De Klerk's Late Sixes Drag London Spirit Off the Floor and Past Trent Rockets
London Spirit were 67 for four, sinking fast, and then Nadine de Klerk started hitting sixes. Two of them came in the final four balls of a chase that had looked lost, carrying Spirit to their first win of the Women's Hundred season — a five-wicket victory over Trent Rockets at Trent Bridge, sealed with three deliveries to spare.
The Hundred, for newcomers, compresses each innings into 100 balls — eight-ball overs, ten of them, and no room for a bad patch. Rockets used their hundred to post 142 for seven. Spirit needed 143 to win and reached 146 for five with balls to spare, finishing on 97 of their allotted 100.
Spirit's chase began brightly. Opener Grace Harper struck 37 from 20 balls at the top of the order. Then the innings unravelled — four wickets tumbled for 12 runs, leaving Spirit 67 for four and the match slipping away.
De Klerk, 26, walked in and changed the equation. She finished 41 not out from 22 balls, finding an ally in Marie Kelly, whose 39 from 26 deliveries was every bit as important. Together they put on 63 from 37 balls — a stand that turned a dire position into a winnable one — before de Klerk's two maximums in the closing stages finished the job.
Rockets' total of 142 for seven had been built on contributions throughout the order. Ash Gardner top-scored with 34 from 22 balls, and Bess Heath added a brisk 31 off 19. But London Spirit's bowlers kept the scoring in check. Marizanne Kapp was outstanding, returning figures of three wickets for 12 runs — she bowled Beth Mooney with the first ball of the innings and went on to remove Sophia Dunkley and Sophie Luff. Charlie Dean chipped in with two for 18, including the catch that dismissed Gardner on the boundary.
The result leaves both teams on one win from two matches. Rockets sit third in the table on a superior net run-rate — the tiebreak that ranks teams level on wins by comparing how quickly they have scored and how slowly they have conceded. Spirit, having opened their account, sit below them.
For a match that looked settled when Spirit collapsed, the turnaround was sharp. De Klerk needed only 22 balls to undo what had taken Rockets a full innings to build.
