Anya Shrubsole bowed out of professional cricket in stunning style as Southern Brave won the 2023 Women’s Hundred on August 27. It brought an end to her near-20-year career in which she scaled the heights of the international and domestic game.

Southern Brave played in their third consecutive final of the women’s Hundred at Lord’s on Sunday. Having lost each of the previous two. they comfortably beat Northern Superchargers by 34 runs this year, bowling them out for 105 with six balls to spare to claim their maiden trophy. Shrubsole, captain of the Southampton-based side since the first season, finally got to walk off into the sunset clutching the winner’s trophy.

A fitting send off for a legend of the game 👏

Thank you for everything, @Anya_shrubsole 💚#TheHundred pic.twitter.com/MQoPm9GhBd

— The Hundred (@thehundred) August 28, 2023

She took one wicket in the Superchargers’ innings, trapping Alice Davidson-Richards lbw. While Davidson-Richards will be Shrubsole’s final wicket, her first in List A cricket came back in 2004, when she made her debut for Somerset Women aged 12. She dismissed opener Debbie Stock playing against Berkshire Women, and also dismissed Sarah Taylor in a Division Two County Championship clash to finish with 2-20 off six overs, helping Somerset to win by four wickets.

While she appeared sporadically for Somerset over the next few seasons, her first game of 2007 caught the England selectors’ attention. She took seven wickets at Taunton against Surrey women, including that of Ebony Rainford-Brent. Her performances in early 2007 were enough to earn her a call-up to England’s development squad, with whom she toured South Africa.

The following year, she won a call-up to full England ODI colours, with a debut against South Africa on August 14, 2008. Her first wicket was the last one of South Africa’s innings, of Marcia Letsoalo, caught by Isa Guha. It kicked off a prolific career, and England won that game at Shenley by six wickets with 30 balls remaining.

Shrubsole made her T20I debut nine days later against South Africa, and put in a memorable Player-of-the-Match-worthy performance at Northampton. She claimed the best figures in the match of 3-19, tearing through the top order alongside Katherine Brunt (now Sciver-Brunt).

Having announced herself on the international stage, Shrubsole was named in England’s 2009 World Cup squad. She only played once in the competition but came home with her first World Cup winner’s medal around her neck.

A T20 World Cup followed the fifty-over edition in 2009, but Shrubsole was forced to withdraw from the tournament with a back injury. It would be the only World Cup she missed for the rest of her career.

In 2012, Shrubsole took her first five-wicket-haul for England. She decimated New Zealand to return figures of 5-11 in Wellington. At the time, it was only the fourth five-for ever in women’s T20Is.

The 2013 World Cup saw Shrubsole in her prime. Despite England’s disappointing Super Six exit, she took 13 wickets and finished as the second-leading wicket-taker in the competition. That included a five-for against South Africa bowling ten overs unchanged. Her wickets in the 2013 tournament are the joint-most of any bowler in a single women’s T20 World Cup.

Her biggest World Cup glory, however, was indisputably England’s iconic 2017 triumph at Lord’s. The footage of her final wicket will be indefinitely replayed over and over again on television, but to reduce what she achieved that day to shattering Rajeshwari Gayakwad’s stumps is diminishing. She took 5-20 in the last six overs of the game and brought England back from the brink.

Shrubsole has an incredible record in World Cups, where her 34 wickets (at 20.35) are the third-most for England women, after Carole Hodges and Clare Taylor. In T20 World Cups, only Shabnim Ismail has more wickets than her 41 (at 12.48). She is one of only three England women to have more than 100 T20I wickets England’s fourth-highest ODI wicket-taker.

Three of those T20I wickets came in as many balls against South Africa in 2018. She became only the second England women’s bowler to take a hat-trick in T20 cricket.

Injury, however, significantly limited her Test career. By the time she was able to make her Test debut in 2013, she had been playing for England for five years. On a turgid pitch at Wormsley, she bowled Rachael Haynes to claim her first Test wicket. Sarah Elliot and Meg Lanning also fell to Shrubsole in that match.

Her best Test figures came during England’s victorious 2013/14 Ashes campaign down under. In the Test match in that series, she took 4-51 in Australia’s first innings.

The final chapter of Shrubsole’s international career came in the 2022 World Cup in New Zealand. Despite England’s loss in the final to Australia, Shrubsole took match-best figures of 3-46. Since then, she has been a vital part of a dominant Southern Vipers side under Charlotte Edwards at the Ageas Bowl: they have won both domestic competitions twice, and Shrubsole finished her Vipers career with a win in the Charlotte Edwards Cup final.

The Brave’s win in the 2023 Hundred means that Shrubsole finished with consecutive wins in domestic competitions.

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