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A scintillating innings from Danni Wyatt enabled Southern Brave to chase down an apparently taxing target of 141 with ease at the Ageas Bowl, as the home side joined Trent Rockets at the top of the women’s Hundred table with three wins from three. Wyatt bided her time before upping the tempo with a fusillade of fours and sixes during the second half of the innings, as Birmingham Phoenix’s attack was found severely wanting.Wyatt’s opening partner, Smriti Mandhana, holed out in the second set of five, hitting into the wind against Erin Burns. But none of the other Phoenix bowlers managed to pick up a wicket thereafter, with the run-out of Sophia Dunkley coming when Abtaha Maqsood dropped a return chance off Wyatt on to the stumps at the non-striker’s end.Wyatt could also have been out lbw a couple of deliveries later, but Phoenix’s captain Amy Jones opted not to review an lbw appeal off Maqsood that Hawk-Eye later showed to have been hitting off stump. Having been chugging along on 25 off 22 just beyond the halfway mark of the innings, Wyatt took 44 off the next 18, hitting the ball to all parts of the ground before finishing things in style by carting her fourth six over deep midwicket off Issy Wong.That completed the highest successful chase of the women’s competition, and rendered an improved display from Phoenix’s top order largely academic.Phoenix fire (apparently)
It has taken a few goes, but Phoenix look like they might have found a batting order they can settle on. Having started the tournament with Shafali Verma opening alongside Katie Mack, they pushed up Erin Burns in place of Mack in their second match and here partnered Verma with Eve Jones. The left-hand, right-hand combination brought immediate dividends with a 58-run stand – which included the third-highest Powerplay score in the women’s competition of 40 without loss.Eve Jones was ‘Hero of the Match’ in defeat in Phoenix’s opener, having anchored the innings with 47 from 41 at No. 3, but dropped down the order for the spin-heavy encounter in Manchester. Pushed up again here, she helped counter the twin pace threat of Anya Shrubsole and Lauren Bell, who played key roles in Brave’s opening two wins. Both had trouble adjusting to bowling to the left-hander in windy conditions, with Jones taking Shrubsole’s first three legitimate balls for 10 runs.Related

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The proactive start from Eve Jones also allowed Verma to take a bit of time to settle. Much has been expected of the India opener but she has had a quiet start to the Hundred after seeing her form tail off during the multi-format series against England. She only faced two of the first 14 deliveries, then pulled Shrubsole for a boundary, before tucking into Charlotte Taylor’s offspin with a couple of trademark biffs over mid-on (perhaps aided by Brave’s field placings). An encouraging start drifted somewhat, as she fell lbw to Amanda-Jade Wellington – but 22 off 20 represented her best outing of the Hundred so far.Jones the finisher
Amy Jones has looked Phoenix’s most-dangerous batter, but her returns had been affected by a malfunctioning top order and starts of 37 for 3 and 35 for 4 in the opening two games. Here she came out at No. 3 for the tenth set of five with her side in a strong position, and although Wellington struck again in her 10-ball stretch, Jones and Katie Mack had licence to go hard down the back nine, putting on a sparkling stand of 71 off 43.Amy Jones moves across to slog sweep•Getty Images

The pair initially saw off the middle-phase threat of Bell with a handful of nudged singles, and then combined intelligent hitting with hard running to get the scoreboard rattling. They successfully targeted the Brave spinners, four times hitting opening deliveries from Fi Morris and the two Taylors for four; and when Bell returned, Jones was confident enough to walk across her stumps to the inswinger and belt it imperiously through backward square leg. Bell went wicketless but Phoenix crucially lost altitude towards the end of the innings, only managing to score 22 off the last 20 deliveries.Slam Dunkley
The rise of Dunkley into the top tier of English batting has been one of the stories of the summer, after an unbeaten 74 on Test debut and 73 not out to see home a successful England chase in her maiden ODI innings. Her form had tailed off a little, with single-figures scores in the T20Is and innings of 6 and 16 in Brave green – but her boundary-laden assault after the early loss of Mandhana was key in giving the home side a chance of reeling in a 140-plus target.Dunkley’s aggressive innings featured a superbly timed flick off the pace of Wong and an impudent uppercut over third man to Emily Arlott. She might have been fortunate to survive after top-edging a spiralling catch to Jones, with Arlott’s delivery harshly judged a no-ball on height – but she was definitely unlucky to be run out backing up, when Maqsood dropped the ball on to the stumps. Her innings also allowed Wyatt to slipstream her way into form, as the game’s momentum swung towards Brave.Wyatt goes through gears
Wyatt is one of the most-destructive batters in the women’s game but she also showed her sense of game management to help snuff out a daunting chase with an eye-popping 18 balls to spare. She scored 6 from 6 during the Powerplay and was going at just above a run a ball when joined by Stafanie Taylor, but killed Phoenix’s chances with a clinical assault. Her first six saw her step outside leg stump and hammer Wong’s pace over extra cover, and she then swept Maqsood over deep square leg, before hitting Georgia Elwiss over long-off. The third-wicket stand with Taylor was worth 74, Wyatt crunching 51 of them, as Brave’s fans got a first glimpse of what their power-packed batting order can do.

Somewhere amid their 36 all out at Adelaide Oval, the remarkable comeback at the MCG and the rearguard for the ages at the SCG, the story of India’s Test tour of Australia has been about the injuries.There was a short list even before India left for Australia, with the names of the Sharmas – Rohit and Ishant – in it, but since then, the number has increased alarmingly. So much so that the team for the series-deciding final Test at the Gabba will likely look very different from anyone’s idea of the best Indian Test XI.Virat Kohli was always going to leave after the first Test, and Rohit was going to be available for the third and fourth Tests – nothing has changed there. But elsewhere…Yes, that was the first of those. Pat Cummins making sure Mohammed Shami – the new-ball partner to Jasprit Bumrah – isn’t around to trouble them for the remainder of the series, adding injury – a fractured forearm – to insult as India completed their 36 all-out show.Mohammed Siraj replaced him for the second Test, but then it was Umesh Yadav’s turn to limp out. Not an impact injury, but a calf strain. And Yadav was back home not long after.Worried Indian faces all around as Umesh Yadav hobbles off the field•Getty Images

The pace attack would ideally have had Bumrah, Shami and Ishant, with Yadav the spare. Bumrah had a group of rookies to do the job with him after that and, it appears, he might himself miss the final Test now because of what might be an abdominal injury.Poor KL Rahul, he wasn’t even out in the middle, just a back-up, when his tour was cut short by a training injury. And it appears that Mayank Agarwal is injured too, while R Ashwin and Hanuma Vihari, who were so heroic on the final day at the SCG, are not fit enough to play the final Test. Wait and watch on those for now…It’s the hamstring for Vihari… and the back for Ashwin.Vihari couldn’t run because of a hamstring injury… Ashwin couldn’t sit down because of a tweak in his back•Getty Images

But before Ashwin and Vihari did what they did, there were Rishabh Pant and Ravindra Jadeja.Pant copped a blow to his elbow while batting in the first innings in Sydney, didn’t keep in the Australia second innings, and then came out to play a remarkable knock on the final day. He should make the XI for Gabba.But Jadeja won’t. That was a first-innings injury too. He didn’t bowl in the Australia second innings. Was possibly not in a condition to bat on the final day. And has since had surgery to fix a dislocated thumb.That’s the story so far… one Test to go, but more than winning the match, and the series, getting a fit XI on the field might be India’s bigger worry.

Josh Davey’s career best 75 not out helped Somerset dominate the second day of the LV=Insurance County Championship match with Leicestershire at Taunton.The Group Two leaders began by extending their first-innings score from a precarious 242 for 7 to 461 for 9 declared, Davey sharing century stands with Roelof van der Merwe, who scored 76, and Marchant de Lange, who reached 75.Then Somerset’s seamers got to work, reducing Leicestershire to 60 for 3 in reply. They closed a final session curtailed by rain on 95 for 3, with skipper Colin Ackermann unbeaten on 21.The day began under cloudy skies at the Cooper Associates County Ground, with van der Merwe on 18 and Davey 4. The former proved the aggressor, taking successive boundaries off Ben Mike as the total advanced to 272 for 7 before the second new ball was taken.It made little difference as van der Merwe moved confidently to fifty off 70 balls, with six fours and a six. He and Davey looked untroubled in extending their eighth-wicket partnership to 102.Ed Barnes eventually had van der Merwe caught at long-on to end an innings that had transformed Somerset’s prospects. But if Leicestershire thought their troubles were over, de Lange was about to prove them wrong. On no fewer than six occasions, the powerful South African swung from the hip to clear the ropes over mid-wicket. And all the time Davey was patiently accumulating to reach his first Championship half-century for Somerset off 144 balls.Roelof van der Merwe drives during his 76•Getty Images

It was 408 for 8 for lunch, by which time de Lange had reached a 38-ball fifty and the hosts were looking to bat only once in the game.They had progressed to 446 when de Lange was caught at long-on off Callum Parkinson. It remained for Davey to go past his previous best first-class score of 71, made for Middlesex on debut against Oxford University back in 2010. At the declaration, the Scotland one-day and T20 international, often an unsung hero of Somerset’s team, had faced 169 balls and hit 11 fours.All the momentum was with the home side and they maintained it before tea, claiming the wickets of Lewis Hill, Rishi Patel and Marcus Harris to leave their opponents 60 for 3.Skipper Craig Overton dropped Hill on 14 at third slip off Jack Brooks, but responded by pinning the opener lbw with the first ball of the following over.Brooks and Davey claimed a wicket apiece before Ackermann dug in, receiving solid support from Josh Inglis in an unbroken stand of 35.The action looked set to continue beyond 7pm to make up for overs lost on day one. But heavy rain set in and the umpires called play off shortly before 6pm.

Mohammed Shami’s three-wicket burst carried Bengal to an eight-wicket win over Hyderabad in Group A of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy on Monday.Shami, who is playing his first white-ball tournament after last year’s ODI World Cup, took 3 for 21 in 3.3 overs as Bengal bowled out Hyderabad for 137 in 18.3 overs.He received good support from Karan Lal and Shahbaz Ahmed who bagged two wickets apiece.India batter Tilak Varma made a 44-ball 57 but he could not guide his side to a bigger total.In reply, Bengal faced little trouble in scaling down the target in 17.5 overs.Openers Abhishek Porel (41) and Karan (46) made 84 runs in 9.5 overs and Bengal never let the momentum slip from there.Meanwhile, India middle-order batter Rinku Singh made an unbeaten 24-ball 45 as Uttar Pradesh breezed past Himachal Pradesh’s 100 in just 13.3 overs to register a seven-wicket win in Group C.Former India legspinner Piyush Chawla took 4 for 12, while pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who on Monday was bought by Royal Challengers Bengaluru for INR 10.75 crore in the IPL mega auction, chipped in with wicket.

Half-centuries from Sam Robson and Leus du Plooy gave Middlesex the upper hand on the second day of their Vitality County Championship game against Northamptonshire at Merchant Taylors’ School.Robson enhanced his impressive record at the Northwood venue, which includes four first-class centuries, by grinding out a vital 58 while Du Plooy hit an unbeaten 66 as the home side reached 250 for seven, a first-innings advantage of 43.However, Ben Sanderson kept Northamptonshire right in contention with figures of five for 58, regaining his status as Division Two’s leading wicket-taker after being briefly displaced by Middlesex captain Toby Roland-Jones.Northamptonshire were dismissed for 207, with Roland-Jones taking a season’s best of five for 49 – and the visitors’ hopes of restricting Middlesex to a lower total were not helped as Prithvi Shaw shelled a trio of slip catches.Sanderson and Lewis McManus, who had hauled Northamptonshire out of difficulties the previous evening, did enough to usher the visitors beyond the key landmark of 200 as they extended their partnership to 83.Sanderson unfurled a pair of classic drives to the boundary off Tom Helm and thoughts of a maiden first-class half-century must have entered the veteran seamer’s mind as he overtook McManus to reach 40.However, those thoughts were dashed when Henry Brookes bowled Sanderson around his legs and, although debutant Dom Leech cracked a cover boundary to raise the visitors’ 200, Roland-Jones quickly wrapped up the innings by capturing their last two wickets in three balls.In reply, Middlesex’s opening pair both survived close calls during the hour prior to lunch, although they made it to the interval unscathed on a surface with variable bounce and pace.With just a single to his name, Robson edged a rising delivery from Justin Broad through the slips, while Mark Stoneman offered a tricky slip chance off the same bowler and Shaw, going low to his left, was unable to hang on.Sanderson made the breakthrough soon after the resumption, getting the ball to swing and uprooting Stoneman’s off stump for 36, but Robson and Max Holden dug in for an afternoon of laborious progress.Robson cut the seamers with authority to keep the scoreboard moving and passed 50 from 118 balls with a sweet cover drive for four off leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal, whose change of ends then bore immediate fruit as he trapped Holden leg before.Northamptonshire might have removed Robson as well in the next over, with Shaw – who had also put down Holden – fumbling another opportunity, but Sanderson made amends immediately after tea with two wickets in as many deliveries.With Robson lbw to one that kept low and Stephen Eskinazi succumbing in identical fashion, Middlesex were suddenly wobbling at 129 for four but a bristling partnership of 72 between Du Plooy and Fernandes was exactly what they needed.Leech eventually brought the stand to an end with his first Northamptonshire wicket, having Fernandes taken at second slip, but Du Plooy remained to nudge his side into the lead with a crisp off-driven boundary.However, Sanderson returned with the new ball and promptly claimed two more wickets in quick succession, completing his third five-for of the summer before Roland-Jones launched a late flurry of boundary-hitting.He took two fours from successive Sanderson deliveries and had just cracked Broad to the fence to earn Middlesex a batting bonus point when the deteriorating light brought play to a close.

Marnus Labuschagne has reflected on being involved in the extraordinary tied County Championship game earlier this week and admitted Glamorgan thought they were home in their bid for a world-record run chase.They had been set 593 by Gloucestershire and entered the final over of the match needing two to win after centuries from Labuschagne and Sam Northeast. Mason Crane played out four dot balls before taking a single to level the scores leaving No. 11 Jamie McIlroy on strike. He swung hard at Ajeet Dale, edging through to James Bracey who took a spectacular one-handed catch having removed his right glove in preparation for the batters attempting a bye.Related

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“Whenever you are chasing a big score like that it’s always about one step at a time,” Labuschagne told . “But the ground we played at was [a] very fast outfield so you just felt like if you got on top of the opposition and you scored and batted well, things could get out of hand very quickly.”That’s always in the back of your mind but you are just taking it one step at a time. Then when it gets down to 100 you start getting a little more invested and you get a bit more eager, then it gets down to 50, then we lost a couple more wickets and we are like, do we bat the draw or go all in for the win.”So there was heaps of ups and downs and even into the last over, we got a boundary off the last ball of the second last over of the day, then we thought we were home. Needed two runs off the last over, we had Mason Crane the batter in on strike. He ended up facing four dots and then got a single, so it’s over to the No. 11 to get the job done.”Incredible game…we got their score, we just couldn’t get one more.” The match marked Labuschagne’s last County Championship outing of this spell with Glamorgan which concludes with a run of T20 Blast matches before he returns to Australia. He will then be part of Queensland’s pre-season as their new captain ahead of potentially returning to England for the ODI series in mid-September.Labuschagne scored 468 runs at 58.50 in four first-class matches with two centuries which follows a relatively lean period in his Test career where he has made one century in his last 20 Tests, although hit 90 in the previous outing against New Zealand in March.”The ups and downs of the game is part of the challenge,” he said. “For me it was just a good opportunity to review before I came here on how I’ve been successful, what have I done in different time periods that I’ve been batting well… have done a few technical things and worked on a few things and it’s coming together really nicely, so setting up nicely for some one-day cricket and some Test cricket coming up this summer.”I always look at my game from a technical lens, finding out ways to improve and get better, and especially with my technique making sure my alignment is good, moving into the ball well, all those sorts of things [are] really important for me.”Being involved in a 592-run four-day tie has not been the only memorable moment of Labuschagne’s Glamorgan season with him also lighting up social media with his spectacular catch in the T20 Blast.”It’s definitely the best catch I’ve taken that’s been caught on camera, that’s for sure,” he said. “I took a catch in club cricket when I was 18 or 19, the boys that I play with at Queensland always say it was another very good catch, but unfortunately we don’t have that on camera, so as good as it never happened.”Labuschagne could be available for at least the first month of the Sheffield Shield season for Queensland and potentially more depending on how multi-format players are managed around the white-ball series against Pakistan in November. The first Test against India starts in Perth on November 22.”It’s there in the back of my mind stewing along,” he said of the prospect of facing India, “but when you are playing you are always trying to focus on the here and now.”

Yorkshire 173 for 8 (Masood 61, Root 43) beat Lancashire 166 for 8 (Jennings 46) by seven runs Yorkshire Vikings won a home Roses match for the second season running, successfully defending a 174 target to beat Vitality Blast pacesetters Lancashire at Headingley by seven runs.A typically pulsating clash on a pitch suiting pace off saw the pendulum swing back and forth but decisively the Vikings’ way as Lightning slipped from 67 for two in the eighth over to 88 for five in the 11th and later finishing on 166 for eight.Home captain Shan Masood underpinned Yorkshire’s 173 for eight with 61 off 41 balls, while England’s Joe Root contributed 43 off 33 – they shared 104 for the fourth wicket. Later, off-spinner Dom Bess struck twice, including the scalp of Keaton Jennings for 46 to start that aforementioned mini collapse.Yorkshire won for the fourth time in seven, while the North Group leaders lost their third game in eight.Off-spinner Chris Green was the pick of Lancashire’s bowlers with two for 21, while pacer Saqib Mahmood struck three times.Yorkshire’s innings, having elected to bat, can be best summed up as Lancashire started and finished well but the hosts dominated the middle through Masood and Root.Vikings lost openers Adam Lyth lbw to Green’s first ball and Dawid Malan caught at midwicket off a top-edged pull against Mahmood – 23 for two in the third over.