After reaching the final of the first three editions of The Hundred, winning in 2023, Southern Brave had a shocking campaign last year – winning just one of their eight matches as they finished bottom.<\/p>\n
On this evidence they will fare better this season, with an attack spear-headed by Bell and a supporting cast of impressive spinners.<\/p>\n
England’s opening bowler broke the stumps of Kathryn Bryce in her first set and saw New Zealand international Melie Kerr paddle the final ball of the powerplay straight to Chloe Tryon.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Villiers accounted for Originals captain Beth Mooney, with the world’s number one batter cutting to Danni Wyatt-Hodge for just one.<\/p>\n
Originals slipped to 66-8 after 74 balls, with 17-year-old Corteen-Coleman bowling the big-hitting Deandra Dottin for eight and Bell catching Fi Morris off her own bowling.<\/p>\n
Smale dragged her side towards vague respectability, putting on an unbroken partnership of 29 with Gregory.<\/p>\n
Her score of 40 from 34 deliveries was easily the highest of the Originals innings, with Kerr (14) the only other batter to make double figures.<\/p>\n
Brave lost opener Maia Bouchier early on, caught by Ecclestone off Dottin for six, bringing Wolvaardt to the crease.<\/p>\n
The South African, who was making her first appearance in a Brave shirt after two years at Old Trafford, put on 48 for the second wicket with Danni Wyatt-Hodge, who made 32.<\/p>\n
She saw Wyatt-Hodge and Sophie Devine dismissed in the space of five balls and Freya Kemp caught off Kerr with 16 more runs required.<\/p>\n
But there was no serious wobble, and Wolvaardt hit Dottin for four over mid-off to level the scores before calmly taking the winning run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After reaching the final of the first three editions of The Hundred, winning in 2023, Southern Brave had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-323113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114983118270610803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}