Trent Rockets 118 for 7 (Gardner 37, Sciver-Brunt 32, Corteen-Coleman 2-16) beat Southern Brave 117 for 5 (Bouchier 38, Lee 31, Adams 2-14) by three wickets
Despite reducing the Rockets to 10 for 3 after the 25-ball powerplay, the Brave slipped to a third consecutive defeat and will now face the winner of Tuesday’s fixtures between Manchester Super Giants and Sunrisers Leeds in Friday’s eliminator at The Oval.
Sciver-Brunt has been managing a calf issue all summer and has missed three group games as a result, and was unexpected held back until the final 31 balls of the run chase before swinging the match with her destructive cameo.
Asked whether she had batted at No. 7 for tactical reasons or to manage her body, Sciver-Brunt said: “A bit of both. We’ve batted quite well as a side, so [I was] allowing some others to have a little hit, and a bit of body management as well. We wanted to top the table, so looking forward to Lord’s.”
The Brave’s top three of Maia Bouchier, Lizelle Lee and Laura Wolvaardt – deputising as captain, with Sophie Molineux unavailable due to a stomach bug – all passed 20, but none could score at a strike rate above 115 as the Rockets’ bowlers hit their marks.
Lee was the first to go with the score on 49 off 47 and things did not speed up sufficiently from that point for the Brave to think about the kind of margin of victory they were looking for.
There were no sixes in an innings that petered out to 117 for 5 from 95 for 1 off 79, and any tension about who would go directly to the final had vanished early on. Georgia Adams was excellent with the ball, picking up 2 for 14 and only conceding singles.
When the Rockets batted, they knew that they were already as good as in the final but that did not initially seem to free them up. Lauren Bell, Issy Wong and Tilly Corteen-Coleman combined to leave their much-vaunted line-up in tatters as they crawled to 10 for 3 after 25 balls, the lowest powerplay score in the history of the competition.
Gardner counter-punched, hitting the game’s only six, and when she slammed Corteen-Coleman over mid-off to take the score to 26, the Rockets were in the final. She and Bess Heath combined for 53 before both went within the space of three runs.
That merely served to bring in Sciver-Brunt with a daunting 51 needed from 30 balls. Nine balls later she was on 25 with five fours, three in succession off Wong.
After Adams was run out unluckily, Georgia Elwiss joined Sciver-Brunt and her cool 10 off four balls helped Sciver-Brunt ace the chase, giving the Rockets a relatively long rest before they look to take the crown at Lord’s next Sunday.
