Ahead of this year’s Hundred tournament, coach Jon Lewis called for his England players to “show up”. And to be fair, some of them have – Nat Sciver-Brunt and Danni Wyatt are the top two leading run-scorers, while Lauren Bell has 9 wickets to her name and has been one of very few bright spots for Southern Brave this season.
But if Lewis thinks that The Hundred has proved him right about his prospective World Cup squad, he should have been paying closer attention to Welsh Fire’s 9-wicket hammering of the Brave at the Utilita Bowl on Wednesday.
First, Fire bowled Brave out for just 103. As per, Hayley Matthews (4 for 14) and Jess Jonassen (3 for 21) proved good bang for their overseas buck, but the role of Freya Davies – keeping it tight in her opening set, sending down 11 dot balls out of the 20 she bowled, and coming good with 2 wickets at the death – was also crucial.
Fire then chased down their target of 104 in just 74 balls, thanks to a rollicking start from Tammy Beaumont, who smashed Freya Kemp’s first set of five for 18, to take her to 22* from 9 balls – a strike rate of 244. (She reached her half-century a tad more sedately, finishing on a strike rate of 148.) In the process, Welsh Fire became the first team to qualify for this year’s finals.
Davies was dropped by England last summer, and has gone on to outbowl every one of her international teammates (bar Linsey Smith) in this year’s Hundred comp. In the group stages, she has taken a wicket in every game bar one, and proven economical to boot, with returns of 1-19, 0-11, 2-19, 1-19, 2-12, 2-17 and 2-14. She has also demonstrated her ability to reliably bowl at any phase of the game, which is a rare ability in short-form cricket.
Beaumont hasn’t had the best Hundred with the bat – “I was due a few, I’ve been pretty rubbish so far!” she said on Wednesday – but the impressive array of strokes she whipped out against the Brave showed that she has still got it, despite having played very little T20 cricket for England in the past 2 years.
Perhaps more importantly, she has successfully turned the Welsh Fire brand from perennial losers into a genuine team who people actually enjoy playing for: a huge achievement in franchise cricket.
And finally, she was – once upon a time – England’s reserve wicketkeeper. The current candidate for that role is Bess Heath, who Lewis didn’t trust with the bat against New Zealand and whose highest score in The Hundred is 15.
If we’re honest, Lewis has basically already selected his World Cup squad. After England’s whitewash against New Zealand, he admitted as much, telling the assembled media: “My preference would be we get on the plane tomorrow.” A plane which neither Davies nor Beaumont would have been on.
The danger of that approach was always apparent: that far from “showing up”, players might instead show HIM up – exposing the flaws in some of his proposed selections, and with no more international cricket left in the interim to attempt to put things right.
Beaumont was as diplomatic as you would expect her to be when asked if, in Lewis’s shoes, she’d be getting on the phone to Freya Davies (not to mention herself!) right now – “That’s not for me, that’s on him.”
Fortunately, I’m the CRICKETher Editor and I can say what I really think: Lewis has backed the wrong horses.
