Manchester Super Giants are champions of The Hundred for the first time, and they have Tim Seifert to thank for it. The New Zealand wicketkeeper-batter blazed 72 off just 38 balls, with seven sixes and four fours, to drag his side to a five-wicket win over Trent Rockets in Sunday’s men’s final at Lord’s, chasing down 159 with two balls to spare. For a franchise that had reached this stage twice before and lost both times, it was a breakthrough seven years in the making.
A chase built on carnage
Set 159 to win after Trent Rockets posted 158 for 8, Manchester Super Giants needed fireworks, and Seifert supplied them from the first ball he faced. He raced to a 24-ball fifty, the fastest of the tournament’s knockout stages, putting together productive stands first with captain Jos Buttler and then with Leus du Plooy as the required rate was blown apart inside the middle overs. By the time Seifert fell, the platform was set, though Trent Rockets refused to fold quietly. Left-arm pace bowler Mohammad Amir struck twice late, finishing with 3 for 29, to leave Manchester needing three runs off the last five balls. It was left to the veteran spin-bowling all-rounder Liam Dawson to settle nerves, smashing a six over midwicket to seal the title and spark scenes of delirium among the Manchester supporters packed into Lord’s.
Rockets’ top order falters, middle order fights back
Earlier, Trent Rockets never quite found fluency with the bat. Openers Ben Duckett (31 off 24) and Tom Alsop-era regular Finn Allen (15 off 13) managed only 33 in the powerplay before Manchester’s left-arm wrist-spinner Noor Ahmad ripped through the top order, finishing with 3 for 33 and removing both openers in quick succession. Trent Rockets’ innings was rescued by Aneurin Donald, whose brisk 38 off 19 balls injected fresh urgency, before late-innings hitting from Lewis Gregory (32 off 16) and an unbeaten 20 off 16 from Mitchell Santner lifted the total to a competitive 158 for 8. It proved, in the end, agonizingly short.
Seven years of near-misses, finally rewarded
The maiden title carries extra weight given Manchester’s history in the competition. The Super Giants, formerly playing as Manchester Originals before the men’s team was rebranded, had appeared in Hundred finals before and lost on both occasions, most memorably a low-scoring 2022 defeat to Trent Rockets themselves and a 2023 final loss to Oval Invincibles. Sunday’s win means that, across both the men’s and women’s competitions, this is the first Hundred trophy any Manchester franchise has ever lifted since the tournament launched in 2021 — a drought that had become a running storyline around English cricket’s shortest format.
The route to the final was anything but smooth. Manchester were on the brink of group-stage elimination after losing three matches in a row earlier in the campaign, with regular captain Aiden Markram flying home for personal reasons partway through the tournament. Buttler took over the captaincy in his absence and oversaw a remarkable turnaround, with the Super Giants reeling off five consecutive wins to climb into the knockouts and ultimately lift the trophy at the home of cricket.
Two verdicts on the same afternoon
Inside the Manchester dressing room, there was little debate about where the credit belonged. Seifert’s innings, which also earned him the player-of-the-series award to go with his player-of-the-match honors in the final, was the kind of individual statement that decides tournaments on its own — seven sixes in a title-deciding chase is a rare feat, and teammates and pundits alike were quick to call it the difference between the two sides. But others in the camp pointed instead to squad depth: du Plooy’s calm support act, Noor Ahmad’s new-ball incision with the bowling that set up the chase, and Dawson’s nerveless finish under pressure with the game hanging on three runs off five balls. Both views have merit. Seifert supplied the spectacle, but Manchester needed contributions up and down the order to survive Amir’s late fightback and get over the line.
For Trent Rockets, the mood was rawer. Having won the women’s Hundred title earlier the same day at Lord’s, beating SunRisers Leeds comfortably, the men’s squad arrived at their own final with the chance of a historic double for the franchise. Instead, they will replay the closing overs for months — the two early wickets Noor Ahmad snapped up, the powerplay that never accelerated, and the five-ball capitulation despite Amir’s heroics. Two balls from what would have been a stunning turnaround, Trent Rockets instead walked away with the more painful kind of near-miss: a final lost by the smallest of margins after doing enough to win.
What it means for both franchises
For Manchester Super Giants, the immediate afterglow will matter less than what comes next. A maiden title, delivered under a stand-in captain and built on a mid-tournament turnaround, gives the franchise licence to retain its core group with confidence heading into 2027 rather than overhaul a winning formula. Seifert’s stock, already rising after a stellar campaign, will only climb further in franchise-league auction rooms around the world. Buttler’s tactical stewardship in Markram’s absence is also likely to prompt questions about the long-term captaincy plans at Old Trafford.
Trent Rockets, by contrast, face a different kind of off-season. A near-miss of this nature — outplayed for large stretches, then agonizingly close to snatching the win — tends to sharpen focus rather than trigger wholesale change. Duckett, Donald, Gregory and Amir all showed enough to suggest the core is competitive; the challenge now is converting one more tight finish in their favor next August. Both sides leave Lord’s with lessons to carry into 2027, but only one leaves with the trophy, and after three finals and three different outcomes, Manchester’s wait is finally, definitively over.