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Trent Rockets romped home with a maiden Hundred title in the final at Lord’s on Sunday, beating Sunrisers Leeds by eight wickets.
Rockets qualified automatically for this final after losing just one match in the group stages of the competition, and played with the appropriate level of swagger here. First, they bowled Sunrisers out for 91 – the lowest total by the Leeds-based franchise in six seasons of the Hundred. Then Sophia Dunkley and Beth Mooney put on a 69-run partnership from 40 balls for the first wicket, ensuring the game was all-but over by the time Dunkley holed out to cover nine runs short of a half-century.
Nat Sciver-Brunt was trapped leg-before by Annabel Sutherland but two leg-side wides from Jess Jonassen and a few crisp boundaries from Ash Gardner saw Rockets over the line with a ridiculous 46 balls to spare.
Some have suggested that allowing four overseas players per team in the competition this year – up from three in previous seasons – has prevented English talent from performing on the big stage. But the 23-year-old seamer Charley Phillips, who has also been in red-hot form in this season’s One-Day Cup for Nottinghamshire-based team The Blaze, enjoyed a day to remember at Lord’s with figures of two for 12.
Hampshire’s Georgia Adams, too, finished up with two wickets, a catch and a run-out – not a bad return for a player who was ditched by Southern Brave despite captaining them to last year’s final.
Put in to bat, Sunrisers Leeds were always heading for an under-par total after losing three wickets in the powerplay, including the leading run-scorer in the group stages, Phoebe Litchfield. Litchfield is renowned for her nifty ramps and switch-hitting; but on this occasion her lap-scoop ended up in the hands of Adams at short fine leg and she departed for just 10.
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The slingy Phillips followed up that huge scalp by rattling the stumps of Deepti Sharma, while Adams had Sutherland stumped coming down the track and then pulled off a diving stop at cover in the next set which ensured the run out of Jonassen for a duck, leaving Sunrisers reeling at 58 for six.
Skipper Dani Gibson attempted to bail them out of trouble with a flurry of boundaries, but when her upper-cut failed to clear backward point the rest of her team collapsed in a heap underneath her.
Sunrisers had been described in some quarters as the reigning champions. Whether this is accurate for a team which has a) changed its name, b) changed its kit and c) retained only four players from 2025 is an open question. Either way, past history seemed academic as Sunday’s events unfolded. In a year which has seen a run of low totals, and in which the women’s competition has generally felt somewhat flat after the excitement of last month’s T20 World Cup, a final as one-sided as this one was not quite what the doctor ordered.
