Everyone is calling the Manchester Super Giants' four-wicket win a masterclass. But what I saw at Headingley was a tragic abandonment of cricket's core values: suffering, dot balls, and leaving good deliveries alone.
The crowd at Headingley on Sunday was deafening. They were on their feet, euphoric, cheering as Smriti Mandhana dismantled the Sunrisers Leeds attack to the tune of 88 runs off a mere 50 deliveries. From my vantage point in the press box, however, I could only shake my head in quiet mourning. The paying public thought they were watching a triumph. I knew I was watching a tragedy. We have become a society addicted to cheap thrills, substituting the agonizing, character-building beauty of a well-left outswinger for the vulgarity of immediate run-scoring.
Let us look at the sheer disrespect embedded in that 50-ball figure. In a proper, morally sound innings, a batter spends her first thirty deliveries simply apologizing to the pitch for standing on it. You wear the bowler down through a war of attrition, offering a polite forward defensive stroke and nodding in mutual respect as the ball thuds harmlessly into the pad. Mandhana, entirely devoid of this basic etiquette, chose instead to hit the ball into the gaps. It was a shocking display of main-character syndrome. Where is the collaboration? Where is the shared struggle?
Then there are the four sixes. A six is a fundamentally selfish act. It physically removes the ball from the field of play, thereby denying eleven other women the opportunity to participate in the sport. It is the athletic equivalent of taking your ball and going home, except Mandhana did it four separate times. You can look at the analytics all you want, but simple observation tells me that lifting the ball into the stands requires absolutely zero character. You know what takes character? Poking a wide half-volley straight to cover point for no run, shouting for a quick single, and then retreating to your crease in a panic. That is how you build resilience. Mandhana just stood there, timed the ball, and ruined the afternoon for eleven professionals who were just trying to get some fresh air in Yorkshire.
I was having a lukewarm tea in the pavilion with a very senior executive from the league office before the chase began, and we discussed exactly this trend. He looked at me, weary from the demands of modern franchise cricket, and asked where it all went wrong. I told him plainly that this league has a problem. We have made the game too easy for the exceptionally talented. We have created an environment where a player can just walk out to the middle, assess the conditions, and win a match for her team without once looking like she is undergoing a painful existential crisis.
If we allow batters to just hit the bad balls for four, it completely invalidates the sixty-page strategic dossiers our analysts print out every morning.
We must spare a thought for the real victims here: the Sunrisers Leeds bowling attack. These are hardworking women who ran in, delivered the ball exactly where they intended to, and were rewarded with the indignity of having to ask the umpire for a replacement ball because the previous one was sitting in the third tier of the Western Terrace. It is a hostile work environment. When Mandhana smoked her third six, I looked at the Sunrisers captain. She looked lost. She had set a perfectly good field for a batter who was going to nervously edge the ball, and Mandhana flatly refused to cooperate.
Defenders of this circus will point out that The Hundred is explicitly designed to encourage this exact style of rapid, high-stakes scoring. That is precisely my point. By capping the innings at 100 balls, the organizers have stripped away the divine right of the batting side to waste forty minutes scoring twelve runs. Mandhana scoring 88 runs in half that time is the logical, horrifying conclusion of a format that penalizes a team for doing absolutely nothing.
The Manchester Super Giants secured a four-wicket win, crossing the line with an ease that bordered on arrogance. They will celebrate in the locker room, slap each other on the back, and tell themselves they played well. But true fans know the truth. The franchise did not grind it out. They did not rely on a chaotic run-out or a controversial umpiring decision to scrape by. They just relied on one woman being vastly superior at hitting a leather sphere with a willow blade.
If this is the future of the sport, count me out. The next time I want to watch someone efficiently execute a task without showing any signs of inner torment, I will go to the bank and watch the tellers count notes. Give me a collapsed batting order and a gritty two-run victory, or give me nothing at all.