Trent Rockets Women demolished Birmingham Phoenix Women by nine wickets at Edgbaston in The Hundred Women 2026, bowling out Birmingham Phoenix Women for 64 in 95 balls before chasing down the target in just 31 deliveries. The victory came without Rockets captain Nat Sciver-Brunt, who missed the match through injury. The rout stands as one of the most emphatic results in the competition’s history, with Birmingham’s innings collapsing after 95 balls.
There are defeats that sting because of how close they come, and there are defeats that sting because of how far away victory was ever going to be. Birmingham Phoenix Women suffered the second kind at Edgbaston, and the manner of it will linger longer than the scoreline alone suggests.
For Trent Rockets, the story was not just about the runs or the wickets, but about doing it all without the player who usually stands at the heart of everything they do. Nat Sciver-Brunt’s absence through injury might have been expected to blunt Rockets on both fronts. Instead, her team-mates delivered a performance so ruthless that her name barely needed mentioning until the final ball had been bowled.
Edgbaston, Birmingham, England: Under grey skies and the low hum of a Friday afternoon crowd still filtering in ahead of the men’s fixture later that evening, Birmingham Phoenix were sent in to bat first. It proved to be a decision that exposed every fragility in their batting order, and by the time their innings mercifully ended, the damage was already historic in its scale.
A Collapse Written in Balls, Not Overs
Birmingham’s innings never found rhythm, and the manner of their dismissal — bowled out for 64 in just 95 balls — tells its own story of panic compounding pressure. Wickets fell in clusters rather than isolation, the kind of collapse that feeds on itself once the first two or three batters depart cheaply.
Samantha Bates and Georgia Elwiss scalped 3 wickets each, and Kim Garth bagged 2 wickets. Meanwhile, Ellyse Perry (39) was the only batter from Birmingham who scored over 10 runs.
There was no recovery act, no lower-order resistance to drag respectability back into the innings. Once the Rockets bowlers found their lengths, Birmingham simply had no answer, and 95 deliveries was enough to end any hope of competing.
Trent Rockets: Ruthless in Pursuit
If the bowling performance was clinical, the chase was surgical. Trent Rockets required only 31 balls to complete the formality, a chase so swift it barely allowed the Edgbaston crowd time to settle into the contest. Sophia Dunkley smashed 43 off just 17.
Nine wickets in hand told its own story — this was never really a chase at all, but an exhibition. The Rockets batters treated the target with the disdain of a side that knew, almost from the first ball of Birmingham’s innings, that 64 was never going to be competitive.
The Captain Who Wasn’t There
What made the victory more striking was the identity of the player missing from the Trent Rockets XI. Nat Sciver-Brunt, the side’s captain and one of the most influential figures in the women’s game, sat out through injury. Her absence might easily have destabilised a team built so heavily around her presence, both as a batter and as a leader.
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Instead, the Rockets barely broke stride. It is a testament to the depth Trent have cultivated that a nine-wicket win of this magnitude could be constructed without their talismanic skipper — with assistant coach Katherine Sciver-Brunt overseeing a group that needed no rallying words to find their focus.
What It Means Looking Ahead
For Birmingham Phoenix, the challenge now is diagnostic as much as tactical — understanding how an innings unravels so completely in fewer than 100 balls, and rebuilding belief before their next outing. For Trent Rockets, the questions are far more comfortable ones: how to sustain this form, and how quickly Sciver-Brunt can return to a side already firing on all cylinders without her.
