Arriving twenty minutes before match start, the cavernous arena, built in oval fashion for football (both versions), had many more camera operators than fans in witness. Even so, the pregame build up familiar in franchise broadcasts was soon underway with the great Sana Mir carrying out the Mel Jones Trophy. It was named appropriately in Canadian fashion after Jones for her humanitarian efforts in helping keep the Afghan Women’s National Team players safe and providing playing opportunities for them.
Looking over at the empty dugout, I am bewildered at who will be filling those seats shortly. Here. In Vancouver. What a leap from the first edition!
Briefly, last year’s tournament was a fine effort. Rosters were filled with inexperienced domestic players and the two sides were led by Deandra Dottin and Amanda-Jade Wellington. While it was a memorable thrill to sit with my 8 year old daughter and hear the crack of a pure hit from the World Boss, and see stumps crumble from mesmerizing spin by the Wicket Queen of Aus IRL, the bowling star of the recent One Day Cup put it best on the Wisden pod when she described the competition as “rogue”. It was also a proof-of-concept showcase for what could be.
And become it has: the increase in pedigree talent this year is substantial. Capped internationals Fatima Sana, Marizanne Kapp, Chloe Tryon and Mady Villiers bring a new level of in-form top performers to the fold. The likes of Laura Harris, Sterre Kalis and Grace Scrivens along with a coach-load of English domestic standouts Sophia Smale, Davina Perrin, Kira Chathli, Grace Ballinger, Bess Heath, Ella McCaughan, Alexa Stonehouse and Alice Monaghan bring huge credibility to proceedings.
Coupling the aforementioned “wrong sport” pitch dimensions with the ultra-short T10 format, the match itself never really posed the platform to create a memorable competition. Nevertheless, world-class cricket was on full and bright display.
Opening the batting, captain of the Sixers Mady Villiers didn’t find her footing on the artificial wicket and chipped one to mid-off for a second-over dismissal after earning 6 from 5 deliveries. Sterre Kalis then joined opener Bess Heath for a solid partnership, both striking at over 150 until opposing captain Marizanne Kapp decided to form her hair bun and have a bowl. Though containing masterfully, Kapp was not able to dismiss the standout performer Saachi Dhadwal, who played a confident 41 not out off 20 balls, showing fine composure while swatting menacing bouncers from the South African at the death, leading her team to a respectable 106 total.
The second innings saw similarly quick dismissals of the Warriors opening batters. Australian Sophie Reid was bowled by Sophia Smale’s drifter after making only 4 runs from 7, ushering way for captain Kapp to have a bat. In first-class professional fashion, Marizanne, finding a steady partner in Grace Scrivens, snatched the game in 9 overs, striking at over 230 with a rapid 74 not out from 36 balls. Formed with six 4s and six maximums, she surgically utilised the short boundaries to get the job done, to the delight of the gathering crowd.
In the end it was a memorable match and a pioneering day for women’s cricket in Canada.
Phase-adjusting three seasons of WBBL batting shows how raw strike-rate rankings systematically mark down openers.
By Zalak Kansara
Tammy Beaumont’s recent WBBL strike rate looks ordinary if it is read as a single number. Across the 2023-24 to 2025-26 competitions she scored 530 runs from 439 balls, a strike rate of 120.7. Among the 50 batters who faced at least 200 deliveries, that placed her 25th.
But those batters did not face the same mix of overs.
The WBBL contains four meaningfully different scoring phases. In this three-season sample, batters scored at 105.2 in the mandatory Powerplay, 112.7 in ordinary middle overs, 139.1 in non-Surge death overs and 155.5 during the Power Surge. The Surge was the highest-scoring phase, yet it accounted for only 9.6% of balls faced.
That matters because access to those phases is uneven. Openers faced only 4.9% of their deliveries during the Surge. The corresponding figure was 10.2% for batters whose median position was three or four, and 13.4% for middle and lower-order batters.
Raw strike rate therefore mixes two things: how quickly a batter scored, and the scoring environments in which she happened to bat.
A phase-adjusted comparison
To separate those effects, each batter’s expected runs were calculated from her own distribution of deliveries across the four phases and the competition strike rate in each phase. Actual runs were then compared with those expected runs and rescaled to the competition’s overall strike rate of 119.8.
The calculation is:
Expected runs = sum of balls faced in each phase multiplied by that phase’s league strike rate, divided by 100
Phase-adjusted strike rate = actual runs divided by expected runs, multiplied by the overall league strike rate
This is not an attempt to produce a definitive measure of batting quality. It asks a narrower question: how would the ranking look if each player’s output were judged relative to the scoring rate of the phases she actually faced?
The answer changes the shape of the table. The 17 openers in the 200-ball sample rise by an average of 6.1 ranking places after adjustment. The other 33 batters fall by an average of 3.1 places.
The shift is not driven by one player. Katie Mack rises 15 places, Beaumont and Chamari Athapaththu each rise 14, and Sophia Dunkley rises 11. Individual movements should not be treated as verdicts, but the group pattern is difficult to dismiss as a Beaumont-only effect.
Beaumont as an illustration
Beaumont faced 253 balls in the mandatory Powerplay, 172 in ordinary middle overs, 14 in the Surge and none in non-Surge death overs. Applying the full-precision league phase rates to that distribution produces 481.75 expected runs.
Her adjusted calculation is therefore:
530 actual runs divided by 481.75 expected runs, multiplied by the 119.76 league strike rate, produces 131.76, reported as 131.8.
That moves her from 25th by raw strike rate to 11th by the phase-adjusted measure, a rise of 14 places.
The adjustment does not say that 131.8 is her “true” strike rate. Nor does it claim that Powerplay batting is harder in every match. It says that Beaumont scored materially more runs than the league phase rates would predict from the particular mix of overs she faced.
Her zero death-over deliveries make her an unusually clear example. The wider result, however, is that openers as a group are less exposed to the fastest-scoring phase in the competition.
Does the result survive different choices?
The direction remains the same under four alternative specifications.
At a 300-ball eligibility threshold, openers rise by 4.6 places on average and everyone else falls by 2.9. When phase benchmarks are calculated separately for each season, openers rise by 5.9 and everyone else falls by 3.1. When the Surge is folded back into the underlying middle or death phase, openers still rise by 4.9 and everyone else falls by 2.5.
There is also a potential issue with rain-affected matches, because a fixed death-over definition is less natural in a shortened innings. Excluding all 17 matches in the sample that carried a D/L result or a reduced target leaves 47 eligible batters. Openers still rise by 5.3 places on average, while everyone else falls by 3.0.
None of those tests reverses the finding.
What this does and does not show
Phase adjustment deals with one source of context, not all of them. It does not control for match situation, opposition quality, ground dimensions, wickets in hand or the tactical role assigned to a batter. The phase rates describe what happened across the competition; they are not proof that one phase is intrinsically easier or harder.
The role labels are analytical rather than official. A batter is classified from her median batting position across her innings in the sample: positions one and two are openers, three and four are top order, and five or lower are middle or lower order.
The measure is therefore most useful as a check on raw tables. A ranking that relies heavily on strike rate risks marking down players who repeatedly bat in lower-scoring phases and rewarding those with greater access to high-scoring ones. In the WBBL, the Power Surge makes that distortion especially visible.
Beaumont’s rise from 25th to 11th is the clearest illustration. The more important finding is the group result behind it: across three seasons, openers systematically move upward once their phase exposure is taken into account.
Biggest rises (10 of 50 eligible batters)
Batter
Raw rank
Raw SR
Adjusted SR
Adjusted rank
Change
Katie Mack
38
113.7
123.7
23
↑ 15
Tammy Beaumont
25
120.7
131.8
11
↑ 14
Chamari Athapaththu
39
113.6
122.8
25
↑ 14
Sophia Dunkley
29
119.2
126.8
18
↑ 11
Alice Capsey
37
113.9
120.8
27
↑ 10
Laura Wolvaardt
34
115.0
120.9
26
↑ 8
Georgia Voll
15
128.6
132.2
8
↑ 7
Meg Lanning
16
128.1
132.1
9
↑ 7
Hayley Matthews
21
122.9
129.4
15
↑ 6
Lauren Winfield-Hill
49
103.3
111.9
43
↑ 6
Biggest falls (10 of 50 eligible batters)
Batter
Raw rank
Raw SR
Adjusted SR
Adjusted rank
Change
Nicole Faltum
24
121.3
112.5
41
↓ 17
Naomi Stalenberg
27
119.7
113.2
39
↓ 12
Bridget Patterson
23
121.6
117.3
33
↓ 10
Alana King
40
110.5
94.7
50
↓ 10
Danielle Gibson
3
142.5
130.8
12
↓ 9
Jess Jonassen
10
131.3
125.8
19
↓ 9
Charli Knott
19
124.4
120.3
28
↓ 9
Georgia Wareham
8
133.8
128.0
16
↓ 8
Heather Knight
14
128.8
125.1
21
↓ 7
Chloe Tryon
18
125.9
123.0
24
↓ 6
Full ranking by movement (50)
Batter
Raw rank
Raw SR
Adjusted SR
Adjusted rank
Change
Katie Mack
38
113.7
123.7
23
↑ 15
Tammy Beaumont
25
120.7
131.8
11
↑ 14
Chamari Athapaththu
39
113.6
122.8
25
↑ 14
Sophia Dunkley
29
119.2
126.8
18
↑ 11
Alice Capsey
37
113.9
120.8
27
↑ 10
Laura Wolvaardt
34
115.0
120.9
26
↑ 8
Georgia Voll
15
128.6
132.2
8
↑ 7
Meg Lanning
16
128.1
132.1
9
↑ 7
Hayley Matthews
21
122.9
129.4
15
↑ 6
Lauren Winfield-Hill
49
103.3
111.9
43
↑ 6
Tahlia Wilson
41
110.3
114.9
36
↑ 5
Georgia Redmayne
42
109.2
114.4
37
↑ 5
Courtney Webb
35
114.3
119.6
31
↑ 4
Ellyse Perry
7
136.2
143.6
4
↑ 3
Jemimah Rodrigues
9
133.3
137.9
7
↑ 2
Maia Bouchier
22
122.7
125.7
20
↑ 2
Maddy Darke
44
108.0
112.3
42
↑ 2
Harmanpreet Kaur
48
103.9
104.2
46
↑ 2
Grace Harris
2
149.1
161.3
1
↑ 1
Danni Wyatt-Hodge
4
140.3
146.8
3
↑ 1
Amy Jones
11
130.7
131.9
10
↑ 1
Ashleigh Gardner
45
107.6
110.6
44
↑ 1
Suzie Bates
50
94.1
97.5
49
↑ 1
Beth Mooney
5
138.1
143.3
5
—
Phoebe Litchfield
6
136.8
140.5
6
—
Sophie Devine
17
128.0
127.6
17
—
Anika Learoyd
47
105.5
100.7
47
—
Lizelle Lee
1
151.8
160.9
2
↓ 1
Nat Sciver-Brunt
12
129.4
130.3
13
↓ 1
Rhys McKenna
13
129.1
130.0
14
↓ 1
Elyse Villani
28
119.7
120.2
29
↓ 1
Tahlia McGrath
31
116.9
118.6
32
↓ 1
Mignon du Preez
20
123.6
124.2
22
↓ 2
Heather Graham
43
108.4
106.8
45
↓ 2
Maitlan Brown
46
105.9
99.7
48
↓ 2
Nicola Carey
32
116.2
115.2
35
↓ 3
Amelia Kerr
26
119.7
119.6
30
↓ 4
Madeline Penna
30
118.0
115.8
34
↓ 4
Marizanne Kapp
36
114.0
112.6
40
↓ 4
Annabel Sutherland
33
115.8
113.6
38
↓ 5
Chloe Tryon
18
125.9
123.0
24
↓ 6
Heather Knight
14
128.8
125.1
21
↓ 7
Georgia Wareham
8
133.8
128.0
16
↓ 8
Danielle Gibson
3
142.5
130.8
12
↓ 9
Jess Jonassen
10
131.3
125.8
19
↓ 9
Charli Knott
19
124.4
120.3
28
↓ 9
Bridget Patterson
23
121.6
117.3
33
↓ 10
Alana King
40
110.5
94.7
50
↓ 10
Naomi Stalenberg
27
119.7
113.2
39
↓ 12
Nicole Faltum
24
121.3
112.5
41
↓ 17
Reading the table: A smaller rank number is better; ↑ means a higher position after phase adjustment. Adjusted SR compares a batter’s actual runs to the expected runs for the phases she faced and rescales the ratio by the overall competition strike rate. The adjustment describes phase exposure and performance in this sample; it does not predict future performance. Tied movements are ordered by adjusted rank.
There was a certain irony in the result of Saturday’s One-Day Cup final. After beating Hampshire by 3 wickets, The Blaze now have their name carved on all three of the English domestic trophies – the Blast, the County Cup and the One-Day Cup. And yet, very shortly, The Blaze will no longer exist.
Two and a half years ago, after The Blaze won the final Charlotte Edwards Cup, I wrote in The Guardian:
The women’s domestic teams will morph from regions into counties at the end of this season, but Gordon has nonetheless confirmed that The Blaze (who are “becoming” Nottinghamshire) will retain their team moniker. Some have questioned that decision – wasn’t the whole point of the restructure supposed to be alignment with the men’s team? – but the evidence of Saturday suggests that it is, undoubtedly, the right call. Who wants to change a winning brand?
I could have written the exact same thing yesterday. Which sports organisation would want to erase a team who have just swept the board in terms of trophies?
And yet this, it seems, is the world we currently live in.
Exhibit A: when I turned up to the Utilita Bowl on Saturday, I discovered that the Southern Vipers mural has been replaced by a Hundred mural.
This has made me a bit sad. The Southern Vipers mural at the Utilita Bowl has been replaced by a Hundred mural.
Southern Vipers are one of the most successful teams in the history of cricket, if you take the ratio of trophies won to years in existence. It’s baffling to me that you would want to wipe them out of the tangible heritage of your club – but this appears to be what has happened.
Two years on from the “official” end of the regional era, it feels like that era has now finally concluded. Was it the right thing to do? Probably. But let’s not forget about those nine years of regional cricket. They happened. They mattered.
They say in football “The table never lies!” and thus it was in the One Day Cup. Two teams – Blaze and Hampshire – finished the regular season a country mile ahead of everyone else – the gap between 2nd placed Hampshire and Surrey in 3rd ended up being a massive 16 points – with Blaze just edging ahead of Hampshire on the final day. After Hampshire underlied that gap by thrashing Surrey in the eliminator, those same two teams contested the final, with Blaze winning off the very last delivery.
Emma Jones, whose move to the Blaze this season followed years at Surrey where her name had tended to be followed by the phrase “is injured again”, held her nerve under extreme pressure to score 34 off 25, including 27 of the Blaze’s last 31 runs, to get them over the line. Earlier, Georgia Elwiss (64) and Tammy Beaumont (74) had dominated the middle overs but couldn’t quite finish the job, leaving those who came after them quite a bit to do.
The required rate was just over 6 when Elwiss was caught on the run by Georgia Adams, and it continued to climb until Blaze needed 29 off 18 balls, with 6 wickets down. Jones had been joined by Kirstie Gordon coming in at 7; and while it isn’t quite fair to call Gordon a tail-ender, she isn’t really even a bowling allrounder either – more a bowler who knows which end of the bat is which. Thus this was not the 10-wicket walk in the park the Blast final had been – it became a test of character, but it was one which Blaze were equal to, as the nerves took their toll instead on Hampshire, who went to pieces in the field, dropping so many catches that I lost count.
A few years ago, I ran a 10k and was rather narked to be beaten by a guy whose strategy was to run a “k”, walk a “k”, run a “k”, walk a “k” – overtaking me several times in the process, including in the final straight! Hampshire’s innings felt a lot like that – there were the sprints led by Ella McCaughan in the second half of the powerplay, and Freya Kemp between 25 and 30 overs; but there were also the periods where they struggled to make progress – a nervous start from Maia Bouchier, and a lumbering period when Georgia Adams was trying to work her way out of the rut around the 20-over mark. Ultimately these slower phases cost Hampshire dearly – another 10 or 15 runs on the board would obviously have made all the difference in a game which went down to the wire.
One Day Cup Bowling Metrics
Bowling
Strike Rate
Economy
Dot %
Boundary %
Single %
2/3 %
1. The Blaze
34
0.76
54
8
30
5
2. Yorkshire
37
0.79
55
9
29
5
3. Hampshire
36
0.80
53
8
29
5
4. Lancashire
37
0.78
52
8
31
5
5. Surrey
39
0.85
50
9
32
5
6. Somerset
36
0.90
51
11
29
6
7. Durham
44
0.87
48
8
31
6
8. Essex
51
0.91
49
11
30
5
9. Warwickshire
37
0.92
47
10
33
6
Credit to Blaze’s bowlers, who did what they have done all season – throughout the competition they’ve had the best Strike Rate; the measiliest Economy; and the lowest boundary percentage. Their bowling strengths have allowed them to carry a slightly weaker batting lineup, and the results are in – batters might win you matches, but bowlers win you tournaments. Today’s triumph sealed the “Treble” of T20 Blast, T20 Cup and One Day Cup for a team that, in their “Loughborough Lightning” incarnation, were such a byword for underachievement that they were the only side in the Regionals Era to suffer being disbanded and rebooted following the 2022 season.
Remarkably they achieved this not by buying in new star players, but by taking the ones they had in the Lightning Era – the Bryces, Kirstie Gordon, and Lucy Higham (4 wickets today), and building a team around them which worked so efficiently as a unit that even losing the Scotland trio for the duration of the World Cup this summer couldn’t stop their march to glory. As for Nat Sciver-Brunt and Amy Jones, who both theoretically play for the Blaze… who needs ’em? The Blaze managed a treble just fine without them; and if that isn’t “trebles all round” I don’t know what is?
I made two predictions during England’s innings today – that they would get over 400, and that Sophia Dunkley was going to break Charlotte Edwards’ nearly 30-year-old record score for England in an ODI – 173* against Ireland during the 1997 World Cup in India. Like a man attempting to mow 4 gardens in one day, they were four-lawn hopes; as England somewhat squandered what felt like a real opportunity to go huge.
England lost 8 wickets caught, and the other two run out, as they were bowled out with 7 balls still in the bucket. Capsey was unlucky to see Kia McCartney get a finger onto a Dunkley drive which then went on to hit the stumps; while Charlie Dean got a good ball from Cara Murray which took an edge to Amy Hunter behind the stumps. The other 8 wickets to fall though were batter error – mostly attempts to hoik it out of the ground by players who apparently thought they’d gone back in time to 2016 when Mark Robinson’s England whacked Pakistan for 378 here on boundaries the size of a new penny!
Is Sophia Dunkley excused being caught on the rope because she got 119 off 119 balls… or all the more guilty because she’s been out there for 35 overs which should have been enough to work out that the rope was quite a long way away? Answers on a postcard to “Sophia Dunkley Competition, PO Box 119, London W1A 1AA” – the winner will receive a Magnum*.
From 242-4 at the 40 over mark, England will have been eyeing up a strong Death Phase to push past 300; instead they lost 6 wickets and gave Ireland the squeak of a chance as they finished on 291 all out.
It was only a squeak of course – 292 is a lot of runs, and while Ireland do have plenty of players that can strike at the sort of rates required on their day, the operative words here are “on their day”. Alice Tector played out a soporific 38 dots as she clawed her way to 29 off 59 balls – a Strike Rate of 43 when Ireland needed to be going at 100+. If you are scratching around for the positives, you might want to argue that Ireland weren’t going to win the match anyway, so it was a valuable hour (and a quarter!) out in the middle building up experience for the 18-year-old. At the other end, Amy Hunter looked to be working her way towards a third consecutive half century, before a Charge of the Light Brigade moment saw her ride headlong into the valley of death and get stumped off Mady Villiers.
It seems to be a dilemma faced by a lot of emerging sides that against the top teams they have plenty of players good enough not to get out, but many of those players can’t score quickly enough to have any chance of winning the game. This problem is compounded for Ireland by the fact that their best player (Orla Prendergast) is coming in at 4, so she isn’t getting time in the middle at a point where Ireland could realistically build a winning position. Today she came in with 20 overs (all but) gone and the game already a distant speck on the horizon. If Prendergast is going to be this team’s Hayley Matthews or Chamari Athapaththu she probably needs to move to the top of the order, even if that isn’t the “right” place for her to be.
Ireland made it to 40 overs with 5 wickets in hand, but lost their final 5 wickets for 10 runs, as England completed a better bowling performance, with Lauren Filer looking more threatening and Tilly Corteen-Coleman finding some turn (though she is still a liability in the field!)
England might not have hit 400; and Sophia Dunkley did not break Charlotte Edwards’ record, though she did pick up Player of the Match, Player of the Series and ODI Player of the Summer – the latter apparently being decided by the PCA’s computer, despite her not having played any of the ODIs v New Zealand. But England did the job they needed to do – there was no repeat of the slip-ups we saw in Ireland in 2024, when the hosts won two of the 5 matches. It hasn’t been a perfect summer for England by any stretch – we spoke to Charlotte Edwards after the game today, and she is clearly stung in particular by the way England performed in the Test against India, telling us that she will be arguing for some domestic red ball cricket to find a space in the calendar going forwards, even if it is just 2-or-3 games per team rather than a complete “championship”. Next summer’s Ashes suddenly loom large, and that will be the real Test/test.
It might be coming up to the end of the season here in England, but in a match that had “mid-season filler” written all over it, Ireland reverted to the mean (“the centre of a list of numbers”) while England reverted to the mean (“threatening and dangerous”), the latter winning so easily that this so-called “day-night” fixture was over before the night bit even really began.
There was perhaps one moment of almost-jeopardy towards the end, with England down to the last of their “proper” batters, before you get down to their long tail of “bowlers who bat a bit” with Charlie Dean next in. But given that by that stage England only needed 40-odd off almost 35 overs you’d think the likes of Dean and Mady Villiers would have had the nous to nurdle it around for the remaining runs, even if it had taken a bit longer.
In the end though they were not required to even pick up their bats, as the “Finish Fam” of Freya Kemp and Dani Gibson romped home, scoring just one run fewer in the Middle Phase than Ireland had done – the difference being that Ireland’s Middle Phase lasted 10 overs, while England’s lasted 3!
Of course, they were only in that position because Maia Bouchier had got them off to another smashing start, though in very on-brand fashion she managed to do so in such a way as to raise again all the old doubts about her ability to concentrate. First she ran out Sophia Dunkley by calling her through for what Cricinfo’s ball-by-ball correspondent nicely referred to as a “psychedelic single”, as in… “Are you on drugs?!?!”
It feels like this happens a lot, so I ran the numbers and they are pretty bad – she has now run out 9 partners in 72 matches, at a rate of 12% – a rate rivalled in the professional era (since 2014, counting players who have played more than 10 internationals for England across formats) by only Fran Wilson (7 in 54 matches, at 13%) and a certain Charlotte Edwards (4 in 31 matches, also at 13%). (And honestly, I think we can let Lottie off for this one, as the professional era was right at the end of her career, when her knees were shot!)
As if this wasn’t enough silliness, after pushing on towards a half-century Bouchier then managed to not only chase a ball she should have left well alone half way back to Leicester, but then plant it straight into the hands of short fine leg. She must have known the fielder was there, so we can only assume she had a total brain-fade, and her reaction – almost impaling herself with her own bat as she slumped to the floor – suggested she knew it too. Is there any other player in England that gets themselves out this often? (Yes – I know what you are going to say – it’s Grace Scrivens; but… any other player?)
Fortunately, England’s job with the bat had already been made easy, thanks to an Irish batting performance that was a bit of an ordeal for all concerned. Amy Hunter probably actually played a little bit better than 64 off 96 balls might suggest – she tried to play shots, but England’s fielding was pretty sharp and with big boundaries and an outfield that was slower than my 5k time up New Walk in Leicester this morning, the runs didn’t quite reflect the adventure! Hunter is one of those who would massively benefit from being able to play county cricket as a domestic player, and as a British citizen born in Belfast it is a travesty that she is unable to do that. (Honestly, she should sue the ECB; but it probably feels like a big scary thing to do, so I understand if she doesn’t want to be the one to make that move.)
Issy Wong was the key beneficiary of Ireland’s slump, picking up a first international 5fer largely by sticking to the basics. Less variations; no trying to bowl away-swingers; just honing-in on the stumps and waiting for the batters to make the mistake, which you can do in longer-form cricket. It is never going to get her picked ahead of Bell; but unless Lauren Filer suddenly actually does start regularly pushing 80mph, rather than just talking about it, it might be enough for Wong to get the nod as the second quick going forwards – it isn’t dissimilar to the Marizanne Kapp approach, and that hasn’t done her too badly!
Tilly Corteen-Coleman had a better outing with the ball than she did in Leicester, and picked up a couple of wickets; but she also stood out as England’s weak link in the field. I remember Lydia Greenway once saying that you need two of the three skills – batting, bowling and fielding – to play international cricket these days, so it has to be a concern that she is another “Genuine No. 11” but without the basic fielding skills that at least the likes of Bell and Filer offer. Of course, she is only just 19; but maybe international cricket isn’t the best place to be learning the basics of boundary-riding?
With the series wrapped-up, England could make changes for the 3rd ODI on Sunday, but I hope that Grewcock gets one more chance and is not swapped straight out for Pavely; though that would probably mean a rest for Villiers, who certainly doesn’t deserve to miss out either. (My guess however is that it will be Pavely for Grewcock.) I’d also like to see England bat first if they have the chance; though obviously that might not be their decision to make, and if you’re Ireland winning the toss you are probably batting again, I’d imagine. Ireland will doubtless be with me in hoping for a more interesting game; but England won’t care – if they win again, it will be job done.
