Southern Brave: Men bow out with a win as women qualify for Friday’s Eliminator
The league stage of The Hundred has come to an end for Southern Brave’s sides, with the women’s side progressing to the Eliminator match while the men exit the competition.
Both faced Trent Rockets in the team’s final double header at Trent Bridge on Monday. The women stepped up first, battling from second place against the top-spot Rockets, with automatic qualification to the final still an outside possibility for the Brave.
Ultimately, however, it was the home side who spared themselves the nerve-shredding drama of Friday’s Eliminator, avoiding the big defeat that would have put their place in the final in peril, then chasing down the Brave’s 117-5 thanks to a destructive late cameo from Nat Sciver-Brunt.
A Rockets win was perhaps the more likely outcome, with the home side having lost their first game then won six in a row, while Brave had won their first five but then stuttered, losing their most recent two.
With their respective net run rates, the Brave needed to win by 94 runs to overtake the Rockets once they had been inserted. They had lost Jemimah Rodrigues to a hamstring injury, with Charli Knott coming in, while captain Sophie Molineux was unavailable due to a stomach bug, Laura Wolvaardt taking the armband.
Although the Brave’s top three of Maia Bouchier, Lizelle Lee and Wolvaardt all went beyond 20, none could score at a rate above 115 as the 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.
The Rockets will now get a couple extra days off ahead of Sunday’s final, with Brave due to face either Manchester Super Giants or Leeds Sunrisers in the Eliminator.
The men’s campaign, however, has concluded with the side sitting in sixth place with a few sides still left to play their final fixtures. The 2026 season ended on a high though, with the Brave (159-4) ending Trent Rockets’ (158-5) six-match winning streak which in-turn denied them automatic passage to the final.
The Rockets knew that a win would secure top spot and their place in the Lord’s showpiece but Stubbs (52*) swatted Lewis Gregory for six to bring up a 28-ball half-century with three balls to spare and complete a six-wicket win. SunRisers Leeds can now leapfrog the Rockets on net run-rate if they overcome Manchester Super Giants tomorrow at Emirates Old Trafford Cricket Ground.
Reflecting on the Brave’s campaign, Stubbs, the Meerkat Match Hero, said: “It’s been disappointing but it’s a nice way to finish off. In hindsight it’s a bit frustrating. We gave it our all for the month but in the first three games we lost a couple of close ones and then it’s hard to get momentum.
“I think we’ve shown at the end what we can do but it took us a while to get there."