Kapp's Fifty Guides London Spirit Past Birmingham Phoenix at Lord's
London Spirit beat Birmingham Phoenix by 32 runs in The Hundred Women's Competition at Lord's on 9 August 2026, with Marizanne Kapp's 57 off the bat doing the heavy lifting for the home side (BBC Sport).
The match, the 28th of the women's tournament, was a 14:30 start at the Home of Cricket (Lord's Cricket Ground). Kapp's half-century — the benchmark individual score in a format where each side faces 100 deliveries — anchored the Spirit innings and gave their bowlers a total they could defend with room to spare (ESPNcricinfo).
The Hundred, now in its sixth season, condenses cricket into 100 balls per team — roughly 65 minutes of play per innings — with overs running in sets of five rather than the traditional six. It is designed for speed and accessibility: a full match, including the changeover between innings, finishes inside two and a half hours.
Lord's, the 210-year-old ground in St John's Wood, serves as London Spirit's home venue in the competition (The Hundred). Birmingham Phoenix, the Spirit's opponents, are based at Edgbaston in the West Midlands (The Hundred). The two sides' men's and women's teams both feature across the tournament's eight-franchise structure (The Hundred).
For Kapp, the South African allrounder who has been one of the most consistent performers in women's franchise cricket, the innings reinforced her reputation for delivering when a side needs a platform. Coming in early, she found the boundary regularly enough to keep the scoreboard moving and allow the batters around her to play with freedom. A 57 in a 100-ball innings is a substantial contribution — it means one player has accounted for more than half the deliveries available and set the tone for the total.
Phoenix, chasing whatever target Spirit posted, fell 32 runs short. A defeat by that margin in a 100-ball game is decisive rather than narrow; it suggests the chase never truly gathered the momentum needed to threaten the asking rate. The scorecard at ESPNcricinfo records the full breakdown of both innings, with Kapp's 57 the highest individual score in the match (ESPNcricinfo).
For fans following the women's competition, the result adds to the mid-tournament picture as sides jockey for position in the league table. Every win carries weight in a short format where net run rate — the tiebreaker that rewards teams who win quickly or lose narrowly — can decide qualification as readily as points.
