The Hundred, Women, and Men: Statistically highlighted performances

The Hundred reached the successful finale of their first season among huge funfair during last weekend. The tournament got backing from the public and was a popular event thanks to the aggressive cricket and the new rules. Oval Invincibles and Southern Brave are the inaugural champions for the Women’s and Men’s format, respectively.

The tournament saw many memorable performances in both men’s and women’s format and some significant statistical highlights by its stars.

The Hundred Women: Best Performances

For the Invincibles, their captain, Dane van Niekerk was the star who finished as the highest run-scorer in the tournament. However, MarizanneKaap, Niekerk’s partner, stole the limelight in the final with her all-round show of 26 off 14 balls and 4 wickets for just 9 runs.

Along with Niekerk, the other top run-scorers in the women’s tournament were Jemimah Rodrigues from Northern Superchargers and Sophia Dunkley from Southern Brave. Barring Niekerk, the Indian and the English youngsters were the only batters to pass 240 runs in the tournament.

Rodrigues’ unbeaten 92 against Welsh Fire remained the highest score of this Hundred. Interestingly, the top three individual innings in women’s Hundred were all recorded by the Indians. Smriti Mandhana with 78 and Shafali Verma with 76* were in the second and third spot.

Another Indian, Harmanpreet Kaur, played just three matches for Manchester Originals and maintained an average of 52. With at least 5-innings cut-off, the highest batting average belonged to Stafanie Taylor from West Indies with 45.50. The next two spots went to two South Africans, Niekerk, and Lizelle Lee. With the same cut-off, the highest Strike rate of 180 was maintained by Danielle Gibson, followed by Laura Kimmince and Joanne Gardner.

Natasha Farrant ended as the highest wicket-taker of the tournament with 18 wickets for the Invincibles. The English speed star impressed one and all and was rewarded with a spot in the England squad to face New Zealand. The Australia all-rounder Sammy-Jo Johnson and English left-arm orthodox spinner Kirstie Gordon finished with 15 wickets each in the tournament.

Kapp’s Outstanding spell of 4/9 in the final was the best bowling analysis in the tournament. Farrant’s 4/10 in the Eliminator is the second-best analysis, followed by 4/12 by Amanda-Jade Wellington. In total, there were 6 instances of bowlers taking four wickets in women’s Hundred, with Wellington featuring twice in that list.

Kapp’s 11 wickets in the tournament came for just 70 runs with a superb average of 6.36. This was the best bowling average with a 10-over cut-off, followed by Johnson and Farrant, who finished with 10.26 and 10.27 bowling averages, respectively.

Kapp again topped the runs per ball table with the same cut-off. She was the most miserly bowler with 0.84 runs scored per ball. She was followed by Indian all-rounder Deepti Sharma with 0.87 runs per ball and Alice Capsey with 0.90 runs per ball. In total, 8 bowlers finished with a run per ball below 1 in the women’s tournament.

The Hundred Men: Best Performances

Liam Livingstone was the most impressive player in the Hundred. The England youngster scored 348 runs in this tournament, 50% more than Ben Duckett, who scored 232 runs to be the second-highest scorer this season. Duckett was followed by James Vince, the Southern Brave captain, who led his team expertly to the title and himself scored 229 runs.

In the Men’s final, Paul Stirling’s 36-ball 61 pushed the Brave to 168/5, which was proved to be the winning total finally as the Birmingham Phoenix could only score 136/5 in their allocated 100 deliveries.

Interestingly, both the men’s and women’s tournaments have the same score for the highest individual innings. Livingstone’s unbeaten 92 against the Northern Superchargers was the highest score in this year’s tournament. A pair of 81 not out from David Willey and Colin Ingram is the second-highest individual score.

A couple of English stars like Jonny Bairstow and Zak Crawley played only two and one matches in the tournament, respectively, and maintained an average of 64. If we consider only players who played five or more innings, Livingstone led the batting average chart with 58. Young Harry Brook with 47.25 and experienced Laurie Evans with 41 ended in the rank two and three in the average batting chart.

Using the same cut-off, Livingstone is also the topper of the highest strike rate charts, with a strike rate of 178.46 from his 9 innings. Will Jacks, Will Smeed, and Quinton de Kock are the other batters to have a 170 plus strike rate this season.

Four bowlers finished with 12 wickets in this tournament and led the highest wickets tally. The list includes two out and out fast bowlers in Adam Milne of New Zealand and Marchant de Lange of South Africa. The other two bowlers in the list are the two crafty leg spinners in Adil Rashid of England and Rashid Khan of Afghanistan.

De Lange also had the best spell of the tournament when he picked up five wickets for 20 runs against Southern Brave. The veteran Imran Tahir is the only other bowler to take five wickets in an innings. His brilliant spell against the Welsh Fire also included the tournament’s first hat-trick. There were four instances of bowlers picking up four wickets in an innings.

Pakistani fast bowler Wahab Riaz played just one match and ended with 4 for 30, giving him a bowling average of 7.5 runs per wicket. However, with a 10-over cut-off, Brad Wheal maintained a bowling average of 7.77. Milne and de Lange followed him as they had an equal number of wickets, but Milne’s average of 10.75 was better than 13.08 runs per wicket for de Lange.

Milne again proved his superiority with his superb economic rate. He was the only bowler in the whole tournament to finish with runs per ball below 1. His 0.95 runs per ball were significantly better than any other bowler who bowled at least 10 overs. Tymal Mills of England was in the second position with 1.11 runs per ball, followed by the experienced campaigner for Afghanistan, Mohammad Nabi, who has given 1.12 runs per ball.