Manchester Super Giants’ first winImage Credit source: Getty Images
England’s cricket league ‘The Hundred’ has started and matches for women’s and men’s events are being played simultaneously. The season has just started and the excitement is gradually increasing. Some amazing performances have also been seen in the initial phase, in which the name of 22 year old bowler Reyna McDonald-Gay has also been added. This young bowler from England wreaked such havoc against London Spirit that the entire team was bundled out for 80 runs and Manchester Super Giants won easily.
On Thursday 23 July, Manchester and London faced each other in the third match of ‘The Hundred Women’. Fans must have had high expectations from the London Spirit filled with stalwarts of international cricket like Grace Harris, Marijn Kapp, Nadine Declercq, Deandra Dottin and captain Charlie Dean himself. But when this team came out to bat first, all the greats fell one by one. Reyna McDonald became the reason for this.
This 22-year-old medium pacer, who has played 2 Tests, 2 ODIs and 1 T20 match for the England women’s team, wreaked such havoc that the London batsmen started returning to the pavilion one by one. Our Rayana did not even need to complete her spell of 20 balls. He bowled only 16 balls and took 4 wickets for 17 runs. The batsmen he dismissed included explosive batsmen like Declercq and Marijan Kapp. The effect of this was that the London team collapsed after scoring only 80 runs in 91 balls.
Reyana had done her work, after this it was the turn of the batsmen. Manchester Super Giants, led by veteran Australian captain Meg Lanning, achieved this target in just 59 balls and registered victory. Indian veteran Smriti Mandhana is also in Lanning’s team, who could not play a big innings but by scoring 17 runs in 14 balls, she helped the team in getting a good start. Manchester won by scoring 86 runs losing 3 wickets in 59 balls. For that, Paige Scofield (22 runs, 16 balls) and Richa Ghosh (15 runs, 5 balls) made a quick unbeaten partnership of 29 runs.
