Three Aussies, two South Africans latest 'The Hundred' recruits

Beth Mooney, Ashleigh Gardner, Nicola Carey, Marizanne Kapp and Chloe Tryon are the latest to be signed for The Hundred, it was announced on Wednesday (March 11).

Mooney, the player of the tournament, was picked up by Welsh Fire, while Gardner and Carey will play for Birmingham Phoenix and Northern Superchargers respectively. Kapp has been signed up by Oval Invincibles with London Spirit managed to rope in Tryon. With these signings, the count of the overseas players to 18.

Fire struck gold by getting Mooney, who recently moved to the top of T20I batting charts. She also made 259 runs in the tournament, finishing as the leading run-scorer. She will have Jess Jonassen and Meg Lanning for company in the side. Meanwhile Kapp will have Dane van Niekerk and Rachael Haynes with her in the Invincibles’ unit.

Welsh Fire and Oval Invincibles are the only two teams to have completed their set of overseas signings, which has been capped at three in a squad of 15. The rest of the sides have an overseas slot left. While Gardner and Sophie Devine are Phoenix’s two overseas players, Carey and Alyssa Healy occupy two of those places for Superchargers. Tryon has Deandra Dottin for company in Spirit. The other three teams haven’t announced their latest overseas signings.

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As reported earlier, Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana are in talks as well.

“It's fantastic to see five more international stars signing up to play in The Hundred this summer,” said Beth Barrett-Wild, head of The Hundred – women’s competition. “The competition is really building momentum, and it's very exciting to see the growing list of world class talent involved across the eight teams. We've now confirmed the names of 18 overseas players who will compete in the women's competition, including the likes of Meg Lanning, Suzie Bates, Stafanie Taylor and Lizelle Lee; with six still to go, the standard of cricket is set to be very high.”