Arise, 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 of women’s cricket.

In the past three years, the WPL has seen everything: from hat-tricks, stunning catches, low-scoring thrillers, to high-scoring run-fests. Be it fifers with the ball or blazing knocks with the bat, the WPL has had everything, already sporting an impressive repertoire of indelible memories. 

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

The lack of a centurion stuck out like a sore thumb in a tournament that has now become the fulcrum of world women’s cricket. 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 close, very close indeed, only for that feat to remain as elusive as the Fountain of Youth. 

Ten batters made it to the nineties. And such is the quality of the names on that list 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 one can get without reaching the summit with 99.

And spare a thought for the indomitable Sophie Devine, who had two bites of the cherry but fell short on both occasions, managing 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 a way that the first player to hit a century in the WPL ended up being the highest run-scorer in the league’s history. As Nat Sciver-Brunt etched her name into the WPL history books with a lofted drive towards long-off, what made the feat even sweeter was the fact that this also happened to be her first-ever hundred in the T20 format.

On a Vadodara pitch that tested the Englishwoman on all facets of her brilliant stroke-making, Sciver-Brunt played the way she always does. Walking in after yet another snail-like Powerplay from the Mumbai Indians, in a game they had to win, the veteran all-rounder outplayed compatriot Lauren Bell, who has been arguably the best bowler in the Powerplay, and then went on to systematically dismantle the entire Royal Challengers Bengaluru bowling unit.

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 as well as to 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 the moment it fell in her arc.

With the RCB bowlers beginning to slowly vary their pace in the latter part of the innings, Sciver-Brunt banked on pure instinct, showcasing her raw, primal, visceral quality to just see the ball, hit the ball, with no care for the fielders.

At 99, with six balls to spare, everyone in the stadium understood that they were on the cusp of witnessing a moment almost four years in the making. And when it arrived, everyone — from teammates, opponents, to spectators — drank it in. And so did Sciver-Brunt. It took 1,059 days and 82 matches to get to this moment, and she let the applause and adulation soak in, well aware of 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 knows how: with calm, clarity, and class.

So arise, 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.