Finn Allen’s unbeaten 72 leaves Buttler’s 55 stranded as Trent Rockets win with 13 balls left
Allen hit 11 fours in a 35-ball 72 not out at Old Trafford, and Trent Rockets chased down 138 with 13 balls to spare to move clear at the top of the men’s Hundred.
Aug 1, 2026
Jos Buttler gave Old Trafford the innings it had come for, and it still counted for nothing. Buttler finished 55 not out from 37 balls on Friday evening, Manchester Super Giants posted 137 for 3, and Finn Allen then spent 87 deliveries making that total look ordinary. Allen was unbeaten on 72 from 35 balls when Trent Rockets closed out a six-wicket win with 13 balls to spare.
It leaves the Rockets clear at the top of the men’s Hundred on 12 points from four matches. The Super Giants, beaten by Sunrisers Leeds at Headingley three days earlier, have now lost two in a row and sit second on eight.
Overton picks off the top three
Sam Billings won the toss and bowled, and for 25 balls that looked like a poor read. Aiden Markram and Tim Seifert took 38 off the powerplay without being separated, and Old Trafford settled in for a big one.
Craig Overton changed it. Seifert went for 12, caught by Tim David. Markram followed for 28 from 24. Two balls into Heinrich Klaasen’s innings, Overton had him caught by Allen for a duck, and the Super Giants had lost three wickets for 17 runs to be 56 for 3 inside 43 balls. Overton’s 20 balls cost 23 and brought three wickets. Nobody else in the Rockets attack took one.
Buttler and Leus du Plooy repaired it without ever quite breaking out. Their unbroken stand was worth 81 from 57 balls, Buttler reaching his fifty off 36 with four sixes in it, du Plooy contributing 40 not out from 28. A total of 137 against a side that had already run down 160 at Trent Bridge felt like a score needing one more push.
Eleven fours and two sixes
The chase started badly. Ben Duckett was bowled by Gus Atkinson for a duck off his second ball, and when Tom Banton fell to Sonny Baker for 10, the Rockets were 14 for 2 after nine deliveries.
Allen simply carried on. He is not a batter who needs a platform, and by the end of the same 25-ball powerplay the Rockets had 44, having lost two. Fifty came off 23 balls, with nine fours in it and a single six. What stood out was how little of the innings went over the rope. He finished with 11 fours and two sixes, so 44 of his 72 arrived in fours, which is not the shape of innings his reputation suggests.
Billings gave him 26 from 19, the pair adding 50 in 25 balls before the captain went, and by the time Tim David picked out Atkinson for 4 the target had been reduced to a formality. Mitchell Santner walked in and hit 24 not out from 17 to finish it. Atkinson and Baker took two apiece; Noor Ahmad, the left-arm wrist-spinner the Super Giants lean on to squeeze the middle, went for 35 from his 20 balls without reward.
A crowded table underneath them
The gap at the top is real but the queue behind it is not. Second to fifth are all on eight points, separated only by net run rate, which means the Rockets’ 0.924 and their three straight wins buy them a genuine cushion rather than a decisive one. They face Sunrisers, Birmingham Phoenix and MI London to finish the group.
The Super Giants have the harder run of it, with MI London, Welsh Fire and a Southern Brave side that has just found its first win still to come. They have also now twice set a total their bowlers could not defend, and the two failures were nothing alike: 181 was not enough at Headingley, and here they could not get near that. On the evidence of Friday, 137 in front of 11,025 people at Old Trafford was about 20 short.