The Hundred Men's 2023: Oval Invincibles Win Their First Title, Tom Curran Scores 67* Off 34 in the Lord's Final

Oval Invincibles won their first The Hundred (men's) title on 27 August 2023 at Lord's Cricket Ground, beating Manchester Originals by 14 runs in the third men's Hundred final. Oval Invincibles scored 161/5 in 100 balls; Manchester Originals were restricted to 147/6. Tom Curran scored 67* off 34 balls and took 1/25 as Player of the Match — his innings giving the Invincibles' total its competition-winning depth. It was Oval Invincibles' first men's Hundred title; Trent Rockets had won the previous year's competition in 2022.

Tom Curran 67* Off 34 Balls: The Innings That Built the Winning Total

Tom Curran's 67* off 34 balls in the Hundred 2023 final at Lord's — an innings that carried the Oval Invincibles' middle-order acceleration to produce the 161/5 total that Manchester Originals ultimately fell 14 runs short of — was the batting performance that defined the 2023 men's Hundred final. Curran, Surrey's right-arm fast-medium bowler and lower-middle-order hitter who had been a consistent domestic T20 performer across multiple competitions, produced an innings at Lord's of the kind that the Hundred's format rewards: aggressive from the start of his contribution, capable of adding 20 or 30 runs in a single 5-ball set, and maintaining a strike rate that maximised the balls available to him without the top order's safety-first constraints. His 67* gave the Invincibles' 161/5 its reach — without his contribution, the total would have sat closer to the range that Originals' chase of 147/6 suggested was within their capabilities.

Oval Invincibles' First Men's Hundred Title: Three Different Men's Champions in Three Years

Oval Invincibles winning the men's Hundred title in 2023 meant that the competition's first three editions (2021, 2022, 2023) produced three different men's champions: Southern Brave (2021), Trent Rockets (2022), and Oval Invincibles (2023). The competitive spread — no men's team had yet defended a title across the competition's first three years — confirmed the competitive balance that The Hundred's draft system had been designed to produce. Oval Invincibles' men's 2023 title added to a Hundred franchise record that already included back-to-back Women's Hundred titles in 2021 and 2022 — making the Oval Invincibles the competition's most decorated franchise across both men's and women's competitions at the end of the 2023 season.

The Hundred Men's 2023 in Context

The Hundred Men's 2023 was the third edition of the competition — building on the inaugural 2021 and 2022 editions to develop its broadcast audience and franchise identity. The 14-run margin of Oval Invincibles' victory — more comfortable than Trent Rockets' 2-ball-to-spare win in 2022 — gave the 2023 final a less nail-biting conclusion, but Curran's 67* provided the individual drama that audiences had been drawn to across the competition's first three years. Manchester Originals' route to the 2023 final — their first Hundred men's final appearance — reflected the competitive reshuffling across eight franchises that the format's draft structure was designed to enable.