Arise Lady Nat Sciver-Brunt: The WPL's First Centurion

Since its inception in 2023, The Women’s Premier League has risen to become arguably the Premier Franchise League in the world for Women’s Cricket. In the past 3 years, it has seen everything from hat-tricks, to stunning catches, to low-scoring thrillers and high-scoring runfests. 5-fers as well as blazing knocks, the WPL has had everything in its repertoire of indelible memories as far as the tournament was concerned. 

Except the One. No one had made a century in this tournament. 

The lack of century stuck out like a sore thumb in a tournament that has now become the fulcrum of world cricket in the Women’s game. And it has not been for lack of trying. Some of the best batters in the game have made an almighty fist of it and came very very close indeed, but that pursuit remained as elusive as the quest to find the mythical Fountain of Youth. 

10 batters made it to the 90’s. And such is the quality of the names that made it till here that you could make a case for any one of them to be worthy of being the WPL’s maiden centurion. Richa Ghosh, Meg Lanning, Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana, Tahlia McGrath, Alyssa Healy, Beth Mooney all stars of the game. Georgia Voll came as close as you could ever imagine with 99. And spare a thought for the indomitable Sophie Devine. She had two bites of the cherry, but fell short on both occasions with scores of 95 and 99. It felt like the “WPL’s 90s curse” would go on and on, with no saviour in sight.

Until yesterday. 

It was fitting in certain quarters that the first woman to a century in the WPL should be the highest run-scorer in the history of the league. And Nat Sciver-Brunt etched her name into the history books with a lofted drive towards long-off that made her an immortal name in the folklore of this glorious tournament. The fact that it also happened to be her first-ever 100 in the T20 format made it even sweeter for her.

On a Vadodara pitch that tested her on all facets of her brilliant stroke-making, Silver-Brunt played the way that she always does. Walking in after yet another snail-like powerplay for her Mumbai Indians side in a game that they had to win, the England all-rounder played out her compatriot Lauren Bell, who has been arguably the best bowler in the powerplay, and then went on to work in what was a systematic dismantling of the remaining bowlers.

Shreyanka Patil and Nadine de Klerk have been reliable mainstays with the ball for RCB. Both of them became cannon fodder for Sciver-Brunt as she took them to the cleaners towards all parts of the ground. She played the field to perfection, used the shorter boundary to her advantage and dispatched the ball to the boundary with the utmost disdain whenever it was in her arc.

With the RCB bowlers beginning to slowly vary their pace in the latter part of the MI innings, Sciver-Brunt then banked on just pure instinct. The raw, primal, and visceral quality of just seeing ball and hitting ball, without any care as to where the fielders are.

At 99, and with 6 balls to spare, everyone in the stadium understood that they were on the cusp of witnessing a moment that has been almost 4 years in the making. And when it arrived, everyone from her teammates, opponents, and the fans drank it in. And so did Sciver-Brunt. It took 1059 days and 82 matches to get to this moment, and Sciver-Brunt let the applause and adulation soak in as she grasped at the magnitude of the moment.

The way Sciver-Brunt plays her cricket has always been defined by not going towards the occasion, but letting the occasion come to her. And yesterday, she let it come in the only way she knew how: With calm, clarity, and class.

So arise, Lady Nat Sciver-Brunt, and lap up the adulation. Because you are the WPL’s first-ever Centurion. And that is a record no one can take away from you.