LON­DON – West In­dies Women’s cap­tain Hay­ley Matthews lashed a ca­reer-best half-cen­tu­ry in the Hun­dred, as Welsh Fire com­plet­ed their high­est ever run chase in the com­pe­ti­tion to beat Lon­don Spir­it by six wick­ets at Lord’s on Thurs­day.

Asked to chase 151 in or­der to win their sec­ond game, Fire over­hauled their tar­get with five balls re­main­ing, with the 26-year-old top-scor­ing with a bril­liant un­beat­en 78 off 46 de­liv­er­ies in a Play­er-of-the-Match per­for­mance.

Dropped on 36, the styl­ish right-han­der made the chance count, go­ing on to pum­mel 11 fours and two six­es and dom­i­nate the Spir­it bowl­ing.

En­ter­ing at num­ber three, Matthews saw Fire slip to 33 for two be­fore in­spir­ing stands of 47 for the third wick­et with wick­et­keep­er Sarah Bryce (21), 43 for the fourth wick­et with Jess Jonassen (14) and a fur­ther 28 in an un­bro­ken fifth wick­et part­ner­ship with Phoebe Franklin (six not out).

Matthews raised her fifty from 37 balls with con­sec­u­tive bound­aries off leg-spin­ner Sarah Glenn and took Fire over the line with back-to-back fours off off-spin­ner Deep­ti Shar­ma.

Ear­li­er, the pre­vi­ous­ly un­beat­en Spir­it ral­lied to 150 for five off their 100 de­liv­er­ies af­ter be­ing sent in, Danielle Gib­son hit­ting 41 from 25 balls and Deep­ti scor­ing an un­beat­en 39 from 26 de­liv­er­ies.

To­geth­er, they post­ed 67 for the fifth wick­et af­ter open­er Meg Lan­ning had struck 31 from 20 balls to pow­er a 49-run, sec­ond wick­et part­ner­ship with Cordelia Grif­fith (17).

Gib­son count­ed half-dozen fours and a six while Deep­ti struck two fours and two six­es to sus­tain Spir­it’s mo­men­tum to­wards the end.

CMC