Dottin leads London Spirit to win

Deandra Dottin’s highest score of the Hundred kept the London Spirit’s qualification hopes alive and inflicted a first defeat of the season on the Northern Superchargers on Sunday despite Jemimah Rodrigues’ third fifty in four innings.

Dottin had struggled for form early in the tournament, making 54 runs in her first four innings, but found her range after shuffling down to No. 4, bringing up an unbeaten 34-ball half-century by hitting Kalea Moore for consecutive boundaries over cover to seal a seven-wicket win with two balls to spare.

Rodrigues’ 57 had held the Superchargers’ innings together on a used pitch which offered some assistance for the spinners as she extended her lead as the leading run-scorer in the women’s Hundred, but their total of 126 was no more than a par score. They had scrapped hard in the field as well as with the ball to defend 109 against the Oval Invincibles on Saturday at Headingley, but could not pull off a similar heist despite Linsey Smith’s miserly spell of 2 for 15 in 20 balls.

Tammy Beaumont anchored the chase with 42 off 36 balls, adding partnerships of 38 with Heather Knight and 56 with Dottin, but holed out to deep square leg with 20 more needed off the last 13 balls. But Dottin had found her groove, clearing mid-off to take the equation down to eight off six before taking her helmet off and crashing Moore through – and then over – the covers to seal the win with a broad smile.

Dottin, who won Player of the Match,  admitted she was “a bit nervous” coming into this game – the Spirit’s final home fixture – after a run of low scores at the start of the tournament, in which she had failed to live up to her billing as one of the Hundred’s high-profile overseas recruits.

She started slowly, reaching 11 off 13 balls, but crashed Phoebe Graham for three boundaries in four balls to remove the scoring pressure in the second half of the chase and began to time the ball sweetly, rotating the strike with Beaumont before thumping the winning boundaries in the final set.

“It’s been a bit of a struggle for me but I knew I had to dig in and find a way and bring this one home for the team,” she said at the post-match presentation. “I had to find a way to adapt really quickly, but I’m in the groove now so you’ll see a lot more from me.”