Our batting rankings are usually dominated by the big names, but it feels rare to see a list that is quite so monopolised by established internationals. In The Hundred last year, we had 3 uncapped players – Eve Jones (5th), Georgia Redmayne (14th) and Dani Gibson (15th) – in our top 15; this year you have to go down to 19 before you find the first uncapped name – Superchargers captain Holly Armitage – the only player without international recognition in the top 20. (And you have to go as deep as 28th before you find another – Bess Heath.)

There is also a worrying lack of England players in the top 20. At the last WBBL, 12 of the top 20, and 5 of the top 10, were Australians; here, only 8 (or 9 if you count Sarah Bryce) of those in the top 20 are England-qualified players, and just 2 in the top 10 are English; so suggestions that what The Hundred really needs is more overseas players might be considered… er… “ill-considered” in the light of these numbers!

Sheer weight of runs puts Laura Wolvaardt out on top, with two 50s and a highest score of 90* at a strike rate of 184 in Superchargers’ remarkable successful chase versus Originals. The prevailing wisdom that Wolvaardt is really a Test / ODI player trying to shoehorn herself into a role in the T20 game will probably follow her throughout her career, and there remains an element of truth to it: her strike rate of 134 is significantly less than the top 10 average of 149. On the other hand, 134 is hardly terrible, and the real question for teams to address is how to complement what she can bring to a team (runs) with what others can (high strike rate). Arguably Superchargers eventually stumbled upon the answer to this, with a top order of Healy, Wolvaardt and Heath, and it would have been good to see this play out over a longer, WBBL-type season with twice as many games.

Suzie Bates might have been a late addition to the Invincibles squad as their “4th overseas” but she underlined her continuing value in franchise cricket with 229 runs at 151, while also picking up the captaincy when Dane van Niekerk has missed out on selection. Most squads chose their 4th overseas with a very clear role as a “backup plan” – Deepti Sharma at Phoenix didn’t play at all, and Molly Strano at Brave played only one game – but Bates ended up playing every match, and forming a formidable partnership with Lauren Winfield-Hill which has made Invincibles a much more balanced team this season, after their over-reliance on their bowling last year.

Winfield-Hill herself is the top-ranked English player at 4, continuing her outstanding domestic summer, after shining in regional cricket too. Whether she has done enough to force herself back into the England XI as a batter remains an open question (probably not, to be honest), though it was interesting that she insisted on retaining the wicket-keeping gloves even though Invincibles had another keeper on the team, despite an injury concern in the final match, suggesting that maybe she sees this as her route back to international cricket?

Two players we definitely won’t be seeing play internationally again come in at 6 and 7 – Deandra Dottin and Lizelle Lee have both recently retired from internationals to focus on making hay (and… let’s not beat about the bush… money) in franchise cricket, and both had fair starts to their new directions; but it will be interesting to see how long they can continue to stay with the pace, without the extrinsic motivations that come with being part of an international squad. Being your own coach, fitness instructor and nutritionist no doubt sounds appealing; but can it work longer-term? It will be fascinating to watch how that evolves over the next year or so.

Batting Ranking = Runs * Strike Rate

Grace Scrivens – dropped down the order after having “failed” in the opening role earlier in the tournament – and Naomi Dattani battled through 54 balls to pull London Spirit back from the deepest of deep holes at 26-6, to overhaul Birmingham Phoenix’s 82 all out, with just 3 balls remaining. Never has the old cliché of pulling victory from the jaws of defeat seemed more apt.

Needing a win (or a tie) to qualify for the eliminator, the pressure was all on Phoenix, who decided to push Sophie Molineux up the order to open in place of Eve Jones. It was a classic case of making a decision based on reputation rather than reality – Molineux has opened the batting for Melbourne Renegades in the past, but they were never particularly successful when she did, and last season, when they had their best season ever, she batted down the order. Unsurprisingly then, she didn’t last long today – sending a limp drive off Freya Davies straight to Amelia Kerr on the ring for 3 off 3.

This brought Amy Jones to the middle, who is developing something a reputation for dealing with pressure the same way a bar of Dairy Milk deals with being left in a hot car on a sunny day. Let’s just say… it doesn’t end well for the Dairy Milk, and it didn’t for Amy Jones – cleaned-up by an admittedly beautiful delivery from Megan Schutt. Ellyse Perry lasted just one ball, and suddenly Phoenix were 15-3.

While Sophie Devine was still there hope remained, but it was looking increasingly forlorn, with both Devine and Eve Jones struggling to find the middle of the bat, and the runs drying up to a trickle. They’d reached 32 off 34 balls when Devine looked to take a quick single, realised she wasn’t going to make it, and tried to retrace her steps, but not quite in time to prevent Grace Scrivens removing the bails after a sharp throw from Charlie Dean. 32-4.

Eve Jones and Georgia Elwiss put on 25, making 24 and 14 respectively – the only Phoenix batters to reach double-figures – but their pace was less than a run a ball, and both fell to infield catches are they tried to manufacture something to up the rate; and from there Phoenix imploded to 82 all out – no doubt to the delight of Northern Superchargers, Trent Rockets and Manchester Originals, all of whom needed Phoenix to lose to retain an interest themselves in qualification for Friday’s semi-final eliminator.

But we are rapidly learning that if there’s one thing hundred-ball cricket can do it is turn on a dime, and within 11 balls of the Spirit innings it had done the kind of 180 Tony Hawk would have been proud of in his heyday. First Dani Gibson clonked Sophie Molineux to long on to register her 4th duck of the tournament – it happens, and the important thing in this super-short format is not to waste balls, which was Grace Scrivens’ “crime” when she was opening, so Gibson shouldn’t feel too badly about it.

Beth Mooney however probably should feel a little badly about her dismissal – given how few runs Spirit were chasing, there was no excuse really for the senior player to take on Sophie Devine’s arm, and she got her comeuppance!  Amelia Kerr followed her back to the dugout 2 balls later – chipping into a space, which suddenly wasn’t a space any more, as Eve Jones sprinted in to take the catch on the dive. After Phoenix had been 15-3, Spirit were now 2-3.

But with Sophie Luff and Charlie Dean at the crease, and the ask well under a run a ball, it should still have been an easy chase, and it was set up for Luff and Dean, neither of whom are big hitters, to manage their way to the total, getting them in singles if necessary. And that seemed to be the way things were going, until both were softly dismissed, followed by Alice Monaghan. 26-6, and I suspect some glum faces among the Superchargers, Rockets and Originals players watching on from their homes or hotel rooms.

The batters in the middle: Naomi Dattani – whose greatest moments on a cricket field have tended towards the “see ball/ hit ball out of the ground” end of the spectrum, and Grace Scrivens, demoted down the order having looked puzzlingly out of form in the first few matches of this tournament.

But the required rate was still within reach – it was 50 off 50 at the half-way stage – so all they needed to do was hang in there and they’d give themselves a chance. And that’s exactly what they did. Dattani finished 28 off 29; and Scrivens 26 off 30, scoring just 3 boundaries between them, but they reached the final set with a gettable 7 needed from 5 balls, and Sophie Molineux (who will want to have this game clinically erased from her memory) did the rest – cracking under the pressure, bowling a head-hight no-ball, which effectively cost 5 runs to leave Spirit needing 2 off 4 balls. Scrivens needed just one ball to finish her tournament (and London Spirit’s) on a high which no one who was here will forget in a hurry.

London Spirit officially knocked Welsh Fire out of The Hundred with an 8 wicket win at Lords.

Not that Spirit are really in much position to celebrate either – their chances of making the eliminator are pretty-much zero too, though they could mathematically still sneak in on Net Run Rate – so this was very much a consolation victory; but nonetheless a win at the Home of Cricket is still a win at the Home of Cricket, and for one player in particular, this could be a career-defining game.

Having made good, quick runs coming in lower down the order for London Spirit last season, Dani Gibson would have been looking forward to building on that this year; but things didn’t go quite the way she hoped in the first two matches: a golden duck against Superchargers was followed by another first-baller against Brave.

A 12 off 7 balls against Rockets was more promising, but with Grace Scrivens struggling… of which more in a minute… today was Gibson’s chance – promoted to open the batting alongside Beth Mooney, who has had her own struggles of late, though today’s half-century was her 4th in her past 7 innings, so it’s all relative!

With the help of a small slice of luck – caught off a no ball – Gibson struck 34 off 27 balls, outscoring Mooney 25-10 in the powerplay, to get the Spirit’s chase off to the bright start they needed.

It has become the pattern in The Hundred this summer that teams score strongly in the powerplay, then fall back in the second quarter of the match, before pushing on in the third and final quarters, and today was no exception, with Spirit scoring at 150 in the powerplay, falling back to 120 in the second quarter, before pushing back up to 150+ as they pushed on to the win.

Having made the most of her opportunity, Dani Gibson has presumably got the opening role wrapped up now for the Spirit’s final two games, though they will be tough ones – Invincibles and Phoenix await, both pushing for direct final qualification if Brave slip up.

Gibson’s chance comes at the expense of Grace Scrivens, who has chosen a very bad time to have a terrible run of form. It’s not just the scores – 1, 18 and 8 – but the Strike Rates. The 18 was off 18 balls, which is “okay” (but only really “okay” for an opener in this competition) but the 1 was off 9 balls and the 8 was off 18 – Strike Rates of 11 and 44. It’s not a fair reflection of her talent, but as my dad always told me: life isn’t fair.

Everyone has dips in form – Alice Capsey had a pretty a rough patch in the Charlotte Edwards Cup earlier this summer, while Scrivens was the one putting in Player of the Match performances for Sunrisers – but no one was watching then. Now the eyes of the world are on them, it is Capsey wowing the crowds once again, while Scrivens had ended up dropped down the order, back where she started last season.

Scrivens’ biggest problem is that what’s left of the summer is short and the winter is long – though presumably she’ll go to the Under 19 World Cup in January, quite possibly as captain – but it is a 11 months until The Hundred comes around again, and that’s quite a wait for the next opportunity.

It’s also a long wait for the next opportunity for Welsh Fire, who can’t qualify for the eliminator now even if they win their remaining two games by a million runs! Most of their batters haven’t come to the party this season, while one of those that did (Hayley Matthews) left early, and is no longer available, having returned to the West Indies for their Caribbean Premier League.

Their innings today stuttered rather than flowed, with 5 “sets” – a whole quarter of the innings – producing just 1 or 2 runs.

In a tournament where the average first innings score has been 136, you can’t afford to throw away a quarter of your innings like that, and unsurprisingly Fire ended up well short of where they needed to be.

As Polly and Richard discussed on last week’s Noughtie Child Podcast, some teams develop a winning mentality, but Fire seem to have saddled themselves with a losing one. The cycle can be broken, as Tasmania proved by winning this year’s WNCL, but it takes something special, and Fire aren’t a “young” side either – the average age of today’s team was 27, with just one teenager (Hannah Baker) in the XI. They had a bit of a clear-out this season, retaining only just over half their squad – they look like they need another now, if they want to avoid an early walk through the exit door again next time around.

143-5 is a good score in The Hundred – it would have been the 6th best total in last season’s comp – but Invincibles made it look easy, sailing past it with 16 balls to spare thanks to a late assault from… who else… Alice Capsey. Capsey celebrated her 18th birthday with 25 off 8 balls, at a Strike Rate of 313 – by some distance the highest 25-run-plus innings Strike Rate in the Hundred’s short history, beating Issy Wong’s 27 off 11 balls for Phoenix against Rockets in 2021.

It came after Capsey survived what appeared to be a horrible fall in the field, slipping as she tried to make a stop on the ring, turning her ankle and landing heavily on her knee. The TV slow-motion replay made it look particularly nasty, but after some treatment and a couple of magic pills she was back on her feet, and although she did leave the field briefly later in the first innings, she certainly seemed unaffected walking out to bat with the score on 104-1, with 40 required from 32 balls.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said that he’d “rather have lucky generals than good ones” but in Capsey, Oval Invincibles seem to have both. The “lucky” came first today – dropped first ball by Bess Heath at square leg, though calling it a “drop” is perhaps somewhat unfair on Heath, who did well to get her hand to it. It was soon followed by the “good” – a six driven straight down the ground was followed by four consecutive 4s off Linsey Smith to end the game.

Smith had been going well earlier, conceding just 7 runs from the last 10 balls of the powerplay, bowled consecutively across a change of ends; but she took a beating from Lauren Winfield-Hill in her third set, going for 11, and then the battering from Capsey to finish with somewhat disappointing figures in the end of 34-0 off 19.

Winfield-Hill collected the Player of the Match (or are we still calling it Match Hero?) award for her contribution of 74 off 42 balls, continuing the excellent form she has shown in domestic cricket for Diamonds this season. She’s already looking like the trade of the century, with Invincibles having picked her up for just a 3rd-tier salary, in the hopes of strengthening a batting order that had been surprisingly weak last year (notwithstanding Capsey’s break-out performances), when they definitely proved the old adage that batters win matches but bowlers win tournaments.

With Marizanne Kapp unwell, being able to bring in Suzie Bates at the top of the innings also gave a bit more balance to the Invincibles line-up. Bates added 46 off 34 balls in a first wicket partnership of 104 with Winfield-Hill, and presents Invincibles with a bit of a selection dilemma going forwards – they will clearly want to bring back Kapp asap, and van Niekerk obviously plays, so one of Bates or Shabnim Ismail is going to miss out. Ismail looked good today, delivering 8 dots from her 20 balls, but it could well be her that misses out for the sake of the balance of the team.

Another one who played a quietly significant role for Invincibles today was 17-year-old Sophia Smale, the Welsh left-arm spinner who only came into the squad as a late injury replacement for Emma Jones. There are obvious comparisons to Sophie Ecclestone, another left-arm spinner who bowls a very consistent ball; but the similarities really end there – Smale has an almost slingly action, delivering the ball wide of the crease to angle it across the batter, and she was obviously causing problems which were rewarded with the wicket of Alyssa Healy, which isn’t a bad first scalp to have in your trophy cabinet. Having come late into the team and not only superseded Danni Gregory in the line-up but also snagged a powerplay bowling spot, Smale must have seriously impressed coach Jonathan Batty, and you could see why tonight.

So Invincibles have carried on where they signed off in 2021, with a big win over fancied opposition – Superchargers were good, but just not good enough on the day to match the brilliance (and luck) of Alice Capsey at the death. It really does feel like the bigger the stage for Capsey, the bigger the performance – and the really lucky ones are all of us being here to see it.

Lisa Keightley will leave her role as England Head Coach at the end of the summer, the ECB have announced, with Keightley having informed the ECB that she will not be seeking an extension at the end of her current contract.

Keightley took up the role of head Coach in January 2020 and was almost immediately forced to navigate the uncharted waters of managing the team in a world of lockdowns and biosecurity forced on them by the COVID-19 pandemic, whilst also being separated from her own family back home in Australia. With Keightley’s long-term assistant Tim MacDonald also returning to Australia after the Commonwealth Games, this decision comes as little surprise.

Director of England Women’s Cricket Jonathan Finch alluded to some of these challenges, saying:

“Leading an international team is challenging at the best of times. It is more challenging during a pandemic, and Lisa has been able to continue the development of the team during what has been the toughest period we have faced off the field.”

Keightley enjoyed a win ratio of 68% during her time in charge of England, but although the cemented their position amongst the best sides in the world, they remain very-much second-best to Australia, who handed them an embarrassing defeat in the 2022 Women’s Ashes, followed by a drubbing in the World Cup Final a few weeks later.

At the recent Commonwealth Games, England were pipped by India in the semi-finals, and then embarrassed themselves in the bronze medal match with a poor and petulant display – something the new management team will need to address ahead of the T20 World Cup in South Africa next year.

New Zealand thoroughly deserved their bronze medals in the play-off match at the Commonwealth Games, after restricting England to one of their lowest 1st innings totals in the history of T20 internationals.

Not to put too fine a point on it: New Zealand looked like they wanted the medals… England looked like they wanted to be somewhere else.

Having lost to England in the last match of the group stages, and been well beaten by Australia in their semi-final last night, with barely 12 hours between leaving the stadium last night and needing to be back here this morning, it wouldn’t have been surprising if it was New Zealand who looked tired and flat. That they came out fighting is credit to their leadership team.

The same cannot be said of England.

England talk a lot about being role models, but after one player was given an official reprimand yesterday for swearing on the field of play, the overriding image of England today was another being shown live on TV, smashing over a chair with her bat on her way back to the dressing room after being dismissed.

We can ask the question as to whether these bronze medal matches are needed or required – other sports in other tournaments just award both of the defeated semi-finalists a “shared” bronze medal – but everyone knew the deal coming into this tournament; and whilst frustrations do sometimes spill over for all of us – me very much included – we also sometimes need to accept that we’ve let ourselves down, front-up and apologise – not for losing in this case, but for losing badly with ill-grace.

The sight of the New Zealand players celebrating with selfies down on the outfield after the game, on the other hand, was lovely to see.

With a new coach and a new-look to their lineup, little was expected from the White Ferns at these Commonwealth Games. Getting to the semi-finals was probably over-par, after a slightly disappointing home World Cup, and so to come home with bronze medals was a fantastic achievement.

Although England were poor by their own standards, they did at least set New Zealand a chase that potentially made it interesting. It doesn’t happen a lot, but matches do occasionally get won by teams making less than 120 in the first innings, so it wasn’t quite a foregone conclusion. But the positive intent shown by Sophie Devine and Suzie Bates up top put New Zealand quickly in the driving seat. By the end of the powerplay they were over half way there, and Devine was able to push on to hit the winning run in the 12th over just after bringing up her half century.

It is probably just as well for England that we’ve got The Hundred coming up hot on our heels right now – there will be no time for the players to brood over the disappointment of the Commonwealths, but instead the chance to reset in a different environment, with different team-mates and different coaches. There will be some tough decisions for the management team to make ahead of the India series in September, but those decisions are for another day.

Right now, let’s just congratulate New Zealand and hope for a brilliant final between Australia and India this evening.