Having been dismissed in the 90s twice in her England career, Maia Bouchier finally posted her maiden professional century, as England strolled to another easy win against New Zealand.
The ‘Will she? Won’t she?’ of the century added a bit of drama to the end of a match that didn’t set too many hearts racing. First, Bouchier survived an LBW review on 92 – given not out, the ball tracking showed umpires call, and she survived by the width of the umpire’s finger. (If the finger had gone up and Bouchier had been the one reviewing, it would of course have been out.) Then with England needing 4 runs to win, and Bouchier needing 4 for her ton, Nat Sciver-Brunt played out 4 dots to put Bouchier back on strike at the beginning of the next over, allowing her to complete the hundred with two twos.
Bouchier has not had an easy ride to the top. A talented youngster with both bat and ball, she was fast-tracked into the Middlesex side as a teenager, but then almost dropped off the radar before a move to Hampshire under Charlotte Edwards rejuvenated her. Opening the batting and the bowling for her new county, she looked a certainty to one day play for England, until the disastrous news in 2020 that her bowling action had been ruled illegal. Efforts to remediate it proved in vain, and suddenly a player that had been a sure bet to play for England as an allrounder was faced with trying to reinvent herself as a pure batter.
Even after making her debut in 2021, she struggled to hold down her place in the side, and it wasn’t until England’s tour to New Zealand earlier this year that she seized the opportunity presented by the absence of Alice Capsey at the WPL to make her case. A solid 43 not out in the 1st T20, followed by 71 in the 3rd (albeit the latter in a losing cause) meant she kept her place even when the WPL players returned to the England fold, before a match-winning 91 of just 56 balls in the 4th T20 made her spot secure.
She suffered a slight dip in form against Pakistan at the beginning of the summer, but a 93 for Vipers in the Charlotte Edwards Cup seems to have brought the confidence flooding back, and a rocking 67 in the 1st ODI has now been followed up by this hundred today. Few get to play for their country; even fewer score a century doing so – Maia Bouchier has now written her name into history as one that did both.
That it was a close-run thing was mainly because New Zealand capitulated for the second time in a week, not even reaching the “landmark” of 150 on this occasion. A typical 1st innings score between the ICC Championship sides these days is 250, so New Zealand were not just a bit short – they were literally lapped by England, finishing in under half the available overs, with their run-rate suggesting that this was more a 300 pitch than a 200 one.
New Zealand batted like they were trying to save a Test match, scoring just 78 runs for the loss of 3 wickets by the 25-over mark. They obviously realised they needed to shift gears, and Maddy Green, who at one stage had been 4 off 29 balls, did then strike a few boundaries to temporarily push the run-rate up, but once she was dismissed the White Ferns fell over in a heap, with Sophie Ecclestone knocking over the tail like they were coconuts on a shy. The game was already over as a contest by that point; but Bouchier gave a decent crowd (albeit definitely not the sellout the ECB had strangely claimed) something to sing about on the way home.
