THE HUNDRED: MI London v Manchester Super Giants – That’s Not My London! Its Batting Is Too Terrible

Posted by Raf Nicholson

It’s not been the best weekend in CRICKETher Towers. Syd was pretty scathing about yesterday’s Spirit v Brave shenanigans and I can’t say I departed The Oval today feeling much more positive, after MI London were bowled out for 92 and proceeded to lose their fourth match in the competition by six wickets inside 72 balls.

MIL’s head coach Lisa Keightley seemed understandably shell-shocked after the match: “I’m still trying to work it all out.”

From here, MIL’s qualification prospects are down at 1% and all routes rely on them having a superior net run rate to teams close to them in the table – not great when your NRR is currently -1.540.

The Salty Manchester Elephants (MSG), meanwhile, continue to be well-placed to make the Eliminator, although captain Meg Lanning clearly needs to be referred to the CRICKETher Alligator after confessing post-match that she was finding her team’s route to qualification “too hard to work out”!

After being put in to bat, MI London quickly found themselves 1 for 2 after Sophie Ecclestone rattled the stumps of both Alice Davidson-Richards and Hayley Matthews. With Danni Wyatt-Hodge ruled out of the rest of the comp with a calf tear, ADR has been bumped up the order, on the basis (according to Keightley) that MIL want to “stretch it out a little bit and have some power hitters in the middle to the death”. Whether ADR will remain at no.2 after swiping across the line to the skiddy Ecclestone for a duck remains to be seen.

Matthews then inexplicably decided to go back to a fuller ball from the left-armer, and succeeded only in edging onto her own stumps.

If anything, things got worse from there – at the halfway stage, MIL had put just 37 runs on the board for the loss of 4 wickets. It honestly felt like watching women’s county cricket in about 2014. No disrespect to anybody involved at the time – those were some of my happiest days watching cricket – but in an amateur era many of the batters were not savvy enough to find the gaps, repeatedly hitting it straight to fielders. That was exactly the way MI London played here, set after set after set:

Ecclestone finished with a ridiculous 2 wickets for 7 runs. She also had a great day in the field, leaping up to take a catch at mid-off to see off Nicola Carey (a relief for everyone given how painfully slowly Carey batted) and running out Tara Norris with a direct hit as MI London threw their remaining wickets out of the pram.

The most entertaining moment for the crowd was probably when Chinelle Henry wellied a six over long-on and a bald bloke four rows back in the JM Finn Stand shelled it onto the row in front. (It’s OK – no one was hurt – except perhaps the feelings of bowler Kathryn Bryce!)

In reply, Lanning managed the chase perfectly. Syd compared her innings to the one against London Spirit at Lord’s 10 days ago, when she was in no hurry at all to chase down the required 81 runs – game-management from the world’s best at the art. I do think she was a BIT more aggressive than that this time around, hitting 43 at a SR of 138 including a swivel-pull for six against Henry before finally perishing to a sweep with 4 runs still required as MSG lost a clatter of academic wickets when the game was all-but won.

“We wanted to try and finish it as quickly as we could,” she said afterwards. “We want people to come out and take the game on.”

We talked on this morning’s CRICKETher Weekly about the new team owners prioritising “big name” overseas stars over and above domestic players. This is now a live issue for MIL: Melie Kerr (11 off 14) and Carey (17 off 24) both played innings at The Oval the like of which many an English domestic player has been dropped for in the past. To drop any of your overseas in a franchise comp is a huge call but intriguingly, MIL head coach Lisa Keightley strongly hinted after the match that she is prepared to do exactly that:

“We haven’t had our overseas play as well as we’d like. If they were firing, would things look a little bit different? I’m going to have a look at a few more options, and see what some domestic players who maybe haven’t had much opportunity – see if they can get exposed and see how they go.”

Credit to Keightley if she does make that call – it’s a brave one, and hopefully she has the backing of the owners in doing it. Things could hardly get much worse.

THE HUNDRED: Southern Brave v Birmingham Phoenix – Brave Victorious But Perrin Welcomes “Small Wins”

Posted by Raf Nicholson

On Wednesday, Birmingham Phoenix released a new poem to celebrate the team, written by the Birmingham Poet Laureate Ayan Aden: “This is Birmingham, where it’s your turf, your team. This is Birmingham, where we rise.”

Presumably rising from the bottom of the table wasn’t quite what they had in mind. Nevertheless, that is the position Phoenix now find themselves in, having lost Thursday’s match to Southern Brave by 24 runs.

This was a match which Phoenix really should have won – or more accurately, one which Brave should have lost. Brave’s batters went for 30 balls without scoring a boundary. They dropped three catches. They failed to take a single Phoenix wicket for 55 balls.

But Brave’s bowling depth once again proved the key factor, preventing Phoenix from accelerating across the final 30 balls, despite having 9 wickets in hand. “I think they were trying [to go harder]”, Sarah Glenn said. “The intent was there for sure. But we shut it off really with our bowling.”

Put in to bat, Southern Brave had earlier reached 140 for 3, though it should really have been more after a rollicking start from Lizelle Lee. Lee might not be the most adept at moving her feet these days, but she has enough heft in her arms to make up for it, smashing 43 from 28 balls.

In the end the pace-off approach from Alice Capsey worked – there wasn’t quite enough velocity on the ball for Lee to clear the rope at deep midwicket and Linsey Smith took the catch.

Brave’s run-rate had actually fallen off a cliff prior to Lee getting out – they had a poor early-middle phase. Slow spin was most effective on this wicket, which meant that Capsey was particularly useful, bowling her full allocation of 20 balls (she only bowled 10 in Phoenix’s first match of the comp).

As an aside, I still think making Capsey back-up keeper for England’s World Cup campaign was a bit silly. But it was always pretty obvious it was a temporary move, while Lottie tries to figure out who is Amy Jones’s long-term replacement, and that Capsey remains committed to her off-spin. In fact, she told me so when I interviewed her at the start of the tournament: “I really enjoy bowling. It’s still a massive priority of mine. It just means my training days are slightly longer than they used to be. Instead of doing bat, bowl, field I’m doing bat, bowl, field, keep.”

Maia Bouchier looked dangerous until she got out in unnecessary but sadly typical fashion, trying to reverse-ramp Lauren Filer five runs short of a half-century. Enter Laura Wolvaardt, who limped to 11 off 15 balls before being dismissed in two different ways off the same ball, simultaneously caught behind and stumped (yes I know this isn’t technically possible in the Laws).

Wolvaardt has just come off the purplest patch of her career, but for some odd reason looks a shadow of her former self since she arrived in England for the start of the World Cup, with a highest score of 45 against Netherlands. From the peakiest of peaks to the troughiest of troughs – it’s not clear quite what’s gone wrong or why?

Thanks to some punches from Jemi Rodrigues in the final set, Brave did eventually get up to a total which was towards the high end of a “typical score” in this competition according to the Ghost:

In reply, Davina Perrin played an innings dominated by wild hacks, offering up three chances – on 30, 32 and 34. Each time, Rodrigues dashed 100 yards across the field to comfort the culprit – Bouchier, Wolvaardt and Bell – before finally getting so fed up / exhausted that she decided to take a catch herself, running in from deep midwicket; although the batter out was Tammy Beaumont, not Perrin.

Heading into the last 35 balls, WIN-her had both teams neck-and-neck:

But then Alice Capsey chewed up nine balls for eight runs, and chipped a catch straight to Sophie Molineux at cover. It was the death knell for Phoenix, and Capsey knew it – she was so annoyed at herself that she threw her bat in the air, tried to catch it with the other hand, dropped it, and suffered the added indignity of having to bend down and pick it up before walking off.

Perrin did go on to get fifty, but was reluctant after the match to take any credit for an innings which was ultimately in a losing cause and perhaps wasn’t quite quick enough to make up for slow-ish scoring at the other end. “Missing the Blast and being injured, and having a lot of the season out, obviously means that when you come back to play, you’re just sort of finding your feet,” she said.

She admitted, too, that it feels like these days she is trying to live up to her magical Eliminator innings every time she is at the crease. “I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t cross my mind. But I think I’m also reminding myself, it’s the small things at the minute. Being back out on the pitch, having a healthy body, they’re the small wins for me at the minute.”

For now, the bigger wins will have to wait.

THE HUNDRED: MI London v SunRisers Leeds – Money Makes The World Go Round

Posted by Raf Nicholson

Just three weeks ago (it feels like an eternity), Hayley Matthews was here at The Oval, playing in a World Cup semi-final and unleashing a brilliant, heartfelt critique of cricket’s financial inequities.

On Tuesday she was back at the same ground (well, sort of: apparently we have to refer to it as The My London Stadium for the next four weeks… or do we?). This time, she was opening the batting for MI London in shiny new blue kit. She will earn £120,000 for four weeks work: a small cog in a big tournament which has itself become part of the problem.

Money from overseas investors (£520 million to be more specific) can buy you a lot of things. Judging by Tuesday’s opening match in The Hundred, that includes very big, very noisy fireworks. At least some of that money also trickles down to (some of) the players. Take a moment to compare the 2026 Hundred with the first franchise cricket in England, the Kia Super League, which got underway almost exactly a decade ago up in Headingley – incidentally now home to SunRisers Leeds. Matthews played in that, too, representing Lancashire Thunder. Her take-home pay was about £600.

Interesting, then, that when she decided to call out cricket’s haves and have-nots, Matthews was actually nostalgic for that period. “The reason we were so successful back in 2012 and 2013 and 2015 and 2016 is because women’s cricket was based off pure talent at that time,” she said. “The minute that investment comes into the picture, we’ve seen the gap widen a lot because of that.”

Perhaps without even realising it, Matthews was expressing a certain wistfulness for times gone by when women’s cricket didn’t revolve around making a bunch of Indian (and American) businessmen richer. And as I watched the match on Tuesday at ~~The Oval~~ The My London Stadium on Tuesday, I was wistful too.

Matthews herself finished as top-scorer for MI London, with 33 from 22 balls, looking good until she popped up a return catch to Deepti Sharma. The music which the powers-that-be insist “makes the Hundred experience” was still blaring when Deepti delivered the ball, which didn’t seem ideal if you were the batter trying to to focus on the actual cricket. MI head coach Lisa Keightley put it best after the match: “That’s just The Hundred, isn’t it? You’ve just got to roll with it.”

From there, though, MI got stuck, and the runs stopped coming, as they limped along to finish on 107-8.

SunRisers Leeds (don’t forget that all-important capital R) then strolled to a 7-wicket victory with 31 balls (almost a third of the innings) remaining, led by their two star Aussies Phoebe Litchfield and Annabel Sutherland, who were both part of the previous iteration of the Popchips who won The Hundred in 2025.

That did, though, leave time for John Newman to perform a longer gig between matches – either a bad thing or a good thing, depending on if you ~~have heard of him~~ like his music or not.

One fascinating aspect of this opening encounter was the number of spectators who turned out for the women’s game – 8,532. Of course, in the days of the Kia Super League, we would have given our right arm for a crowd like that. But, for comparison, that’s almost 2,000 less than the 10,249 people who attended the opening match of the 2024 Women’s Hundred at The Oval, which was also on a Tuesday, against Birmingham Phoenix.

It’s early days, but does this maybe reflect a slight wariness on behalf of the British public, who don’t quite trust that this iteration of fake plastic teams will stay around long enough for them to bother caring about?

A final word on Dani Gibson, she of the £190,000 price tag, who hit the winning runs on Tuesday. I’m told that we aren’t supposed to talk about money – let alone compare salaries – because it makes the players uncomfortable. Certainly, SunRisers head coach Adrian Birrell refused to admit that it might have been on Gibson’s mind as she led her team out onto The Oval on Tuesday: “I don’t think she’s thinking about it for one second. She’s trying to win matches. I don’t think it’ll be a factor at all.”

“No one’s mentioned anything about who earns what. It’s just purely cricket, and everyone’s getting down to playing cricket and doing what they do,” he added.

Given that SunRisers’ Lauren Winfield-Hill, whose salary dropped from £50,000 in 2025 to £27,500 in 2026, has previously described the auction process as “awful” and an “ego bruise”, I find that hard to believe.

Either way, the honest truth is that we don’t talk about money anything like enough in women’s cricket – who has it, who doesn’t, and what are the problems when a whole load of it suddenly gets concentrated in a few places.

That press conference by Hayley Matthews was memorable precisely because she DID talk about money. And maybe in the age of The Hundred 2.0, we need to start talking about it a little more.

ONE DAY CUP: Surrey v Durham – Filer’s Flurry in Surrey

Posted by Raf Nicholson

Rumour has it* that Charlotte Edwards was at The Oval today (Ed: is she following us around?) although she didn’t actually prove visible to the naked eye – much like some of the balls in Lauren Filer’s opening spell.

After winning the toss under blue skies at The Oval, Durham had posted 256 for 8. A skipper’s knock of 106 from Hollie Armitage, a nifty half-century from Mady Villiers and a handy back-end cameo of 18 not out off 10 balls from Sophia Turner all played a role.

But it looked to be well light of a competitive total on a belter of a wicket at The Oval. That is, until Filer began her work.

It’s a bit of an open secret that Edwards has not yet settled on her World Cup Fifteen – hence pulling all the England contracted players out of the One-Day Cup earlier this week for an intra-squad camp. Some big decisions lie ahead, including what is likely to be a three-way fight for one spot in the World Cup squad between Filer, Issy Wong and Em Arlott.

Over in Chelmsford, Wong (0-21 off 4 overs) was being pummelled by Grace Scrivens, while Arlott (2-14 off 5) was economical but unspectacular.

Meanwhile here in Surrey, Durham’s powerplay bowling exactly epitomised Edwards’s dilemma: go with the safe option of Arlott, or throw caution to the winds and opt for the ferocity of Filer?

Filer started with an erratic no-ball beamer which hurtled over the fine leg boundary, costing a sum total of five runs. She also fell over in her follow-through three times in as many overs – a worrying habit which England confidently claimed last year that they had cured her of.

“The first couple of overs was a bit of a pick and mix,” Filer said afterwards. “I said to Hollie [Armitage], ‘I’m sorry mate, I’ve probably not bowled as straight as I can’ – but the balls that did go straight were wickets. So it was just taking the confidence from those balls into future overs.”

She blamed her falls on “a big divot in the foot holes” and joked: “It’s not Lauren Filer if I don’t fall over.”

In fact, the Surrey top-order looked genuinely frightened of her pace: a fear which translated into figures of 3 for 13 in her first three overs. Paige Scholfield and Alice Davidson-Richards both had their middle stumps pegged back; in between, Alice Capsey was hurried into a drive and got an edge behind – albeit reliant on a fantastic diving catch from Tahlia Wilson to pouch it.

Just how quick was Filer bowling in the powerplay? There was no speed gun in operation, but Filer reckoned: “There were a few balls that were pretty up there.” (A reminder that for Filer, that means high 70s – she’s apparently been clocked at 80mph in training.)

Kira Chathli fought fire with fire, pulling and crunching Filer’s next over for 14 runs. But when the England quick returned for a second spell, Armitage tapped Filer on the shoulder and indicated that she should put in a deep square leg. Sure enough, Chathli sent one down her throat, handing Filer a fourth wicket and Armitage some field-placement bragging rights.

Filer often only looks dangerous when fresh, so perhaps the most interesting part of today was that her third spell (which consisted of two overs, the 29th and 30th) proved almost as threatening as her first. She basically bounced out the 19-year-old Jemima Spence, who tried to keep her body out of the way while waving her bat around, and was bowled.

The upshot of it all was that Filer finished with 5-59 – a List A best.

Of course, a typically aggressive innings from Danni Wyatt-Hodge eventually saw Surrey win by 3 wickets, picking up a bonus point in the process. But if Filer earns selection in a home World Cup on the back of today, maybe she’s the real winner?

The question, as ever, is whether the guaranteed risk is worth the possible reward. Only one woman knows the answer – and for now, she is keeping her counsel.

*Later confirmed by Filer after the match.

THE HUNDRED: Brave v Fire – Fire’s Batters Burn Out At The Bowl

Posted by Raf Nicholson

Southern Brave will go into Sunday’s Hundred final with an unbeaten record of 8 wins from 8 matches, after pulling a rabbit out of a hat to defend 106 at the Utilita Bowl.

It makes them the first team in the history of the competition to finish the group stages undefeated. When Brave won the tournament previously, back in 2023, their one loss in 8 games came against Fire at home in Southampton – but Fire couldn’t spoil their party again today.

Meerkat Match Hero Lauren Bell added to her chart-topping wicket-tally (19 at 7.47) with extraordinary figures of 4 for 6, including a third set during which Tammy Beaumont and Jess Jonassen both holed out to fielders in the deep.

But Bell was the beneficiary of a team bowling effort in which Brave’s four spinners – Chloe Tryon, Tilly Corteen-Coleman, Georgia Adams and Mady Villiers – put a stranglehold on Fire’s chase. Even before the wickets started to fall, Fire’s lack of runs had swung the Win-Her dial in Brave’s favour:

“It was a tricky pitch,” Bell said afterwards. “We chatted about it before we went out, that dots were going to be massive, almost as important as wickets, and as soon as the run rate got above a run a ball on that pitch we knew it would be a tricky chase. Mads [Villiers] and Coco [Corteen-Coleman] and Gads [Adams] bowled some really important sets.”

Bell gave the credit to her teammates but the fact that Fire scored just 47 runs in their first 50 balls, despite only being 1 wicket down, is symptomatic of just how miserable their efforts with the bat have been this season. Between them, Fire’s top five batters have managed two half-centuries this season – both scored by one Sophia Dunkley. Hayley Matthews – who was talismanic for Fire in their 2024 campaign – has barely scraped a run together, averaging 19.

Today, she was scratchiness personified, managing just a single boundary before failing to get the necessary elevation to clear Villiers at deep midwicket. With Matthews in a slump-spiral as deep as this, it’s perhaps a good thing that West Indies won’t be featuring in October’s World Cup.

Brave had themselves struggled with the bat, sinking to 14 for 2 early on after Fire put them in to bat on a pitch made sticky with rain. With Sunday’s final looming, Brave chose to fiddle around with their middle order to offer chances to Freya Kemp, Chloe Tryon, Villiers and Georgia Adams, who have had very little to do with the bat this season. Adams, for example, had faced just 11 balls prior to today’s match; but her elevation to number 6 against the Fire gave Brave’s skipper (who finished 30 not out from 26 balls) to bat herself into a modicum of form.

Not only did that ensure Brave got to a total which was (just about) defendable, it could end up mattering a lot on Sunday if the final proves to be a tight match.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Sophie Devine – “I know my time is coming to an end soon”

Posted by Raf Nicholson

The fact that I waited half an hour after play ended in the Brave v Invincibles match on Monday to speak to Sophie Devine is typical of the player and the person. How did she spend those 30 minutes? Signing autographs and taking selfies with kids on the boundary at the Utilita Bowl. In the end, she had to be physically ushered away by security as they geared up for the men’s match.

Earlier this year Devine took a mental health break, missing out on the WPL and the second part of the New Zealand domestic season, presumably partly out of sheer exhaustion caused by simultaneously captaining her country and being her side’s best player. Now, she is back out there and – as she says – “enjoying herself” again.

“It’s pretty obvious that I’m nearing the end of my career, and for me, it’s being as happy as possible out on the cricket field,” she says.

What’s keeping her motivated these days? Unsurprisingly, she isn’t focused on personal milestones. “Giving to others has been a massive focus for me,” she says. “I want to help and encourage anyone and everyone, wherever they’re from. It’s about improving the standard of the game, because there’s so many talented kids out there now.”

She cites England and Southern Brave’s 20-year-old all-rounder Freya Kemp as an example: “She is going to be a freak. To be able to rub shoulders with her is what’s motivating me at the moment.”

After a few years spent with Birmingham Phoenix, Devine was picked up by Brave in this year’s Hundred draft and is thus far proving something of a lucky charm – largely with the ball, having taken 9 wickets so far opening up alongside Lauren Bell.

In Monday’s game, she bowled a magic ball which curled away from Meg Lanning and hit the very top of her off-stump, beginning the rout which saw Brave beat Invincibles by 89 runs. Brave’s bowling coach Jenny Gunn was apparently so delighted with the Lanning dismissal that she played the delivery on loop in the dressing room when the players came off the pitch.

“Playing around the world in different competitions you have to fill different roles, and here when we’ve opted to only have a couple of seamers, responsibility falls on me and Belly. I’m enjoying that,” Devine says.

“And I’ve certainly enjoyed my time here at the Brave,” she adds. “Everyone knows how well Lottie [Charlotte Edwards] has set this club up – it’s evident in the way that it’s run.” The 2023 winners are already in pole position to qualify for this year’s final, with five wins in five matches and (according to our Alligator analysis) a 99% chance of reaching at least the Eliminator stage.

After that, Devine heads to the UAE to warm-up for the 50-over World Cup in India – a tournament which she has already said will be her last in the ODI format. “It’s a big weight off the shoulders,” she admits. “That was the whole point behind announcing my retirement, was to get it out there nice and early, so I don’t distract from the group and the team being at the World Cup.”

“I’ve always been strong on my feelings of, the team comes first, personal milestones are secondary. I’m enjoying every moment because I know my time’s coming to an end soon.”

And the rest of us will continue to enjoy every moment of watching her, for as long as we can.

CRICKETher

Women's Cricket News & Views

the-hundred

THE HUNDRED: MI London v Manchester Super Giants – That’s Not My London! Its Batting Is Too Terrible

THE HUNDRED: Southern Brave v Birmingham Phoenix – Brave Victorious But Perrin Welcomes “Small Wins”

THE HUNDRED: MI London v SunRisers Leeds – Money Makes The World Go Round

ONE DAY CUP: Surrey v Durham – Filer’s Flurry in Surrey

THE HUNDRED: Brave v Fire – Fire’s Batters Burn Out At The Bowl

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Sophie Devine – “I know my time is coming to an end soon”