Trent Rockets vs London Spirit Review — Duckett Sets It Up, and Craig Overton Finishes It Off His Own Twin Brother

Cricket occasionally writes an ending no scriptwriter would dare submit. Trent Rockets needed a handful off the closing set, London Spirit had Jamie Overton at the top of his mark, and the man at the striker's end was Craig Overton — his twin brother. Craig top-edged him for six over deep fine leg, which is the least dignified way to win a family argument and by some distance the most satisfying, and then picked off successive twos to finish the job. Rockets got home by four wickets with the small matter of a Trent Bridge record attached: 160 is the highest total successfully chased at this ground in The Hundred.

It was a meeting of two sides who had lost their openers, which usually produces a nervous, attritional evening. Instead it produced the best contest of the weekend — a defendable total, a chase with genuine jeopardy, and a finish that went to the last handful of deliveries.

Spirit's innings was a study in starts that did not become anything. Craig Overton removed Jonny Bairstow caught-and-bowled for a duck with the innings barely underway, which set a tone the batting never fully escaped, and he later added Lhuan-dré Pretorius for 24. Dewald Brevis top-scored with 39 from 24 — the most fluent hitting of the night from either side while it lasted — and Liam Livingstone's 33 from 24 gave the middle a spine. But 159 for 9 means nine wickets fell for those runs, and in a hundred-ball innings a side losing that many is a side that never got to plan the last twenty deliveries. They were batting to survive when they should have been batting to accelerate.

Even so, 159 at Trent Bridge had history on its side. No team had chased more here in this competition. Spirit had a target to bowl at and a ground that had never let anyone do what Rockets were about to do.

Ben Duckett is having the sort of summer where the format stops mattering. His 75 from 47 was built on the two shots that make him so awkward to bowl to in England: the pull, played early and flat off anything a fraction short, and the scoop, which turns the yorker-length ball — the bowler's designated escape route — into a scoring option behind the keeper. Once a batter takes both the short ball and the yorker away from you inside a hundred-ball innings, there is not much left to bowl. He kept the chase ahead of the rate for long enough that the closing overs required nerve rather than heroics.

Which is precisely what Craig Overton supplied. Twenty not out is a modest line on a scorecard and an enormous one in context: he arrived with the match live, faced his brother with the game on the line, and took the risk-free option off the table by clearing the rope with a top edge that will be replayed in the Overton household for the next two decades. The twos that followed were the unglamorous part, and the part that actually won it.

Rockets, beaten by ten runs at Edgbaston 48 hours earlier while chasing 215, will take enormous confidence from the fact that they finished this one. That is the difference between 1-1 and 0-2 in a tournament this short. Spirit, meanwhile, are winless after two — beaten by seven at Lord's by Manchester Super Giants and now by four wickets here, both times with the game in reach and both times short of the one partnership that would have settled it. Their batting is producing thirties, not fifties, and in The Hundred that is the whole margin.

Spirit's next assignment is MI London at The Oval on July 29. Rockets travel to Cardiff to face the unbeaten Welsh Fire on the same day.