Jemimah Rodrigues’ unbeaten 42 sends Southern Brave top of the women’s Hundred
Deepti Sharma’s Sunrisers Leeds managed only 116 at Headingley, and Jemimah Rodrigues made sure Southern Brave did not slip up chasing it. Player of the match, and top of the table.
Jul 26, 2026
Sunrisers Leeds put 116 on the board at Headingley on Saturday and for a while it looked like enough. Southern Brave were 36 for 3 and wobbling. Then Jemimah Rodrigues dug in, stayed to the end for 42 not out off 34 balls, and Brave got home with four deliveries left to move top of the women’s Hundred.
India against India, and Jemimah won it
This was the first game of the tournament in which two of India’s four players at this year’s Hundred were on the same field, and it was the matchup worth waiting for. Deepti Sharma, playing for the defending champions, made 23 off 15 in the Sunrisers innings and gave their total some late shape. Rodrigues answered with the innings that decided the game.
She walked in with the chase already three down and the required rate climbing. What followed was not a flashy knock. She took the singles that were on offer and waited for the width, and the modest target did the rest of the work for her. Sophie Molineux gave her 21 off 17 in a fourth-wicket stand worth 35, which was the passage that turned a nervous chase into a manageable one. Naomi Dattani was with her at the finish on 3 not out.
The player-of-the-match award went to Rodrigues, and it was not close.
Issy Wong set it up
Before any of that, Brave had to keep the Sunrisers down, and Issy Wong did most of the work. Her 20 balls cost 15 runs and brought three wickets, and she broke the innings open at the point where Leeds looked ready to push on. Bryony Smith was the one Sunrisers batter who found any fluency, striking 48 off 34, but nobody else in the order passed 25. A total of 116 in this format is a total you defend by taking wickets, not by bowling dots, and Leeds could not find enough of them.
Sophie Molineux won the toss for Brave and put Leeds in, which is the sort of call that looks obvious once 116 all out is on the board. On a Headingley surface that did not misbehave, it was a score the Sunrisers will look back on as 20 short.
Brave go top, Leeds drop back
Southern Brave now have two wins from two and sit on eight points at the head of the table, with a net run rate of plus 0.349. Sunrisers Leeds, who beat MI London at the Kia Oval on 21 July, are on four points from their two games alongside Trent Rockets, Manchester Super Giants and Welsh Fire, with only run rate separating them.
It is early. The women’s competition runs to 16 August and every side still has plenty of cricket in front of them. But the defending champions have now been beaten at home by the team they beat in last year’s final, when they were still called Northern Superchargers and won at Lord’s by seven wickets. Brave, meanwhile, have won two tight games in a row, having defended 126 for 7 against Welsh Fire at the Rose Bowl on 22 July.
A useful month for India’s four
Smriti Mandhana and Richa Ghosh are together at Manchester Super Giants, Deepti is at Leeds and Rodrigues at Brave. All four came to England having been knocked out of the Women’s T20 World Cup at the group stage on 28 June, when Australia chased down their 170 for 4 at Lord’s with an over to spare. Three more weeks of tight, full-house cricket before they go home is about as useful a reset as the calendar could have handed them.
Rodrigues has now had a direct hand in both of Brave’s wins, having run out Freya Kemp with a direct hit to seal the opener against Welsh Fire. The bat has taken a little longer to arrive. On Saturday it did.