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 the 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 sugglish 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 inexplicably followed by frankincense (9 off balls 70-75) and myrrh (13 off 85-90) as Heather Knight inexplicably persisted with Gibson, even though Tarra 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 half-way point in the Spirit Innings, as long as they played it smart, and there are few people smarter in cricket that Heather Knight and Georgia Redmayne.
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* I don’t have a TikTok – sorry.
