Lee and Bouchier set it up, Rodrigues finishes it as Southern Brave go four from four

Southern Brave are the only unbeaten team left in the women’s Hundred, and the 140 for 3 they built at the Rose Bowl on Thursday showed the pattern that has got them there. Lizelle Lee attacked early, Maia Bouchier held the innings together, and Jemimah Rodrigues arrived late to add the runs that turned a decent total into an uncomfortable chase. Birmingham Phoenix got to 116 for 5 and are still waiting for their first win.

Lee sets the tone, Bouchier keeps it going

Lee’s 43 came off 28 balls and included the only two sixes anyone managed in the match, which tells you plenty about how the surface played once the field spread. She was gone before she could turn it into something bigger, but the damage was done. Phoenix spent the rest of the innings trying to claw back a run rate that had already got away from them.

Bouchier did the less glamorous half of the job. Her 45 off 31 balls carried the innings through the middle without another wobble, the sort of contribution that gets skipped in a highlights package and remembered by the opposition captain. Lauren Filer, Alice Capsey and Alana King took a wicket apiece, and those were the only three Phoenix got all innings.

Rodrigues finishes it in 18 balls

Rodrigues came in at No. 4 and finished unbeaten on 28 from 18 balls, and the shape of it mattered more than the number. Three of her fours came in the last five deliveries, which dragged Brave to a total that felt a good deal bigger than it had looked when she walked in.

It is another telling contribution from her in this competition, and it came in the phase where this tournament is usually decided. A side that keeps finding 15 or 20 extra runs at the death does not need its top order to fire every night.

Perrin’s fifty was never quite enough

Davina Perrin made 52 off 43 and rode her luck to get there, surviving three catching chances on the boundary before reaching a 40-ball fifty. Her 73-run stand with Tammy Beaumont was the substance of the Phoenix innings, but it came at a pace that made the last stretch impossible. Beaumont’s 22 took 23 balls. Perrin eventually miscued a Sarah Glenn leg-break to Bouchier at long-on, and by the time Ellyse Perry got going with 16 not out from 11, the equation had stopped being a real question.

Sophie Molineux led the squeeze with 2 for 24, which took her to seven wickets in the competition. Lauren Bell’s 1 for 16 was the tightest set of figures in the innings, and Tilly Corteen-Coleman and Glenn shared the other two.

Four from four, and a table already splitting

Brave sit top with four wins from four, the only side yet to lose. Phoenix are bottom and still without a win, their only points so far coming from a washout against Manchester Super Giants, and their net run rate is comfortably the worst in the competition. That last part is the number that should worry them: even once they start winning, the margins they need are getting bigger every week.

There is still a lot of tournament left, which is the only real comfort available to a side in Phoenix’s position. Brave have the opposite problem, if it counts as one: their openers, their No. 4 and their spinners have all won them something already, and nobody has yet worked out which end to attack.

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