Rockets vs Spirit, 10th Match at London, Women's Hundred, Jul 29 2021 - Match Result

5.36 pm Priest and Sciver's fireworks in the first innings set up the biggest total of the Women's Hundred and despite some incredibly poor fielding in the chase, Trent Rockets had enough runs on the board to not make any of that matter in a comfortable victory. In one of the few moments of good fielding from the Rockets, it was Priest who helped to runout Deandra Dottin in a crucial moment when Dottin was hammering the ball and that snuffed out the last genuine threat from the Spirit. Big credit also goes to Kathryn Bryce, who bowled 10 straight balls in the Powerplay conceding only five and taking the big scalp of Tammy Beaumont in a sequence that built up early pressure and put the Spirit behind the required run rate for the rest of the way. Curiously, Bryce was never brought back into the attack to bowl the remaining 10 balls available in her quota but it didn't matter in the end.

Match Hero is Rachel Priest: "It was nice to finally get some runs under the belt. Hopefully I'm in a bit of form now. But I'm just happy today to come out here and get some runs. We all know we can score runs, it's just getting them under the belt. I just had a clearer head today and it came off for me. We knew coming here would be really tough for us, particularly with the start we've had, but shorter format anything can happen and it came off for us today and what a place for us to get our first win."

Here's Nat Sciver, Trent Rockets captain: "It was brilliant. That's what we want from our top four, a hundred partnership. I don't think there's been one yet in the Hundred so far. They set us up brilliantly and then with the ball we were able to take wickets the whole innings. It was a bit of a tricky one at the toss. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. I guess because we've chased twice [and lost] we wanted to go bat. In terms of our batting order, we haven't quite got it right yet but we backed our batters and they did well today. [On Rachel Priest half-century] That's what she can do. That's usually how she plays the game. When I play against her, she usually whacks me all over the shop so I'm glad she's doing it to someone else now. We're glad to be off the bottom of the table and hopefully we can bring that into the next game. It's very special and I love being back here playing with people filling the stands. It's been a while since 2017 but you still get the same atmosphere. Hopefully some of them who were watching in 2017 are back here or playing and just enjoying the game."

So the Rockets get their first win to dig their way out of the cellar on the points table. They now sit level with the Spirit and Phoenix on two points in a three-way tie for fourth place, though the Phoenix have a match in hand and a vastly superior run rate to the other two. That's all from our coverage of the women's match today in the first half of the doubleheader. Flip over to the men's match feed for more live coverage where Andrew Miller and myself will continue to bring you the ball-by-ball coverage while Alan Gardner covers the scene on the ground at Lord's. I'm Peter Della Penna. Take care!