Brave, spirited fans unrewarded as Spirit-Brave washed out

It was hard to know what was more of a farce. The poor groundsman seeing his neat pile of sawdust obliterated as he tried unsuccessfully to lift the rope being towed round the Lord's outfield to soak up moisture left by another rain shower over it, or this season trying to pass itself off as "summer".

For the majority of a 13,000-strong crowd who saw Southern Brave Women defeat their London Spirit opposition and then stayed on through an hour-and-a-half stoppage for persistent drizzle and the subsequent mop-up, there didn't seem anything farcical about a match reduced to 50 balls per side. The fact they were set to see any more play was testament to the superpowers of drainage at Lord's and its ground staff, allowing the show to go on - momentarily. That was until rain intervened again, this time for good (or bad, if you're a cricket fan).

Dan Worrall had Devon Conway caught-and-bowled for a three-ball duck on the seventh ball of the match but only five more balls were possible before the rain which had hung around all day and delayed the start of the women's match by an hour returned, at which point Brave were 11 for 1.

At the resumption, the powerplay was revised to 13 balls per side, meaning Brave had just two balls left of theirs and James Vince made the most of them with back-to-back fours behind square leg and through the covers off Jordan Thompson. A short time later, Vince thrashed Matt Critchley over wide long-on for six as the Brave batters set about doing what they could to make up for a start in which they thought they'd have double the time.

Liam Dawson slowed things up innings and delivery-wise, conceding just three runs off his first set of five, which included the wicket of Finn Allen, holing out to Zak Crawley, who fell theatrically backwards as he pouched a straightforward catch in the deep. No sooner was Dawson out of the action, he was back in it - taking a sliding catch at full stretch to remove Vince. Immediately the rain started to fall again however, the heaviest it had all day, with Brave having scored 34 runs off 26 balls for the loss of three wickets.

At that point, the fans started filing out, credit to them for believing for so long. The match was abandoned shortly afterwards.