Welsh Fire beat London Spirit by wrapping up the fourth highest run-chase in the history of The Hundred, reaching their target of 151 with five balls to spare in what was, largely, a one-woman undertaking:
Battling erratic shoelaces, and at one point a shoe which actually flew off as she hared down the pitch, Hayley Matthews finished on 78 not out from 46 balls – Sarah Bryce’s 21 being the next highest contribution.
More importantly, Matthews was there at the end to propel Fire’s chase over the line, turning an unlikely-looking 50 runs off 25 balls into 26 off 15, 16 off 10, and finally a nice-and-relaxing 10 off the last 9, after just clearing the long-on boundary off the 91st ball – the first of Deepti Sharma’s final set.
“If she’s going to lose her shoes but bat like that, who cares? Maybe I’ll try it!” captain Tammy Beaumont said afterwards.
“I’ll teach her how to!” Matthews joked back.
Matthews did get lucky a couple of times – most notably when she pulled a catch to Eva Gray at deep midwicket on 35*; Gray couldn’t quite hang on and ended up parrying it over the rope. But, largely, it was an intelligent innings under pressure, with exactly the right balance between taking enough risks to keep up with the hefty rate, and then dialling it down when that was no longer necessary:
Matthews knows how to manage run-chases single-handedly under extreme pressure – she’s been doing it for West Indies for about a decade – so for Fire it was a case of cometh the hour, cometh the woman.
London Spirit clearly realised she was the key wicket – hence why Georgia Redmayne refused the easy run-out of Phoebe Franklin off the 90th ball, instead opting to attempt to throw down the stumps at the bowler’s end (it was too wayward to have any effect).
A word, too, for Freya Davies’s efforts with the ball, which ensured that Fire did not feel the absence of Shabnim Ismail through injury too acutely. After a tight opening set in which Meg Lanning managed to score just one run from five deliveries, Beaumont’s decision to bring Davies back to bowl balls 41 to 45 proved inspired:
“She’s such a utility bowler, she can bowl at any phase brilliantly,” Beaumont said. “I felt like we let them get away from us a little bit – I wouldn’t normally bring Freya back as early and I just had that gut feel and I had to do it then. For her to come off then so brilliantly really shifted the game.”
Davies removed Heather Knight and Meg Lanning within the space of three balls, and a total which could have been catastrophic proved within reach… just. No doubt there was a certain amount of karmic satisfaction for Davies, who was not just bowling at her former teammates but against the captain who was responsible for her being dropped from England last summer.
Spirit return to Lord’s on Sunday for their top-of-the-table clash against Oval Invincibles: time to see if they can bounce back from what might be a difficult loss to take.
