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.

Southern Brave knocked Oval Invincibles out of The Hundred with a 4-ball win at the Ageas Bowl.

The result means that only Trent Rockets retain a theoretical hope of pipping Welsh Fire to the final knockout qualification spot – Rockets need to win their final match well, and hope that Fire lose both their remaining games badly, to snatch 3rd place in the ladder.

At a packed-out Ageas Bowl (official attendance, measured at the innings break in the women’s game, was over 10,000) Brave got off to the perfect start, with Lauren Bell and Anya Shrubsole removing openers Lauren Winfield-Hill and Alice Capsey within the first 10 balls.

It was left to Suzie Bates and Marizanne Kapp to try to rebuild, and they leveraged all the experience of their collective 512 international caps to take Invincibles to 51 without further loss at the half-way stage.

51-2 at the half-way mark is still some way short of a good score, but it was a platform that allowed Invincibles to subsequently accelerate, with Paige Scholfield hitting a rapid 30 off 17 balls, driving a big late-middle phase which begat 43 runs.

Brave’s bowlers pulled things back a little bit at the death, but Invincibles 130-6 was nonetheless a decent total, slightly in excess of a typical score in this competition, and especially impressive in the light of where they had been.

Brave’s formidable top-order all struggled today – Maia Bouchier laboured to 22 off 25 balls, as if shackled down by the weight of expectations after both Danni Wyatt and Smriti Mandhana had been dismissed cheaply. Brave reached the 50-ball mark neck-and-neck with where Invincibles had been, on 52-2 where Invincibles had been 51-2; and they proceeded to slip further behind, going at little more than a run a ball through to the 70th ball.

It needed something special to get Brave over the line, and it was provided by Freya Kemp, who had made just 7 runs in the tournament before today, and had been dismissed for consecutive ducks in her last two visits to the middle. Kemp defied that form, smashing a commanding 41 off just 21 balls, finishing it off with a 6 off the 96th delivery. With Georgia Adams also hitting her best score of the comp – an unbeaten 50 – at the other end, Brave were home and dry.

With the announcement by England this week that they are planning to play Kemp as a pure batter against Sri Lanka next month, there could hardly have been a better time for her to recover her mojo with the blade, leading her side to a win which puts them in the driving seat now to qualify directly for their third Hundred final, and perhaps this time actually win the thing!

65 runs from the bat of Hayley Matthews saw Fire get their Hundred campaign-proper off to a winning start, after their opening match was rained off without a ball bowled on Wednesday.

After her heroics with the bat, Matthews then took the ball for the final death over set, with Brave needing 9 from 5 balls, holding her nerve to restrict Brave to 4 for the loss of 2 wickets, with Chloe Tryon stumped off a wide from the first delivery and Freya Kemp meaninglessly run out off the last.

Matthews has been a feature of English franchise cricket since the first Kia Super League season in 2016, when she appeared for Loughborough Lightning, and has remained a consistent if unspectacular performer ever since; and her outing today was very much that. Her 65 wasn’t one that will live long in the memory – the fans in the stands will probably take home Laura Harris’ 7-ball 20 and Danni Wyatt’s typically swashbuckling 67 – but it did the job, ensuring that Welsh Fire already have more points on the board than they achieved in the entire 2022 Hundred season.

Fire made a decent enough start, with Tammy Beaumont contributing 26 off 17, continuing to show that she remains a very useful batter in domestic short-form cricket, but it was the early middle phase that did the damage as Matthews got into her running, and Harris did what she was brought in to do – play the odds and smash some boundaries.

This put Fire in such a strong position that even a 15 ball slump between balls 55 and 70, where they could barely get the ball off the square, proved survivable; and with Georgia Elwiss getting the better of Vipers teammate Anya Shrubsole in the final set which went for 13, Fire posted a total well above par for this competition – just 1 short of Brave’s own record highest first innings score.

Danni Wyatt might be getting on in years – she is 32 now – but she isn’t showing any sign of slowing down, and she looked the business out in the middle, hitting 67 at a strike rate of 181. At the other end, Smriti Mandhana didn’t look to be quite middling it early on – at the fall of Wyatt’s wicket she was on 27 off 21, at a strike rate of 129; but she then took the initiative, hitting the next 21 balls she faced for 43, at a strike rate of over 200.

Could Smriti have managed the strike better? Possibly – she faced exactly half the deliveries which remained after Wyatt was dismissed, so given her strike rate another 3 balls faced could have won the game for the Brave; but it seems harsh to blame her for the loss when (for example) Chloe Tryon managed to chew-up 10 balls without finding the boundary once.

Sometimes it feels like The Hundred is more about the cricket and the individual performances than it is about the teams, who still feel a little bit “plastic” even in this third season, partly because the draft meant so many big-name moves. In that sense, the fans got their money’s worth this afternoon… even the ones that had come out in green hoping for a different outcome.

It was 4th time lucky for Nat Sciver-Brunt – having scored a record third hundred in a losing cause against Australia in the 2nd ODI, our National Treasure finally hit one to set up an England win at Taunton.

The result means of course that England win the ODIs, having also won the T20s, to tie the multi-format series… but still had to watch Australia presented with the Women’s Ashes trophy.

As I am writing this, the players are milling around on the boundary ahead of the ceremonies, and to be fair neither side look too chuffed – Australia have lost 4 out of 6 white ball games; England have “lost” the Ashes – the faces on both sides say it all.

England’s mission this summer was to “inspire and entertain” and they certainly did that today, delighting a sellout crowd in deepest, darkest Somerset.

England got off to a shaky start, losing two quick wickets, but a huge partnership of 147 between Heather Knight and Sciver-Brunt took them from 12-2 to 159. The Australians must have been ruing allowing Knight to bat herself back into form at Bristol – she played the most assured innings she has in a while for England; whilst Sciver-Brunt just did what she does, giving the Australian bowlers nothing through the middle overs.

The job wasn’t quite done though. At 40 overs England were 198-4 and heading for around 250, which didn’t feel like it would quite be enough. It needed a brilliant 43 off 25 balls from Danni Wyatt to push England’s total to a much more imposing 285.

Wyatt did that damage in the 40-45 over phase, achieving a run-rate of over 10 in that 5-over period; and although the rate slowed again after she got out, crucially England’s tail still managed to bat at over 6/ over in the final 5 overs, despite losing wickets.

In the chase, Australia also lost early wickets – Lauren Bell will be particularly pleased with finding the edge of the left-handed Phoebe Litchfield’s bat, with Sophie Ecclestone taking a good catch at slip; whilst Cross got one to wobble through Alyssa Healy, who has had, it is fair to say, a mixed few weeks – she has averaged just 15 on this tour, but on the other hand she has captained Australia to an Ashes “win”, which can’t be too bad as consolations go.

Australia’s 3 and 4 – Ellyse Perry and Tahlia McGrath – threatened to do what Knight and Sciver-Brunt had done, but a moment of wicket-keeping magic from Amy Jones did for McGrath and gave England a glimmer of hope. Jones with the bat this series has fared little better than her Australian counterpart, averaging 17; but with the gloves she has once again shown there is no doubt who is the best in the world; and whilst she maintains that level, you can see why England aren’t even thinking about any other options.

After a break for rain, and a slightly adjusted DLS total, Australia came out fighting again, with Ash Gardner looking dangerous, but her run out for 41 was the start of a collapse which saw Australia subside to 199 all out, with the crowd really getting behind the team as they finished the job.

In the press conference after the game, Heather Knight admitted that it was a “disappointment” not to have regained the Ashes; but they have massively outperformed expectations – mine more than any. I feared Australia taking home a 16-0 whitewash; so 8-8 and two series wins for England is a huge achievement.

Whether this is just a blip for Australia, or we’re looking at a team past their peak, will emerge in the coming months and years. But when England next face them… perhaps in the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh next autumn… they will at last know that this is a team they can beat. And if they do, this will have been where it started.