Amy Hunter does it again in Harare
Hundreds are fun, but Hunter's speed of scoring has ticked up of late, culminating in another historic day
Amy Hunter loves the Harare Sports Club.
Just over two years ago, aged 16 years and, quite literally zero days, on the occasion of her birthday she became cricket’s youngest centurion in a One Day International in Zimbabwe. Today, now 18, Hunter added her first T20 international century at the same venue against the same opposition.
Her unbeaten 101 off 66 balls saw Hunter bat through the entirety of Ireland’s innings. Finishing on 191/3, it is their third highest total in women’s T20s.
Where to even begin? A heap of broken records is as good a place to start as any.
Hunter’s knock was Ireland’s second century in a T20I, Gaby Lewis hitting the other against Germany in 2021.
Hunter is now the only Irish woman to have scored a century in both ODIs and T20Is. Given Ireland women don’t play Test matches, she is also the only Irish woman to be a de facto all-format centurion.
She joins Paul Stirling and Kevin O’Brien as the only Irish cricketers to have scored a century in all international formats available to them.
As statistician Hypocaust points out, aged 18 years and 107 days, Hunter is the youngest woman from any country to have reached three figures in both white-ball formats.
Hunter is now the third-youngest woman to have scored a T20I century.
By hitting 13 boundary fours in today’s innings, Hunter equals Lewis for the highest number of fours hit by an Irish woman in a T20I innings.
By putting on 138 for the first wicket today, Hunter and Lewis have recorded Ireland’s highest T20I partnership, comfortably beating the previous best of 113 set by Kim Garth and Lewis in 2019.
Sitting on 99 with one ball to go in the innings, Hunter brought up her milestone with a flick to deep square. Coming back for a second allowed her to savour the applause of her colleagues on the Irish balcony.
The delivery prior was a nervy false alarm. Kudzai Chigora fired a ball down leg that passed close to Hunter’s thigh pad. Did it flick the pad? Was it a wide? Would Hunter be stranded on 99? The grainy stream didn’t provide immediate answers. Eyes darted to the umpire, his arms stretched out wide. Relief for Irish viewers, let alone Hunter.
The ball prior to that, Laura Delany was on strike. Facing up to just her second delivery, she knew the score. With Ireland already on a mammoth total out of Zimbabwe’s reach, there was no chance she was taking on the boundary, risking an even number or even a dismissal that would leave Hunter stranded at the non-striker’s end with one ball to go.
Delany called her young colleague for a chat before the penultimate delivery. It wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest the conversation featured strong instructions to back up and get ready to run.
Delany did her job, tucking the ball gently to mid wicket. The fielder was in the ring, but Hunter had already run half the length of Harare by the time the ball was picked up.
Ireland’s wicketkeeper then held up her end of the bargain, adding a second historic day in Harare to her personal list.
Where does this all leave Hunter?
Centuries are to be savoured, but as a statistic, they are a relatively arbitrary, incomplete marker of a successful batting performance. For sentimental types, passing three figures is what is to be savoured here.
For more pragmatic (less romantic, perhaps) readers, Hunter’s strike-rate is far more important. The fact that she batted for 20 overs scoring at 153.03 runs per 100 balls faced was far more effective at increasing Ireland’s chances of winning than the moment she raised her bat.
Such a strike-rate is comfortably the highest in an individual T20I innings where Hunter reached double figures.
That 153.03 figure is also comfortably higher than Hunter’s T20I career strike-rate of 107.65. Those who watch Hunter regularly know not to read too much into a pretty average career strike-rate. Considering she debuted aged 16, it’s hard not to see that figure quickly rising as she learns to spend longer at the crease and therefore better use her natural power. Friday’s knock alone saw her career strike-rate jump from 101.61 to 107.65.
As is always the case with good days out for this young Irish side, the question quickly turns to what comes next. Hunter now has two international centuries - two more than the majority of her teammates - but not a long track record of consistent success. At such a young age, that almost doesn’t matter.
Not that the consistency isn’t building. After a disappointing T20 World Cup almost 12 months ago where she passed double figures only once in four games, Hunter has put together a run of nine T20I innings where she is averaging 52, a number heavily inflated by Friday’s unbeaten century. In that nine-game span, she has only been dismissed with a strike-rate of under a run-a-ball twice.
She certainly looks more settled in Ireland’s T20 side now than during that ill-fated World Cup.
Caveats about the opposition apply. Similar to Cara Murray’s good run of form with the ball (discussed here), the opposition in this run was the West Indies, Netherlands, Scotland and now Zimbabwe - hardly behemoths of the women’s game.
Even on Friday during Hunter’s most recent century, Zimbabwe featured some horrendous shortcomings for a supposed full-member nation. They gifted Hunter opportunities to score when deciding to bowl full and straight with fine leg inside the ring. Hunter played the ramp shot once, scything the ball to the boundary, and the field did not change until she did it on two further occasions.
Yet runs are runs, and Hunter has shown an ability to get them against better opposition. The one decent game she did have in that T20 World Cup came when scoring two early boundaries against England. More recently against Australia, memories of her launching Annabel Sutherland and Georgia Wareham into the Clontarf trees stand out as examples of fearless bravado and, more importantly, a well-honed power game that should eventually see Hunter thrive against better teams.
For now, Friday was an indicator of what Ireland can look like at their best. It’s no secret that they are reliant on their top three to produce in T20 cricket, but when they do, no one will care.
Lewis and Hunter flying out of the blocks, the former ultimately dismissed for 56 with a strike-rate of 143.58, set the game up perfectly. Orla Prendergast didn’t stay long enough to set off fireworks of her own, but a strike-rate of 144.44 in a short-ish knock nevertheless kept momentum going enough for Hunter and co to take Ireland to 190+.
In the last five overs, Ireland scored 59 runs at an average of 11.8 per over, a rare occasion where the bats fired at the death - thanks in large part to Hunter. She even got the personal milestone to match the feel-good factor of the team performance.
Hundreds are fun, they make us feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But most importantly, today’s century was merely the biggest marker of what Ireland already knew.
Hunter is a player who can produce days of magic, with two significant ones coming while still a teenager. Compared to Lewis and Prendergast, she is more of your classic wicketkeeper-type batter. She scores more square of the wicket and is a 360 degree player, as Friday’s ramp shots showed.
Crucially, of all three, Hunter probably has the best ability to pick up deliveries over mid-wicket on both the front and back foot (followed closely by Prendergast), a crucial skill in T20.
When Ireland succeed, different batters will have days out. More often than not, these will be the big three. Given their varying contributions on Friday, the win was the best indicator yet of what everyone wants them to be: a group of batters that can score quickly and, as a result, win games for Ireland.