As with Invincibles in the Eliminator yesterday, so with Fire today – failure to put quite enough runs on the board in the 1st innings, and in particular a post-powerplay lull in the Early Middle phase, made it too easy for a London Spirit side that have looked workmanlike at best, but nonetheless claimed the prize because that’s all they needed to be.

Georgia Redmayne won player of the match; Deepti Sharma struck the winning six; but it was Dani Gibson that was perhaps the key player for Spirit. We gave her both barrels for her bowling yesterday, as she conceded 38 runs (one of the worst bowling returns in the history of the competition) and she didn’t have the best outing with the ball today either (0-16 from 10 balls) but she made up for it with the bat.

With the Heather Knight / Georgia Redmayne partnership having gone undefeated on the way to victory yesterday yesterday, it looked for all the world like we were heading the same way again, with Spirit on 50-2 at the half-way point in the chase.

Intriguingly though, WinHer had the Fire edging it 56%-44%, and if Fire could break the Knight/ Redmayne partnership, you felt they had a real chance to win the game; so when Shabnim Ismail returned to castle Heather Knight, that meant Gibson walking out to the middle with the match on a knife-edge. But the only edge was a slightly streaky single for Gibson’s first run.

Gibson then timed her next delivery from Ismail perfectly through backward point for 4, using the South African’s pace against her, before hitting the next for another boundary to midwicket. The change of ends meant Redmayne held the strike until the final two deliveries of the following set, which Gibson again struck for a brace of fours off Hayley Matthews. The first ball of the next set, bowled by Freya Davies? Another 4 – 5 consecutive boundaries in all.

Gibson became Ismail’s 3rd and final victim shortly after, but the 22 off 9 balls she’d added had turned a tricky chase into a canter for the batters who came in after her, with Deepti playing exactly the same smart cricket that Redmayne and Knight had in the Eliminator, knowing exactly what she needed to do, and waiting for the right time to strike the big shot which carried Spirit over the finish line. And who else would it be out there with Deepti when she hit the winning runs at Lord’s but Charlie Dean?

Like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, where (spoiler alert!) the villain from the first film returns as the hero for the second, Deepti turned her story around, winning over a Lord’s crowd of over 22,000 with the biggest cheer of the afternoon as she hoisted the trophy high on the podium after the match.

It has been a fascinating Hundred in the Women’s Competition, with the feeling that any one of 5 sides could have won it. London Spirit lost 3 games and scraped through to the Eliminator in 3rd place; but both Oval Invincibles and Welsh Fire lost 2 games apiece, so neither had dominated the way Brave did last season. In the end, it became a test of nerve and a test of smarts, and that’s where Spirit had the edge – beating teams that they had lost to in the group stages because they held their nerve and remembered their smarts when it really mattered.

A second unbeaten half-century of this 2024 Women’s Hundred from Georgia Redmayne took London Spirit to victory with 9 balls to spare – a pretty comfortable margin in this shortest of all short forms of the game – in The Annihilator Terminator Eliminator at The Oval.

Redmayne wasn’t supposed to be the “Big Name” in the London Spirit XI – that was Meg Lanning, with over 200 caps and more than 8,000 international runs. In contrast, Redmayne has zero caps, and zero international runs, having spent her 20s combining cricket with completing her medical training to qualify as a doctor. But for once, the Megastar has been eclipsed, with Redmayne outscoring her by 195 runs to 166 in the tournament so far.

The Doc played a patient innings (yes… I went there… for more puns of this quality follow my TikTok*!) and had to wait until the final moment to secure her half-century after Heather Knight almost snatched the opportunity from her, hitting out at the death. With 2 needed off 10 balls for the win, and 1 short of the fifty, Redmayne finally got the strike back from Knight, who had faced most of the previous couple of sets, and drove Alice Capsey through the covers for the runs she and Spirit needed. 53 off 47 balls isn’t a huge Strike Rate, but it didn’t matter – it was enough to win the game, and that’s all that counts – Spirit are heading back north of the river for tomorrow’s final with a spring in their step.

Oval Invincibles ultimately paid the price for a sluglish Early Middle phase, scoring just 19 runs between balls 25 and 50. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Dani Gibson giving them 3 gifts it would have been far worse.

The gift of gold came in the 2nd set, bowled by Gibson, which went for 16 runs – the most expensive set of the match; but it was followed by frankincense (9 off balls 70-75) and myrrh (13 off 85-90) as Heather Knight inexplicably persisted with Gibson, even though Tara Norris had bowled only 5 balls (conceding 5) leaving her with 15 still unused at the end. Heather Knight backing “her” players can be admirable; but sometimes it veers into obstinacy, and that’s how it looked today – Gibson was almost twice as expensive as Spirit’s next bowler, Charlie Dean – conceding 2.53 runs per ball, to Dean’s 1.2.

With precious few runs to play with, Invincibles played their trump card – Marizanne Kapp – early and often, hoping for the wickets they needed to get back into the match. Kapp was bowled out with half the match remaining, and I think Rosa hits the nail on the head identifying the problem with this:

Once Kapp was through, Heather Knight and Georgia Redmayne knew that all they needed to do was keep rotating the strike, hitting the odd bad ball to the boundary, and the win would come without them having to take too many risks.

Sure, there were some dropped catches as they made their way towards their target – Invincibles made it easier for them than it might have been – but basically the game was won by the halfway point in the Spirit innings, as long as they played it smart, and there are few people smarter in cricket than Heather Knight and Dr Georgia Redmayne.

———————–

* I don’t have a TikTok – sorry.

Martin Saxon reports

Senior Knockout: Lindow 106-8, Didsbury Swordettes 108-4

Didsbury landed their third Senior Knockout title, with their bowlers taking control and restricting Lindow to a below par score, before completing a fairly comfortable run chase.

Heidi Cheadle and Carys White added 47 for the first wicket in the opening seven overs, but any hopes that this would lay the platform for a significant total were swiftly dispelled. Hannah Marshall took the first two wickets inside four balls, swiftly followed by two more for Rosie Ackerley.

Besides Cheadle’s 43 retired from 33 balls, scores of 19 from White and Claire Ashworth were the only double figure scores, and most observers felt that the final total of 106 would not be enough. Several wickets fell to impressive catches in an eye-catching all-round fielding display from Didsbury.

In contrast, Didsbury not only started the innings at six runs per over, but largely maintained it throughout. Zoe Conway’s cameo played an important role in getting them off to a fast start. Grace Hemsted caused some difficulties for a time, and the door was briefly open for Lindow when their opponents were 66-4.

Kashmira Shinde responded by completing her innings of 42 retired with a flourish, and the South Manchester team got home with all of 13 balls in hand.

Development Knockout: Didsbury 2nd XI 114-8, Chester Boughton Hall 2nd XI 80-5

A superb day for the Didsbury club was completed here with a dominant performance in the final of the competition for division three and four teams. In doing so, they made a strong case for having one of the best second strings ever seen in the league, with this 2nd XI also riding high in Division 3 East.

After being restricted to 14 in the first five overs, Didsbury responded with 100 more in the remaining 15. Romilee Cabral tops cored with 30 retired at the top of the order, and despite the loss of regular wickets, the scoring rate continued to be rapid, with Amy Walkman and Noreen Latif amongst those playing their part.

Abbey Mayers contributed three wickets and Shree Dayama bowled her four overs for 10, but the overall impression was that Didsbury had posted a formidable total.

What was already a difficult start for Chester got worse when Amy Walkman struck twice in successive deliveries, and they eventually fell more than 30 runs short.

T20 Divisional Competition – Nantwich Vipers 122-3, Lindow 117-7

After winning the Senior Knockout in 2022 and 2023, Nantwich won the league’s other prestigious T20 trophy this time. The feat of landing one or both of the senior trophies in three successive years has certainly not been accomplished since Chester Boughton Hall’s dominance of the late 2000s and early 2010s.

It was therefore double heartbreak for Lindow, with the crucial period coming in the last 10 overs of the first innings, when 77 runs were added. After some impressive opening overs from Emilia Rossi and Libby Ackerley, Nantwich hit the accelerator pedal from the halfway point, with vital contributions from Grace Michell and Charlotte Neal. It all left Lindow needing to chase a total that was 17 runs larger than the team total they made in the morning’s final.

When three wickets went down in the first five overs of the reply, with Eleanor Sinker and Charlotte Kirk causing significant problems, the Wilmslow club’s task looked even harder. Having held a number of these triple-header Finals Days over the years though, the League knows all too well that it’s practically an unwritten rule that at least one match will go down to the wire.

From the start of their fourth wicket partnership, Grace Hemsted and Emily Murray looked in good form, and they gradually rebuilt the innings, adding another 79 runs to take their team to 93.

Hemsted departed after reaching the retirement score of 40 from 35 deliveries, but Lindow really needed Murray to reach this milestone as well. One of the most crucial deliveries of the match came when Sinker returned for her second spell and dismissed Murray for 35.

Although the likes of Katie Farmer kept swinging to the end, it always seemed that Nantwich were slight favourites, and a composed final over from Emily Clamp put the seal on a five-run victory.

The League extends its thanks to host club Hale Barns and to umpires Duane Jones, Keith Wells, Chris Moore and John Bone.

Ahead of this year’s Hundred tournament, coach Jon Lewis called for his England players to “show up”. And to be fair, some of them have – Nat Sciver-Brunt and Danni Wyatt are the top two leading run-scorers, while Lauren Bell has 9 wickets to her name and has been one of very few bright spots for Southern Brave this season.

But if Lewis thinks that The Hundred has proved him right about his prospective World Cup squad, he should have been paying closer attention to Welsh Fire’s 9-wicket hammering of the Brave at the Utilita Bowl on Wednesday.

First, Fire bowled Brave out for just 103. As per, Hayley Matthews (4 for 14) and Jess Jonassen (3 for 21) proved good bang for their overseas buck, but the role of Freya Davies – keeping it tight in her opening set, sending down 11 dot balls out of the 20 she bowled, and coming good with 2 wickets at the death – was also crucial.

Fire then chased down their target of 104 in just 74 balls, thanks to a rollicking start from Tammy Beaumont, who smashed Freya Kemp’s first set of five for 18, to take her to 22* from 9 balls – a strike rate of 244. (She reached her half-century a tad more sedately, finishing on a strike rate of 148.) In the process, Welsh Fire became the first team to qualify for this year’s finals.

Davies was dropped by England last summer, and has gone on to outbowl every one of her international teammates (bar Linsey Smith) in this year’s Hundred comp. In the group stages, she has taken a wicket in every game bar one, and proven economical to boot, with returns of 1-19, 0-11, 2-19, 1-19, 2-12, 2-17 and 2-14. She has also demonstrated her ability to reliably bowl at any phase of the game, which is a rare ability in short-form cricket.

Beaumont hasn’t had the best Hundred with the bat – “I was due a few, I’ve been pretty rubbish so far!” she said on Wednesday – but the impressive array of strokes she whipped out against the Brave showed that she has still got it, despite having played very little T20 cricket for England in the past 2 years.

Perhaps more importantly, she has successfully turned the Welsh Fire brand from perennial losers into a genuine team who people actually enjoy playing for: a huge achievement in franchise cricket.

And finally, she was – once upon a time – England’s reserve wicketkeeper. The current candidate for that role is Bess Heath, who Lewis didn’t trust with the bat against New Zealand and whose highest score in The Hundred is 15.

If we’re honest, Lewis has basically already selected his World Cup squad. After England’s whitewash against New Zealand, he admitted as much, telling the assembled media: “My preference would be we get on the plane tomorrow.” A plane which neither Davies nor Beaumont would have been on.

The danger of that approach was always apparent: that far from “showing up”, players might instead show HIM up – exposing the flaws in some of his proposed selections, and with no more international cricket left in the interim to attempt to put things right.

Beaumont was as diplomatic as you would expect her to be when asked if, in Lewis’s shoes, she’d be getting on the phone to Freya Davies (not to mention herself!) right now – “That’s not for me, that’s on him.”

Fortunately, I’m the CRICKETher Editor and I can say what I really think: Lewis has backed the wrong horses.

Lauren Winfield-Hill reverse-swept away the doubts, after a poor Hundred by her own high standards, to put Oval Invincibles in pole position for a top 3 finish with a good win over London Spirit at The Oval – a win at Rockets in their final group stage match will guarantee qualification for the knockouts.

Speaking after the game, Winfield-Hill admitted that she was “probably starting to lose a bit of faith” after a run of low and lowish scores (her highest in The Hundred 2024 before today was 20 versus Originals). She credited the coaching staff at Invincibles, particularly Johann Myburgh and Jonathan Batty, for giving her the belief she needed to come back at a crucial stage in the tournament with a match-winning 61 off 40 balls.

It wasn’t quite as straightforward a win as it might have been. Spirit had a nightmare powerplay, scoring just 13 runs off the first 25 balls. Marizanne Kapp was at her parsimonious best, opening the bowling with two sets on the trot taking 1-4; and Scotland’s Rachel Slater then matched her, also taking 1-4 off consecutive sets; before Ryana MacDonald-Gay stepped up to concede just 3 more runs to leave Spirit 13-2.

Cordelia Griffith had a very Cordelia Griffith stay at the crease, taking some time to settle in before hitting a cracking six over backward square which looked the business; then running herself out 3 balls later after failing to spot that Heather Knight had decided against a tight second run.

Spirit had slumped to 41-6 by the half-way point, and we were checking the record books for the lowest total in the history of the competition – Birmingham Phoenix’s 54 v the Superchargers a couple of weeks ago, since you ask! But a typically stoic rearguard action led by Deepti Sharma brought them back from the brink to post a pretty decent 120. As a youngster playing for Surrey, Eva Gray was considered allrounder material, but she has focused almost exclusively on her bowling in recent years, and is playing here very much as a pure bowler. However, her 28 off 22 balls on Saturday belied her tailender status, as her and Deepti put on a crucial partnership of 56.

There were a few questions asked as to why Marizanne Kapp was left with 5 balls in the bag, given that Invincibles were leaking runs like a fishing net towards the end, conceding a whopping 48 in the death phase. Lauren Winfield-Hill admitted post-match that this was partly about protecting her key asset – saying she was reluctant to bring Kapp back cold, given that she was also carded to bat at 4.

Invincibles came out to bat knowing that failing to chase 120 would make it very difficult to qualify, so the pressure was on both openers, with Chamari having had a similar run of form to Winfield-Hill prior to today – one knock of 30 and not a lot else. You can’t fault Chamari’s commitment – she was diving about in the field, giving it everything she had – and she played a couple of the most gorgeous strokes today; but unfortunately two strokes doesn’t make a summer. She chewed up 12 dots in 19 balls today – almost 20% of the innings, it is easy to forget – which left the rest with a lot of work to do.

Fortunately, Winfield-Hill was up to it, pulling out some beautifully timed reverse sweeps, unusually for her – she joked afterwards that she had only played the shot twice in her life before this innings! Alice Capsey was a little subdued, running singles to keep her strike rate ticking over, before inexplicably trying to ramp Dani Gibson, who she must know is the kind of bowler who will hit if you miss. Personally, if I was in charge, I’d have the next England batter to attempt a ramp shot summarily executed pour encourager les autres, so… it is probably just as well for everyone’s sake that I’m not, especially Alice Capsey.

Marizanne Kapp, though, came out the consummate professional, knowing what needed to be done, and the Matterhorn chart shows a perfectly timed chase, with just enough impetus to ensure that things were wrapped up before it got squeaky.

The Invincibles certainly haven’t been invincible this season, but it looks like they’ve done just enough to get through to the knockouts, where anything can happen. That’s when the value of having someone like Kapp really hits home, as it did in the 2021 final when she destroyed Southern Brave at Lord’s. With the likes of Kapp and Capsey, Invincibles have the players to beat anyone on the day, and if Winfield-Hill can make her knock today the start of a perfectly timed run of form, we could yet see the Invincibles name on the trophy for a 3rd time next weekend.

This week, on the Official Vodcast of the Powerful Women’s Cricket Lobby™:

• Will women’s cricket actually see ANY of the money from the sale of The Hundred?
• What’s gone wrong for Manchester Originals?
• Has Grace Scrivens silenced her critics?
• Our predictions for the finalists and the winner of The Hundred 2024!

London Spirit beat Manchester Originals by 8 wickets at Lord’s on Friday, leapfrogging Oval Invincibles into third place courtesy of a superior net run rate.

It means that defending champions Southern Brave are now out of the tournament – which will come as a bit of a shock to anyone used to seeing anything Charlotte Edwards touches turning to gold. It also now looks increasingly likely that it will come down to a battle between Oval Invincibles and London Spirit as to who finishes in third place and thus progresses to the Eliminator – making Sunday’s match between the two at The Oval an effective quarter-final. (We can’t wait!)

Spirit were chasing just 113 after another lacklustre effort with the bat by Originals, but had barely made their way out of the starting block by the halfway point, posting 49 for 2 from their first 50 balls compared to the 48 for 3 which Originals had managed. At that point, Georgia Redmayne was 21* off 31, and had hit just two boundaries – one off the first ball, and one off the 45th – a drought-and-a-half when you’ve only got 100 balls to play with.

In fact, when a caught-and-bowled chance popped out of Fi Morris’s hands, you’d have been forgiven for thinking that the drop was actually a deliberate ploy by the fielding side, who were presumably quite happy to continue bowling at the player who looked to be killing the game. “I dug myself into a little bit of a hole at the start. I was wondering if I should retire myself!” Redmayne said afterwards.

But five balls later, Originals opted to take their strategic timeout, and Redmayne had a moment to gather her breath, and listen to her coaches. The message? “Hold my feet, play good shots, find space, don’t panic.”

She went on to hit 45 from the next 28 balls she faced, and Spirit romped home the winners. Has a strategic timeout ever backfired so spectacularly against the fielding side?

It was just one of a number of decisions which Originals captain Sophie Ecclestone didn’t *quite* get right on Friday – another one being the determination to bowl out seamers Kim Garth, Lauren Filer and Alice Monaghan, leaving Fi Morris with 10 balls in the bank, despite the fact that all five Originals wickets had fallen to spin.

Originals have picked up just two wins from six matches in this tournament so far. There are a number of things that aren’t going to plan – Mooney has scored 92 runs in six innings, averaging just 15; Sophie Molineux never even made it onto the plane after being forced out with a rib fracture; they lost Mahika Gaur at the eleventh hour – but maybe Ecclestone’s captaincy is also one factor in the equation?

This is a bowler who recently enjoyed a record-breaking run of 34 consecutive innings for England taking a wicket (34!!!) And yet so far in this year’s Hundred comp, she’s taken just four wickets. She is ranked 27th if you judge her by the CRICKETher Ranking System (wickets divided by economy), or 23rd, if you use Women’s Cricket Blog’s System. That’s an even bigger issue when you consider that Originals have the worst balls-per-wicket ratio of any team in the comp:

If you’re one of those people who thinks that Ecclestone is the answer to England’s Non-Existent Captaincy Succession Plan, you perhaps need to ask yourself: are you happy to risk that dip in form being replicated on the world stage?

Originals have the best T20 bowler in the world in their ranks (Ecclestone), and one of the best T20 batters in the world (Mooney). And yet they now have just a 1% chance of limping through to the knockout stages. It’s probably fair to say that in 2024 they have proved to be one of those franchise teams whose sum is smaller than its component parts.

This week:

• Hampshire sell off the family silver (and £60m debt) to Delhi Capitals
• ⁠The Hundred: What’s gone wrong for Southern Brave?
• ⁠Welsh Fire top the table: the queens of pressure run chases
• ⁠Could Sri Lanka win the World Cup in Bangladesh?

When I walked into the press box before today’s match, the Oval Invincibles media manager mistook me for someone else. I was embarrassed; but perhaps I shouldn’t have been – their socials today suggest he also mistook Oval Invincibles for a cricket team. Now that’s awkward!

Having been put into bat, the Superchargers didn’t get off to the kind of start which suggested they were heading for a huge win. At the halfway point in their innings, they were 62-2, with Phoebe Litchfield and Annabel Sutherland both set, but not exactly motoring. Litchfield remains a little bit of an enigma in short-form cricket – despite the dinks and the sweeps and the ramps, she is far more comfortable playing the kind of booming cover drive with which she opened her account today. She can do the T20 shots all around the ground, but they feel plastic somehow – manufactured rather than her natural game. But having said all that, her natural game is nonetheless so good, that she is able to make T20 work for her regardless, and she was obviously vital today in terms of steadying things after those two early wickets.

Having reached 50 balls with just those two wickets down, Litchfield and Sutherland clearly decided to turn it up a notch, and the acceleration began into a big late middle phase which produced 48 runs at a Strike Rate of 192.

This was probably the key phase of the match, because it turned a middling score into a big one, so although Superchargers slowed down significantly at the death they still ended up on 146, which is right at the top end of a typical total in this competition.

Sutherland finished 63 not out, looking pretty-much as comfortable as it is possible to look in a format that is so relentless; and once again I find myself thinking that what stands Sutherland apart is an incredible work ethic that sees her return to England a better player every summer she comes… and that was even before she got her hands on the ball 45 minutes later!

A very decent total put the pressure on Invincibles batting from the off, and… they cracked big-time, losing a wicket in each of the first 5 sets, to finish the powerplay on 24-5. Lauren Winfield-Hill got a decent ball from Kate Cross; and Kapp was done by an over-optimistic call from Chamari, but everyone else will be wincing when they review the analysis footage, and rightly so.

By the time Amanda-Jade Wellington and Paige Scholfield got together, it was just a question of trying to save some face, and they did what they could, but they obviously weren’t going to go on and win the game from 24-5. And then Sutherland happened for the second time today, taking 4 wickets in 6 balls, with the dastardly tactic of bowling at the stumps – it’ll never catch on!!

The result really opens up the table, with 4 teams on 4 points and one (Superchargers) on 3. It also leaves Southern Brave bottom, which is a new experience for a Charlotte Edwards team; but with there being so little in it, there is still plenty of scope for them to turn things around. The bigger challenge than Edwards’ is on Invincibles coach Jonathan Batty – they were swaggering; now they are staggering. Which way will they go from here?