Mandhana retained by Southern Brave for The Hundred 2023; Stokes, Bairstow, Archer return

Smriti Mandhana, who was the most expensive player at last week’s inaugural Indian Women’s Premier League auction, is retained by the Southern Brave.

FILE PHOTO: Smriti Mandhana of Southern Brave in action.

England Test captain Ben Stokes has been retained by Northern Superchargers for this year’s edition of The Hundred after missing last year’s event due to a heavy workload.

Jonny Bairstow and Jofra Archer will also remain with the Welsh Fire and Southern Brave, respectively, on their return after missing The Hundred 2022 due to injury.

The eight Hundred franchises confirmed their retained list on Thursday with a draft to make up the remainder of their squads set for March 23.

Teams in the men’s competition were able to retain 10 players while the women’s franchises could keep four of their 2022 group.

Smriti Mandhana, who was the most expensive player at last week’s inaugural Indian Women’s Premier League auction, is retained by the Southern Brave.

England one-day captain Jos Buttler remains with the Manchester Originals and Moeen Ali is hoping to go one better as Birmingham Phoenix captain after finishing runner-up in 2021.

“We’re really excited about having retained 10 players ahead of the third year of the competition,” said Ali.

“We’ve seen across short-form competitions around the world that keeping a core squad together can make a real difference and hopefully it’ll help us win the Hundred this year. We’ve got a lot of talented players and it’s a great group, so we can’t wait to get out in front of the Edgbaston crowd again.”