The weekend saw no fewer than four double headers in The Hundred, two on each of Saturday and Sunday. The second double header on Saturday featured Welsh Fire against MI London, and both matches saw remarkable performances.
THE WOMEN’S MATCH
The London side won the toss and opted to bowl first. Welsh Fire batted very well, especially Sophie Devine (52 off 29 balls) and Georgia Wareham (43 not out off 20 balls), and ended up with a massive 177-4 from their 100 balls. To successfully chase a total of this magnitude you need a strong start, which was just what MI London did not get. Grace Potts bowled 20 of the first 30 balls of the reply, and took out the top three in the MI London order. When Danni Wyatt-Hodge was third out, to the 26th ball of the innings, the score was 33-3 and the match was as good as settled. With the partial exception of Chinelle Henry who scored 30 off 23 balls no MI London batter even threatened to really get going, and in the end they were all out for 117 from 92 balls, giving Welsh Fire a win by 60 runs. Grace Potts, whose bowling at the start of the MI London innings had effectively sealed the deal on a Welsh Fire win should have been ‘Match Hero’, but that award went instead to Georgia Wareham, who had nabbed a couple of wickets to go with her innings referred to above. Scorecard here.
THE MEN’S MATCH
The men’s fixture was dominated by a single player. Rachin Ravindra, a New Zealander who bats left handed and bowls left arm orthodox spin had an astonishing match. He came in to bat at 20-2 from 22 balls, and proceeded to hit 98 off 44 balls with seven fours and seven sixes. Joe Root played the support role with 29 from 26 balls, while Jordan Cox weighed in with 17 not out off nine balls. It is measure of Ravindra’s utter dominance of team mates and opponents alike that Welsh Fire ended with 167-5. Ravindra’s 98 came out of 143 scored while he was at the crease.
MI London were never up with the required rate at any stage of the chase, though while James Vince was going well it looked like they could make a close contest of it. He was fifth out for 66, with the score at 122 and 28 balls left, and his dismissal was courtesy of a return catch by none other than Rachin Ravindra. He was replaced in the middle by Tom Curran. Had he batted really well MI London might still have got close, but as it was all he could scrape was 10 off 11 balls, with one four. The match-losing nature of this innings is readily apparent when you consider a) he came in with his side needing 46 off 28 balls, a tough but not impossible ask, and b) he was out with the score at 150 from 96 balls, meaning that the target was now 18 from four balls which is a huge ask. Rashid Khan managed to get the strike to Sherfane Rutherford, who can hit a big ball, but only one accrued from that delivery, and a requirement of 17 from three balls does not give much of a margin of error. In the event MI London advanced their score by two runs, making the final result a 15 run win for the Welsh Fire. With that blistering 98 and 1-25 from 15 balls with that wicket being the key one of Vince there was never any doubt about who would be ‘Match Hero’ this time – the chap whose parents couldn’t decide whether to honour Sachin Tendulkar or Rahul Dravid and therefore came up with the portmanteau name Rachin for him. Scorecard here.
PHOTOGRAPHS
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