You can’t rush a New York Cheesecake – not when you are baking it, anyway! (When you are eating it – yes, rush away!) But in the baking, it needs to cook low and slow.

In that sense, Sterre Kalis’s match-winning half-century for Yorkshire in their One Day Cup semi-final showdown against Middlesex was the perfect New York Cheesecake – cooked low, and cooked slow.

As Kalis faced her first ball from Saskia Horley at the start of the 11th over, Yorkshire were in just a wee bit of trouble, having lost two set batters – Lauren Winfield-Hill (for 16) and Erin Thomas (for 38) – within the space of 4 balls. That left the visitors 55-3, with both batters at the crease on nought.

The situation wasn’t desperate by any means – chasing a lowish 194, Yorkshire had time on their side. But given that the head-t0-head between the teams this season read “Middlesex 2 – Yorkshire 0”, including a 10-wicket drubbing in the final of the Tier 2 Blast, the honorary Yorkie from Den Haag in the Netherlands must have been wondering if history was about to deliver it’s infamous second encore, this time as farce?

So she dug in.

You could almost hear her telling herself – low and slow; low and slow – as she and Maddie Ward added just 15 runs in 9 overs between the 10th and 19th. A 4 driven down the ground by Ward at the start of the 19th over was the first boundary since the 8th over.

Even with 8 off the 19th over, the entire early middle phase produced just 23 runs for Yorkshire – it was soporific stuff, and for a brief period the game turned against them. Though it wasn’t really relevant, with no rain forecast, they fell behind on DLS, and also on the WinHer Win Predictor.

Nonetheless, Kalis didn’t panic – despite facing dot after dot (45 of ’em in all!) of defensive shots back to the bowler, or drives to fielders on the ring; and despite going at a Strike Rate of well under 50, she kept her cool, and lowly… slowly… the small crowd at Radlett began to wake up and smell the cheesecake.

Two-and-a-half an over, became three-and-a-half an over, helped by some woeful fielding and a succession of dropped catches from Middlesex. But at the point Ward was dismissed (Artemis Downer finally holding on to a skier at cow corner) Kalis was still only on 29 off 57 balls, at a Strike Rate of just 51.

The entrance of Ami Campbell did then flick a switch – the shots got bigger and so did the run rate. Kalis’s next 36 runs were scored from just 22 balls – 3x the Strike Rate she’d been going before – to get Yorkshire home with more than 10 overs to spare, with Campbell 34* at the other end. A New York cheesecake, perfectly baked.

Some credit must also go to Yorkshire’s bowlers – particularly Beth Langston, who bowled 10 in a row up-top, taking 2-38 and deserving some of the credit for the wickets that fell at the other end too. By the end of the 12th over, Middlesex had lost Issy Routledge and Artemis Downer, both edging pacy deliveries from Langston to Lauren Winfield-Hill behind the sticks; as well as Finty Trussler and Pippa Sproul. Those 4 between them have scored nearly 60% of Middlesex’s runs in the One Day Cup this season, so losing all for barely a peppercorn meant it was always going to be an uphill struggle for the home side.

Captain Saskia Horley fought back with 83 off 100 balls to get Middlesex back into the mix, assisted by an unbeaten 48 from Gaya Gole, and if the Middlesex tail had been able to wag just a little more it might have made a big difference. Chasing something more like 220 or 230 wouldn’t have allowed Kalis quite the luxury to slow-bake her innings the way she did.

It was a disappointing end to the season for Middlesex, but given the way the dice were loaded against them as basically an amateur side playing Yorkshire’s professionals, they should be immensely proud to have achieved a first-placed finish in the table, in addition to their Blast win.

And as he lined up commiseration beers for his side, Middlesex’s Director of Cricket Alan Coleman praised them for what he described as an “unbelievable season” in which the Tier 2 side have won 18 of their matches 21 matches:

“The pride that they can take in the cricket they’ve played is immense. As a club, we couldn’t be prouder of what they’ve achieved.”

For Yorkshire, they march on to next weekend’s final, where they face Glamorgan, with nothing less than a win the minimum expectation.

This week:

• Tier 2: Yorkshire, Glamorgan & Middlesex v The Rest
• ⁠Tier 1: Warwickshire go out
• ⁠Grace Harris in Australia’s World Cup squad
• ⁠Is it right to price World Cup tickets so low?

Batting Rankings

Bowling Rankings

On the CRICKETher Weekly:

• Northern Superchargers triumph in The Hundred
• Davina Perrin’s once-in-a-lifetime century
• CSA make a mess of bringing Dane van Niekerk back into the fold
• NSB bites back after being blamed for the Kate Cross non-selection

Southern Brave have been involved in a few low-scoring games this season – chasing 106 against Rockets with two balls to spare; chasing 111 versus Fire with just one ball remaining; and perhaps more significantly in the context of this match, defending 106 against Fire in their final group match. They won them all – the first time any team has gone through the group stages undefeated.

Now, in the final at Lord’s, they needed to do it all over again, after posting a slightly disappointing 115-6 against Superchargers. Lord’s isn’t The Oval, of course – anyone hoping for a repeat of yesterday’s run-fest in the Eliminator doesn’t know their North London from their South; but nonetheless Brave would have been hoping for more.

Ultimately, they probably needed a lot more – Superchargers chased it with 12 balls to spare, and with very little urgency required. There were a couple of moments in Superchargers’ chase that the Brave might rue. First they failed to go upstairs for a DRS review on Nic Carey, which would have been out. It would have been a golden duck – it was Carey’s first ball – but she went on to top score with 35 and be named the Meerkat Match Hero. Then later a delivery from Lauren Bell nicked the bails, which lit up but didn’t fall. Annabel Sutherland survived, and went on to hit the winning runs with a 6 over mid on.

The Sutherland wicket might not have mattered – Superchargers needed a straightforward 16 from 20 balls by that point, with two proper batters (Hollie Armitage and Bess Heath) plus the highly experienced and pretty unflappable Kate Cross still to come. But the Carey one definitely did; and would have made up somewhat for a disappointing season from the bowler in question – Chloe Tryon, who will go home with £20,000 in her pocket having taken 4 wickets and scored 31 runs in 9 games for Brave this summer.

None of Brave’s overseas stars really fired today. Laura Wolvaardt at least can legitimately claim that she got an unplayable delivery from Kate Cross, who will have perhaps enjoyed a moment of ‘Look What You Could Have Won?’ on the day Isa Guha let-slip live on the BBC that she has lost her central contract. (We understand that she was told this well before the World Cup squad was announced, which… shall we say… certainly adds an additional dimension to those discussions.)

But Sophie Devine chewing up 28 balls – over a quarter of the innings – for just 23 runs made it very difficult for everyone around her; and Tryon “chipping in” by stuttering to 5 off 10 balls at the death was pretty inexcusable – you have to hit out or get out in this shortest of short formats, especially at that stage!

Prior to the game, all the talk in the press box was of Davina Perrin, after her incredible performance in the Eliminator. Men’s cricket journalists who would have struggled to spell her name 24 hours before were sidling up to media managers trying to wrangle an exclusive interview with the girl who now looks set to be cricket’s next global superstar.

And why not? That unbelievable innings will turn her into a millionaire within a year or two, and deservedly so. But expecting her to do it twice in one weekend was probably a bit much; and personally I was simply keeping my fingers crossed that she didn’t let the pressure get to her and dry-up like a mountain stream in a heatwave. And she didn’t – 17 off 16 balls wasn’t a match-winning knock but it was no disgrace either. It got them all-but through the powerplay and gave them the foundation they needed to go on and win the game by playing (mainly!) sensible disciplined cricket.

Phoebe Litchfield was named Player of the Tournament, after a cameo today where she dragged out all the classics like an old music hall performer – the sweep, the reverse sweep, the switch sweep – we saw ’em all! No doubt she has been great entertainment, and she did finish as the leading run-scorer; but if I was Lauren Bell I’d feel slightly aggrieved I think. No one has taken 19 wickets in a Hundred season before, whilst both the last two top run-scorers (Nat Sciver-Brunt in 2024 (303) and Danni Wyatt-Hodge in 2023 (295)) scored more than Litchfield’s 292 runs. If Bell’s team had won the final, might that have made the difference? Should it have? I’m not sure.

So ends the era of The Hundred… at least in its current form. The format itself may drag on for another season or two; but it is certainly doomed after that, and I’d just bite the bullet and change it now, mainly because so much else will change in 2026.

As I look out from the Lord’s press box with the men’s final being played, I see thousands of kids in Invincibles’ bucket hats and sea-green shirts. They’ll be chip-paper next year, with the team from south of the river likely renamed MI London and playing in blue; as will all those Superchargers shirts being worn by the boys and girls who cheered their women’s team’s win earlier. The full house for both games proves that the public has taken this competition to their hearts. The challenge now will be to keep it there for The Hundred 2.0.

This week:

• ⁠England’s World Cup squad: Kate Cross omitted
• Alice Capsey & Danni Wyatt-Hodge included, and will Heather Knight actually get on the plane?
• Shafali Verma misses out on a home World Cup
• ⁠A new World Cup venue = havoc for players, fans & journalists
• ⁠Aussies dominate in The Hundred

Laura Wolvaardt was made for days like these. With Southern Brave chasing a low-ish total, she scored one of the coolest, calmest 50s of her career to get her side home. The scorecard says Brave won with just 6 balls to spare, but it was possibly the longest 6 balls in history – as WinHer reflects, the result was absolutely never in doubt.

Having been put into bat, London Spirit didn’t get off to a great start – Kira Chathli, who veers from the sublime to the sordid like a character in one of the 19th Century Russian novels she likes to read, holed out in the first set to one of the worst shots I’ve ever seen. Spirit then limped to 24-1 at the end of the powerplay, with neither Cordelia Griffith nor Georgia Redmayne playing with much… well… “spirit”.

When Redmayne – such a critical cog in the Spirit machine that won this competition 12 months ago – was dismissed to a stunning low catch from Mady Villiers off her own bowling, things quickly went from bad to worse as Grace Harris delivered a classic “Six and Out” – slogging just (just!) over Maia Bouchier at long on for a maximum, and then sending the very next ball in exactly the same direction but a foot or two shorter, allowing Bouchier to make the catch at the second time of asking.

Griffith continued to stutter, with her Strike Rate falling back into the low 70s at one stage; but crucially she hung in there long enough to remind Mady Villiers that fielding might be easy but sometimes bowling isn’t – Griffith taking her for 19 runs in a set, including two sixes. This one set threatened to turn the tide in favour of the Spirit, giving them a platform to push on towards 150; but they blew it big-time. Dani Gibson first ran out Charli Knott; then after (just) failing to run out Issy Wong, ran herself out for 9.

This exposed the lack of power in Spirit’s tail, as they scored just 22 runs in the final 25-ball phase, with the only boundary coming by sheer luck, after a fortunate deflection off non-striker Sarah Glenn wrong-footed Maia Bouchier on the long on boundary.

Needing 126, Brave lost Danni Wyatt-Hodge early after Issy Wong somehow persuaded Charlie Dean to review an LBW that everybody in the stadium except Wong (including, crucially, the umpire) thought was going down leg, but proved to be just straightening enough to get the decision – a millimeter of difference would have been umpire’s call, and Wyatt would have survived.

Wyatt-Hodge was Brave’s top run-scorer in the tournament coming into this match; but today they didn’t need her. Wolvaardt and Bouchier took control of the game, pushing just hard enough to stay ahead of the rate whilst keeping their wickets in hand. Bouchier did eventually lose her concentration, possibly demonstrating why Emma Lamb is going to the World Cup and she isn’t, as she was caught on the ring.

But Wolvaardt stayed cool, even as Brave’s run-rate dropped unnervingly towards the end, with 4 consecutive sets between balls 70 and 90 going for 3 or less. Others would have been panicked into going for the big hit, but Wolvaardt just rotated the strike in the knowledge that was all she needed to do; before Sophie Devine finished things off to maintain Brave’s unbeaten season and catapult them straight into the final back here at Lord’s next weekend.

Who they will meet there remains of course to be decided. London Spirit could yet defend their title – they finished third in the group stages last year and went on to win it – but they will need to be much more convincing in their final match against Invincibles, as well as hoping other results go their way, if they are to repeat the trick.

Southern Brave crushed Oval Invincibles by 89 runs – the biggest margin in the history of The Hundred – via the ultimate team performance: no 50s or 100s; no 4fers or 5fers; just contributions up and down the XI, as the Brave made it 5-from-5 to leave themselves one win away from qualification for the knockout stages. Regardless of what else happens, a win in their next match versus Welsh Fire will guarantee Brave at least 3rd place in the table.

Maia Bouchier and Danni Wyatt-Hodge got Brave’s innings off to a solid enough start, reaching 33-0 after 25 balls, with Bouchier having had the bulk of the strike through that period, facing 17 of those 25 balls and making 21 runs. But it was definitely a platform rather than a big start, little hinting at what was to come.

Brave began to accelerate immediately following the powerplay, with Bouchier hitting a 6 and a 4 off Amanda-Jade Wellington’s first set which went for 13. But her dismissal – holing-out on the midwicket boundary – saw a dip in the trend of their innings which could easily have become a fatal slump, especially after Wyatt-Hodge, who has been Brave’s leading run-scorer this season, decided to charge Phoebe Franklin, presumably guessing that Franklin wouldn’t bowl two slower balls in a row. (She did; Wyatt-Hodge was way too early on her charge down the pitch, and was comprehensively bowled!)

Although neither Laura Wolvaardt (36 – Brave’s top score) nor Sophie Devine (19) really got into 5th gear, they kept pressing as they put on a partnership of 42; before they were dismissed in quick succession – Wolvaardt caught on the ring; and Devine run out after a bit of the “Yes; No; Yes; Nos” with Freya Kemp. Kemp, however, more than made up for it with a rapid 24 off 11 balls as Brave timed their innings perfectly – losing 4 wickets in the final phase, but getting 46 more runs on the board, moving from 115-2 to 161-6 in the final 25 balls.

Interestingly, if this had been a “normal” T20 game, Brave might well have struggled to score many runs off the extra 20 balls – certainly not at the rate they had been going. But for a 100-ball match, it was perfectly timed; and left Invincibles needing a record chase for the win.

To be fair, it was a record chase.. just not the record they’d have had in mind!

We’ve seen a few times already in The Hundred this season that you have to get ahead of the rate if you’re to have any chance in these big chases; but after Sophie Devine removed both Invincibles openers in the space of 4 balls, they could only cough and splutter their way to 17 off the powerplay.

If Invincibles chances were slim after 25 balls, by 50 they were non-existent, after Lauren Bell and Rhianna Southby (who continues to show the value of a specialist wicket-keeper in this competition) combined to have Alice Capsey and Paige Scholfield caught behind off consecutive deliveries; and Invincibles eventually succumbed to the inevitable as their longish tail collapsed to 72 all out.

The result puts Brave back on top of the table, with an enormous Net Run Rate advantage over their rivals; but on the evidence of tonight they won’t need it to qualify directly for the final – they might not have had a stand-out star today, but as a team they look unstoppable.

This week:

• Will form in The Hundred impact on World Cup selections?
• Syd gets cross about the changes to the Blast & One Day Cup
• Why didn’t the ECB release their Ashes review?
• Who is English cricket’s Run-Out Queen?