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.

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.