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Exclusive: Georgia Adams on whacking, the wonderful Hundred and women's cricket

Georgia Adams helped the Oval Invincibles win The Hundred last year and will play for Southern Brave this summer. Planet Sport's Jonathan Doidge caught up with the superstar opening batter.

From last year's "rollercoaster" ride and lifting The Hundred trophy to a new tournament, new team-mates and a new team. Georgia Adams has a lot to get to grips with.

The batting extraordinaire led the Oval Invincibles to the Women's Hundred champions last year. But now the Sussex captain dreams of glory with Southern Brave this summer and is seeing the women's game continuing to explode.

"Last year was brilliant. It set the bar so high and it was fantastic, especially for the women's game," she said following The Hundred Draft.
"This year we'll be taking it to a whole new level with all the Australian cricketers being able to come over this time and some of the Kiwis as well."

What does The Hundred involve?

The Hundred throws cricket's doors open to a new audience of fans, providing a combination of live music and world-class men's and women's sporting talent.
The Men begin on August 3 and the Women eight days later with 19 of the 22 players who starred in the World Cup final between Australia and England featuring in the tournament's second season.
This 100-ball tournament has been deemed a huge success in helping the sport attract a wider audience.

"Those at the forefront of the Hundred, I don't think they had foreseen the impact that it was going to have. It's just been phenomenal," Adams added.

"The amount of people who started watching cricket, who'd never watched it before, got behind the women's game.

"As the tournament went on more and more people were getting in touch with me saying they were actually enjoying watching some of the women's games more than the men.

"Everyone seemed to really love the tournament. People who've never really watched cricket before were saying they had tuned in and it was really easy to follow and really easy to understand and really changed their perception of cricket. It had such a powerful impact on the women's game.

"It's created female role models for young girls and young cricketers, or non-cricketers for that matter, just being able to access and watch women's cricket on TV and hopefully get more people playing the game that we all love."

'I have to whack everything'

The shorter format of the game has seen a huge boom in cricket's popularity with many of the more explosive skills at the crease from T20 needed in The Hundred.
Comparing the two formats, the Southern Vipers captain added: "The Hundred felt a little bit faster-paced. I think going into it a lot of the mindset, especially mine as a batter was, I have to whack everything, I can't have any dot balls.
"But what we found was that you can do that. So the similarity with T20 cricket is that you do have more time than you think even though it's only a hundred balls.
"I think you'll see people going into it a lot calmer this year, because they know that now. I also think the tactics and stats have a little bit more of a role this year because they've actually got some stuff to work with and work from, from last year's games."

Adams looking for a new challenge with the Southern Brave

A winner with the Oval Invincibles last year. Can this brutal batter do it again for her new team Southern Brave?
"It was a rollercoaster ride at the Invincibles last year because two of our bigger name players were out injured," Adams said.
"Southern Brave were the team to beat and I think we went into that final as the underdogs, which made the win that little bit more special.
"I don't think anyone was quite expecting us to lift the trophy. It just shows in franchise cricket that anything can happen and you can't afford to have an off day as a team. Every little counts.
"I'm hoping for that now with the Braves and we'll be searching hard to go one better and lift the trophy. Selfishly, I'd love to be able to lift the trophy again - that would be great!"
The Men's Hundred kicks off on August 3 with last year's winners Southern Brave vs Welsh Fire. The Women's Hundred begins August 11. Tickets are priced at £5 for U16 and free for children under 5 years of age. Get your tickets online now at www.thehundred.com/tickets

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