Zak Crawley shone under the lights at Headingley to make an unbeaten 67 and lead Andrew Flintoff’s Northern Superchargers to an assured eight-wicket win over Welsh Fire.

The England man hit five fours and four sixes across his enterprising 37-ball stay at the crease to see the Superchargers to a brace of home wins on their opening matchday of the Hundred, following the women’s team’s win earlier in the day.

Crawley was accompanied by captain and fellow England star Harry Brook to hit the winning runs at the end, book-ending a game that started with Jonny Bairstow and Steve Smith putting on 62 for the opening wicket for Welsh Fire.

The pair were booed on their way to the crease but they looked as if they’d get their own back on their crowd, before Smith was bowled by Matthew Potts and the Fire innings began to lose its heat.

Fire fought their way to 143 for 9 from their 100 balls but Crawley, David Malan (41) and Brook (25*) made light work of the chase – knocking off the runs with 11 balls to spare.

Brook signalled his arrival at the crease with a first-ball six over mid-off and his innings brought plenty of cheer to the Headingley crowd, who on this performance may have plenty to celebrate across the Hundred this season.

Crawley said: “I loved it. The boys are great, and coming here with Freddie [Flintoff] – the guy’s a legend. It’s a great place to play your cricket and an awesome wicket to bat on, so I loved it.

“It felt a really good wicket for us to bat on and the outfield was rapid so the game-plan for us was to play strong shots, and it came off. The boys kept them to a really good total with the ball, and we felt like we could chase that and it was a good performance.

“I felt like me and Dawid complemented each other quite nicely, we hit in different areas, so that was good. And obviously the skipper came in and does what he does. He’s a proper player so that made it easy for me at the end.

“The bowlers got us off to a great start. They’ve got a couple of top players at the top for them but we managed to take regular wickets, which is what we talked about before the game, and the boys did brilliantly to keep them to 140-odd and that was very chaseable.”

Brief scores:
Northern Superchargers 147 for 2 in 89 balls (Zak Crawley 67*, David Malan 41, Harry Brook 25*; Riley Meredith 2-33) beat Welsh Fire 143 for 9 in 100 balls (Steven Smith 29, Jonny Bairstow 42, Tom Abel 18, Tom Cohler Cadmore 10, Saif Zaib 13, Paul Walter 15; Adil Rashid 2-25, Imad Wassim 2-26, Mohammed Amir 1-28, Tom Lawes 1-19, Mathew Potts 2-26) by eight wickets

[Cricinfo]