perrin. We’d seen good performances from her in her county and regional shirts; but a series of poor returns for England A and in big games hinted that there might be a problem – could she cope in those pressure situations that are the real test of a cricketer’s worth?

I think it is fair to say, we have our answer now.

Having been put in to bat, with a forecast of rain likely to affect the second innings, Superchargers needed to get runs on the board; and with Perrin and Alice Davidson-Richards at the crease, they went off at a decent clip, reaching 41-0 at the end of the powerplay. Well… I say Perrin and Davidson-Richards; but ADR had very little to do with it. When Perrin brought up a 25-ball 50 off the 31st ball, ADR was on 3, having faced just 6 deliveries.

By the time ADR was dismissed for 18, Perrin had reached 85, as Superchargers plundered an incredible 68 runs from 25 balls in the Early Middle phase. Perrin’s hundred, off 42 balls, was greeted with a standing ovation from the Oval crowd. Some had come to see the Superchargers; some the Spirit; some the two men’s teams who were scheduled to meet later. Every one of them will go home today with just one memory though, having witnessed something truly remarkable from Perrin, as ball after ball was dispatched to the boundary.

It is fair to say that it wasn’t a great bowling performance from Spirit, though probably one that was in keeping with what they’ve done in this competition, where they have been decidedly average with the ball, ranking 6th across the 8 teams.

But you’ve still got to hit your shots; you’ve still got to find your gaps; you’ve still got to generate your power. Phoebe Litchfield, whose numbers across the whole competition have been better than Perrin’s, didn’t find it easy out there initially; but Perrin was a cut above even Australia’s most promising young player today, hitting sixes that didn’t just cross the rope, but soared over the Oval’s white picket-fence and into the crowd. The Spirit fielders had no chance.

With Nic Carey coming in at the end and sweeping Grace Harris for 22 runs in the biggest set of the match, Superchargers finished on 214 – an absolute mountain, which it would have taken a miracle for Spirit to climb.

Spirit gave it their best shot – they were slightly ahead after the powerplay, but they lost 3 wickets in the process, including Grace Harris, promoted to open the batting in the knowledge that Spirit needed something extraordinary from her, for a two-ball duck. Charli Knott went hard (harder than Perrin had) but couldn’t keep it going and once she was lost, the only question was whether the weather would finish the game before the players on the pitch could.

A succession of blustery showers threatened to end things early, but the umpires were able to keep things going for the full game to be completed with Spirit on 172-9 – a total that would have won all bar two games in this season’s competition. But not this one. Davina Perrin had already long seen to that.