Fire Crush Phoenix To Stave Off Elimination

The Hundred men's competition, Edgbaston

Birmingham Phoenix 138-9 (100 balls): Bethell 38 (28); Green 3-27

Welsh Fire 140-2 (89 balls): Smith 47* (36), Eskinazi 42 (29)

Fire won by 8 wickets

Scorecard. Table

Welsh Fire cruised to a broad eight-wicket triumph complete Birmingham Phoenix to support their fading hopes of reaching The Hundred men's knockout stages alive.

Defeat astatine Edgbaston would person ended their chances of making nan apical 3 but aft restricting Phoenix to 138-9, they knocked disconnected nan runs pinch 11 balls to spare.

Opener Stephen Eskinazi made a quickfire 42 and Jonny Bairstow, moved down to three, came successful and thumped 35 disconnected 21 balls, while Steve Smith batted done nan innings for an unbeaten 47 disconnected 36 arsenic Fire made ray activity of nan chase.

Earlier, wickets fell regularly during a Phoenix innings that many times threatened to ignite but ne'er rather did so.

Jacob Bethell top-scored pinch 38 from 28 balls, while Chris Green took 3-27 for Fire and his chap off-spinner Ben Kellaway claimed 2-10 connected debut.

The consequence leaves some sides connected 8 points, still 8 backmost of Northern Superchargers successful third, pinch 2 games near to play, meaning qualification remains unlikely.

However, some Fire and Phoenix will beryllium clinging to nan truth that if they triumph their remaining games they could still scope nan eliminator - albeit it would require different results to spell their way.

It is different four-day crippled connected Saturday pinch double-headers seeing Northern Superchargers big Oval Invincibles (11:00 and 14:30 BST) and London Spirit look Southern Brave (14:30 and 18:00 BST).

There will beryllium ball-by-ball power commentary connected each crippled connected BBC Sounds.

Spirit v Brave are besides BBC TV games pinch nan women's crippled connected BBC iPlayer and nan men's crippled connected BBC Two and iPlayer.