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.