The Hundred Women's 2023: Southern Brave Win Their First Title by 34 Runs at Lord's, Danni Wyatt-Hodge Scores 59

Southern Brave won their first Women's Hundred title on 27 August 2023 at Lord's Cricket Ground, defeating Northern Superchargers by 34 runs to end Oval Invincibles' two-year hold on the championship. Brave scored 139/6 in 100 balls; Superchargers were restricted to 105. Danni Wyatt-Hodge scored 59 off 38 balls as Player of the Match — the innings that gave Brave's 139 its competitive quality. Marizanne Kapp (Oval Invincibles) won Player of the Tournament with 147 runs and 11 wickets — from a team that did not reach the final.

Danni Wyatt-Hodge 59: Southern Brave's Batting Platform at Lord's

Danni Wyatt-Hodge's 59 off 38 balls in the Women's Hundred 2023 final at Lord's — the innings that gave Southern Brave's 139/6 a total that Northern Superchargers' batting lineup could not match — was a Player of the Match contribution that confirmed Wyatt-Hodge's development into one of England's most impactful women's T20 batters. Wyatt-Hodge, Sussex's right-handed opening batter who had been an integral part of England Women's white-ball setup, brought the combination of aggressive intent and ability to time the ball that the Hundred's 100-ball format rewards from an opening batter with licence from the first delivery. Her 59 gave Brave the batting platform that their bowling attack could defend — the Superchargers' 105 in reply falling 34 short of the 139 target.

Marizanne Kapp's Third Consecutive Women's Hundred Season with the Competition's Top Award

Marizanne Kapp (Oval Invincibles) winning the Women's Hundred 2023 Player of the Tournament — 147 runs and 11 wickets from a team that did not reach the final — was her third consecutive Women's Hundred season in which she won the competition's top individual award. In 2021 (inaugural), she took 4/9 in the final to win Player of the Match; in 2022, she scored 37* in the final to win Player of the Match again; in 2023, she won Player of the Tournament from a non-finalist Oval Invincibles team. Her sustained dominance across Women's Hundred Seasons 1-3 — with two final Player of the Match awards and a Player of the Tournament in successive years — gave Kapp the most distinctive individual record in the competition's first three editions. Her Oval Invincibles team's failure to reach the 2023 final meant that their PoT-winning bowler could not repeat the title she had contributed to in 2021 and 2022.

Women's Hundred 2023 in Context

The Women's Hundred 2023 was the third edition of the competition — the first in which a team other than Oval Invincibles won the Women's title. Southern Brave's 34-run victory over Northern Superchargers gave the competition's third year a new champion and a different competitive narrative from the Oval Invincibles' back-to-back 2021-2022 run. Kapp's Player of the Tournament from Oval Invincibles (a non-finalist) was the clearest indication that the competition's individual talent was distributed broadly enough that the title-winning team did not necessarily contain its most impactful player. Northern Superchargers reaching their first Women's Hundred final — before losing by 34 runs — reflected the competitive reshuffling across eight franchises that the Hundred's draft system had been designed to enable.