Mandhana’s stardust brings Women’s Hundred to life as Brave beat Rockets

Southern Brave 157 for six (Mandhana 55) beat Trent Rockets 130 for 7 (N Sciver-Brunt 49, Taylor 3-20) by 27 runs

Sciver-Brunt gave Brave a quick scare, crashing 18 runs off 5 balls from Maitlan Brown to achieve 44 off 27 balls. She hit one other boundary off Anya Shrubsole to depart 57 required off 24, however chipped a return catch to fall for 49 and finish the sport as a contest.

Salaries within the girls’s Hundred have been frozen after the 2022 season however the launch of the Women’s Premier League (WPL) in India has reworked the panorama of short-form leagues. Mandhana was retained on a top-bracket £ 31,250 contract by Brave – a wage that’s not even one-tenth of the INR 3.4 crore she was paid by Royal Challengers Bangalore.

The girls’s sport has not but reached the purpose of saturation that has left the boys’s Hundred struggling for relevance. There are solely three top-tier leagues all over the world – the WPL, the Hundred and the WBBL – with a handful extra working at a stage beneath.

Some of Australia’s high gamers have skipped the Hundred this 12 months as a result of heavy workloads, accidents or each. But as a complete, the usual of abroad gamers within the girls’s competitors is excessive – a way that’s solely underlined by Mandhana’s presence. “Along with the WPL, this is probably still up there with one of the best competitions in the world,” mentioned Kirstie Gordon, who bowled tightly for Rockets.

“Initially, I didn’t know two or three bowlers,” Mandhana mentioned. “I had just watched their videos, so it was important for me to see them and how the wicket was playing, because I’ve just come off a tour from Bangladesh and the conditions were pretty different.”

Brave opted to not retain Sophia Dunkley over the low season, as a substitute backing their complementary opening pair. “Those two at the top, Smriti and Danni, have been exceptional for us,” Shrubsole advised Sky Sports. “They were the two we really wanted to retain because they get us off to such good starts: right and left-handers, they can play completely differently and hit the ball in different areas.”

Wyatt chipped Bryony Smith into the off facet the place Sciver-Brunt took a pointy catch working again from further cowl, however Bouchier – unused by England of their Ashes marketing campaign – got here out swinging, hitting 31 off 18 balls with 4 fours and a slog-swept six.

Mandhana pounced on Rockets’ spinners by the center section, skipping down the pitch and lofting Smith’s offbreak again over her head for a straight six, and when she introduced up a 32-ball half-century, Brave regarded on track to interrupt their very own report whole within the girls’s Hundred of 166.

Rockets’ reply began with a run-out, Smith stitched up by Lizelle Lee as Shrubsole’s leg-side huge diverted right down to Kalea Moore at brief wonderful leg, and regardless of the presence of Sciver-Brunt and Harmnpreet Kaur within the center order, 158 all the time regarded a tall order.

This was Brave’s thirteenth win in 15 group video games throughout the competitors’s nascent historical past. The ECB hope that the match will show to have extra aggressive steadiness this season, having launched a draft earlier this 12 months in an try to shut the hole between the most effective and worst groups.

Brave’s crew seems to be lighter on paper than in earlier years: the England seamer Lauren Bell is lacking for the primary two video games, resting after an exhausting Ashes, and the Australian legspinner Amanda-Jade Wellington was drafted by Manchester Originals after two prolific seasons on the Ageas Bowl.

Taylor, a standby for England’s Under-19 World Cup squad earlier this 12 months, mentioned that Brave coach Charlotte Edwards had saved her recommendation so simple as potential. “She said, ‘Just bowl straight.’ I just wanted to hit the stumps. It felt so surreal. I’m so excited to be here – absolutely buzzing.”