This week:

• Blaze win the Blast!
• Why was Finals Day on a Friday?
• Is The Oval the right ground for it?
• Afghanistan Refugee XI put on a World Cup pathway
• Will ICC World Cups continue to grow for the women?
• The Hundred: a whole new world

The average 1st innings score in the T20 Blast at The Oval this season has been 150… and that includes Durham being bowled out for 102 back in May. With Lancashire, Surrey (twice) and Warwickshire all hitting 180+ here in 2026, hopes were high for a run-fest on Blast Finals Day in South London.

But that reckoned without the accumulated impact of two record heatwaves in London – a Black Swan Summer perhaps, but one which global climate change almost certainly made inevitable at some point – which created unprecedented challenges for the groundskeepers here. The result was a pitch that had a decent head of green, grassy hair left on it, to try to stop it breaking up totally over 120 overs; but was still as dusty as a spring field.

The good news is that if you’ve ever wondered what a cricket match would be like if it was played on a giant suet pudding… today was your lucky day!

The biggest losers from this were… ironically… Surrey – the reigning champions – playing Finals Day “at home” for the second consecutive year. The team with the highest Strike Rate and Boundary Percentage in this year’s T20 Blast, with the likes of Bryony Smith, Danni Wyatt-Hodge and Laura Harris in their lineup, couldn’t adjust and were bowled out for just 105 in 15.2 overs in their semi-final.

Albeit with the luxury of knowing they didn’t need to go hard, the Blaze batted even slower in reply – reaching the target in 16.3 overs.

Strike Rates in the second semi-final were similar at just under 110 – less than bottom-of-the-table Lancashire managed over the course of the season – as Durham out-stodged Hampshire with 4 balls to spare.

So the question for the two finalists was: who could learn the lessons of their semi-final and find a way to play cricket, rather than something closer to croquet, on this pitch? Take a quick look at the table and the answer might surprise you: the Blaze came 3rd, behind Hampshire and Surrey; but the top 3 sides were closer than that suggests – all won 8/12 games, the difference between them being ties – one for Surrey and two for Hampshire.

Across the whole tournament, the key player for the Blaze has been Australian overseas Charli Knott. Knott impressed in the half a season she spent at Hampshire last year, but come the Blast was superseded by Ellyse Perry. I felt at the time that Hampshire’s money might have been better spent engaging Knott for the whole season, and someone at the Blaze obviously agreed. Having taken a further 6 wickets today, Knott finished as the competition’s leading wicket-taker; as well as its 3rd highest run scorer, with 404, behind Hollie Armitage (421) and a certain “GE Scrivens” (428) who did it in two fewer innings than Armitage and three fewer than Knott… just sayin’!

But the lynchpin today for the Blaze was Tammy Beaumont – now a “former” England player, after her final appearance in the Test match at Lord’s this week. If Lord’s was a game to forget for Beaumont, scoring 2 and 0, today was one she’ll long remember for a classy 54 in partnership with Sarah Bryce (53) as the Blaze suddenly made batting look easy, cruising to a 10-wicket win inside 14 overs.

When she announced her international retirement Beaumont explicitly said that she’d continue to play domestic cricket, but I can’t have been the only one who immediately wondered how long for? A day like today can go either way – the perfect note on which to finish; or a clarion call for more? But she has certainly shown that she still has what it takes to dominate at the highest levels of the domestic game, even if her England ship has sailed. For a player for whom T20 was never really considered “her game”, it was quite the statement.

This might sound like an odd thing to say about someone who has an international T20 century in her kitbag, and is the only woman to have scored a hundred in The Hundred. But the T20i century (versus South Africa) was on a road at Taunton, where she could slog-sweep almost everything – 68% of her scoring shots that day were in the arc between 3 and 6 o’clock.

At Taunton, the runs found her; today she had to seek them out. There was no slog-sweeping over cow-corner (though there was plenty of sweeping backward of square); and there was a lot of running – this innings actually had more “run” runs (26) than her Taunton century (20). I’m not saying it was a “better” innings than her international hundred… but I am saying it was a harder one.

Support came from Sarah Bryce, who has struggled to make her usual impact for the Blaze this season – this was just her second half-century of the domestic summer, but under the pressure of a final she turned up with a feisty 53 off 41 balls.

The Win Predictor gives an indication of just how dominant the Blaze were, reaching 99% by the end of the 5th over, and never falling behind. (By comparison, Australia didn’t hit 99% until the end of the 14th over, as they sauntered to victory in the recent T20 World Cup Final.) They say that if you wait long enough, one day a lemming will fly. But why wait for the lemming? Tonight at The Oval, Tammy flew.

Batting

Bowling

This week:

• England’s Test v India: did England select the right team?
• Sophie Ecclestone gets on the Honours Board
• Kranti Gaud & Yastika Bhatia shine
• Farewells for Beaumont & Knight

Last Wednesday evening at about 9pm, the peace of our quiet south London street was broken by a wailing screech followed by a loud bang. Someone had taken the turning a little too quickly and skidded onto the pavement, totalling the “20mph” sign on the corner. He continued home, but leaving a substantial chunk of his front wing (including the number plate) at the scene. (The police officers who attended a few minutes later didn’t exactly need to be Sherlock Holmes to solve that one!)

I can’t quite decide if England are the car or the 20mph sign in this metaphor; but either way… it was a car crash!

England were defeated, an hour and a half into the final morning, by the small matter of 270 runs, having made 170 and 186 – indicating that they wouldn’t have won this match even if they’d had a third innings to do it!

Sophie Ecclestone scored a maiden international 50, which gave the England fans something to cheer… or would have done if there were any in; but as far as I could see, almost everyone who took advantage of the free tickets available for the final day was an India supporter.

Ecclestone was given out LBW on 44, and having confessed in yesterday evening’s press conference that “sometimes I hate cricket”, I did wonder if she might be relieved to just walk off; but you can’t say that she isn’t a competitor. She immediately reviewed, and was reprieved by a small spike on UltraEdge, which allowed her to reach her maiden milestone. (I had in my mind that she already had a T20 50 against South Africa at Derby, but it turns out it was just a very rapid 33!)

Any hopes England might have had of saving this Test match (and I’m honestly struggling to believe there really were any) were extinguished with the dismissal of Amy Jones, who struck her second 50 of the match before reaching for a completely unnecessary pull and (you’re not going to believe this!) getting caught on the ring. I know that 9 Test matches aren’t a lot – some of the boys will occasionally play that many in a year – but you’d have thought she’d have learned something from them, like… you don’t have to hit it if it isn’t going anywhere near the stumps!

Issy Wong looked more the part, digging in for 1 off 30 balls. She is (I suspect not entirely uncoincidentally) one of the ones who watched a lot of (men’s) Test cricket as a kid, so she was doing all the right things – leaving alone, or getting well down the pitch to defend. It took a change of bowling to see her on her way, finally outfoxed by the craft of Deepti.

It was a pretty disappointing end to the summer for England. (Though there are ODIs in September against Ireland, which will likely be played by an “A” XI.) Nat Sciver-Brunt took a lot of stick for electing to bowl first; although I suspect the decision was at least 50% Charlotte Edwards’. My guess is that this will be NSB’s final game as captain, which might explain why she was so desperate to play – Charlie Dean will almost certainly lead the side in those ODIs versus Ireland, and it would make sense to appoint her full time from there. Dean has shown she can do the job; and it would permit NSB to focus on staying fit, which might be the one thing that would allow her to fulfill her dream of playing in the Olympics.

With other retirements already announced, some have asked if this might also be the end of the line for Jones; but I doubt it. Frustrating as she can be to those of us who have to watch her repeatedly make the same mistakes over and over again with the bat, she remains far and away both the best wicket keeper we have, and the best batter of the other ‘keepers. With England’s coaching teams having had long hard looks over the past few months at Southby, Chathli and (here) Threlkeld and apparently decided “No”, I would imagine that they are now keeping their fingers crossed that Jemima Spence (who looks very promising, but not quite ready for this level yet) might be the answer in a couple of years, with Jones retaining the gloves until then.

As an occasion, this Test has felt incredibly positive, with fans turning out in their tens of thousands in weather that was (if anything) a little too perfect, as London suffered under its third heatwave* of the summer. India showed how positive Test cricket can be played, and we were entertained (if perhaps not inspired!) as they extended their unbeaten Test record in England to 10 matches.

England meanwhile have won just one Test in the past decade, against South Africa; and none against the other members of the “Big Three”. Can they correct that statistic next summer in The Ashes? I’m afraid I’d put my money on another car crash; but if it is a car crash involving a new, younger team led by Charlie Dean, at least we’ll be able to say we’re looking to the future, having left the past out here today, where it belongs at this most historic of grounds.

————–

*Or is this just a continuation of the second?

This wasn’t in the script. It was supposed to be Smriti Mandhana’s name on the Test Batting Honours Board for scoring the first hundred at Lord’s – on 69 overnight, it was written in the stars! But instead (plot twist!) it was Yastika Bhatia who raised her bat about 5 minutes after lunch on Day 3 of this historic Test. Smriti was batty; but Yastika was battier.

The Indian keeper-batter has been out of the team far more often than she has been in it over the past couple of years, partly due to a succession of injuries culminating in ACL surgery towards the end of last year. ACL surgery is every female athlete’s nightmare; but at Lord’s Yastika was in dreamland – the only player on either side to really master the conditions, bringing up her maiden international hundred off 145 balls.

Yastika was eventually out, caught on the ring for 113, as India looked to force the pace after lunch. The wicket was Ecclestone’s, and shortly afterwards she bowled Sneh Rana to bag her 5fer and become the first England woman to get on the honours board. Her teammates celebrated but Ecclestone didn’t – she knew the writing was on the wall as India’s lead passed 400.

By 3pm in the afternoon a declaration was looking iminent, with Harmanpreet spotted on the balcony in her whites, and Richa and Sayali throwing the bat at anything and everything. Ecclestone dropped Richa on 47, and she took a couple more overs to get to 50 via 3 more singles, but as soon as she did Harman called them in, setting England a target of 452.

Once more for those at the back, the highest ever 4th innings total in a Women’s Test is England’s match-saving 245 at Canberra in 2022; and the highest successful chase is just 198, by Australia versus England, in the match we mentioned in yesterday’s report which was the last time anyone overturned a 1st innings deficit to win a Test.

We’ve occasionally looked at chases in Women’s Tests, including that match at Manuka where England needed (and came within an Umpire’s Call of getting) 257, and thought: “Well, if this was an ODI it would be doable!” Here? Nah! In the friendly sweepstake I had with friends on how many England would get, I called 135… and was soon quite worried I’d overcooked it!

England’s top order folded quickly to 59-5, with a golden duck for Tammy Beaumont in her final innings for England, after a career that has included a record 12 ODI hundreds, a T20 century and a Test double-hundred. There were plenty of setbacks in the early years, but although I never held back (once writing that she should never have played for England!) she understood our role and never took it personally. Ultimately she did all the talking-back she needed to do on the pitch; and I have the uttermost respect for her for it. She’s a legend, and (if she wants it) she will one day make a fine England coach.

England fought back in the final hour with a partnership of 67 between Amy Jones and Mady Villiers, with Jones picking up a second half-century of the match. But realistically they were making India work a little bit harder for the win, rather than there being any possibility of England saving the game; and Villiers eventually fell to a weirdly “zen” catch by Richa at silly mid off, who just stood her ground where anyone with an ounce of sanity (!) would have leapt out of the way of a drive so full-on Lewis Hamilton would have been proud of it.

With Villiers gone, India are now into the tail – England closing on 130-6, with India now surely virtually certain to close out the win when we return for the final day tomorrow.

Last night, the MCC hosted drinks for the press and former England players in the Media Centre. It was a lovely occasion, though I regret to inform you that your correspondent’s attempts to indulge only in moderation were… shall we say… not entirely successful. Coffee was required in curative dosages this morning.

The words “not entirely successful” could equally apply to England’s batting today. During the current heatwave, the government’s official guidance is not to spend too long out in the sun – advice England’s top order took somewhat literally with Heather Knight, Alice Capsey and Maia Bouchier all scurrying back quickly to the safety of a shady balcony on the first floor of the pavilion.

If there is one thing more on-brand for Amy Jones than getting out in the softest way possible, it is following a run of low scores with a longer innings that does just enough to ensure that calls to drop her looked premature… and then getting out in the softest way possible, prodding forward with no real intent and popping a catch up to short leg. Has there ever been a player with such a unique ability to come in and seem set in an instant, playing the most beautiful strokes from the first ball; and then after batting for an hour, giving it up with a shot that looks like she’s never seen a cricket ball before in her life?

So on a day when England needed to ideally be something like 300 for 3-or-4 at stumps, Amy Jones did the hard work of getting to 50, but then left them a couple of wickets and 170 runs short of that. With a glass half-full, perhaps you are saying that she top-scored and got them to a position where they avoided the follow-on? But England needed someone to go deep, and if not the one batter that got to 50, then who?

Certainly it feels a bit much to expect Mady Villiers, coming in at 7, to have done that, and eventually she got a bullet with her name on it anyway – perhaps not quite as good as the delivery she herself bowled Harmanpreet with yesterday, but not too far off from Sneh Rana. I wonder now if it might have been better to push Villiers up the order a bit, so that she was batting with the batters rather than the start of a long, wobbly tail?

From an Indian perspective, Kranti Gaud gave an object lesson in bowling to your limitations – she’s not an express train; and she isn’t swinging it like a 50s lounge crooner; but she is bowling ball after ball to her plans and her fields. With the wicket of Lauren Bell (and thanks to a brilliant reaction catch from Shafali following Sneh Rana’s drop) she deservedly became the first woman on the Test honours board at Lord’s.

With the final wicket falling to Deepti, India led by 115 runs at the turn. Records are made to be broken, and batting ones seem especially vulnerable right now; but in the professional era (I think?) no one has overturned a 1st innings deficit to win a Test match – the last side to do it were Australia versus England at Sydney in 2011, when Australia declared behind in their 1st innings to get a few overs bowling at England late on Day 2. On that occasion in 2011, England survived 10 overs at the gloaming of that second day, with Caroline Atkins and a certain Heather Knight (whatever happened to her?) blocking everything that the Aussies could throw bowl at them.

In theory, India had 49 overs to bat out to the close of Day 2 here, though obviously no one actually expects 100 overs to be bowled in a Women’s Test any more – something we’ll discuss this weekend on this week’s CRICKETher Weekly. More importantly, India very-much did not come out to block anything that didn’t need blocking, at least until the shadows started drawing in towards the end of the day!

Shafali and Smriti have 16 Tests between them; but they batted this afternoon like it was 116. Each.

Everyone always expected Smriti to take to Test cricket like a tiger to a wounded deer, with her intelligence and classical strokeplay; but Shafali, having been pegged for years as a T20 “biffer”, has also developed a convincing Test persona, partly by shutting down her more risky options. She scored almost all her runs (and all of her boundaries) on the off side today; and it was only when she momentarily lapsed, trying to drive in the air through mid on, that she was caught by Emma Lamb, who looked… a lot more delighted about it than made much sense, given the state of the game!

Smriti meanwhile was cutting and pulling towards her second half-century of the match as India pulled away in the last hour. Smriti will almost certainly never play another Test at Lord’s – she’s 30 next week, and we all know how this works – now that the ECB/MCC have checked this match off the ICEC “To Do” list, they’ll feel vindicated and we won’t be back for another 10 years at least.

So it isn’t so much that Smriti won’t have a “better” chance as that she won’t have another chance at all to join Kranti Gaud on the honours board than she’ll get tomorrow, needing another 31 runs to do so. She’s had a little bit of a lean patch in recent months, after a purple 2024/25; but still no one in the world playing international cricket right now deserves it more.

India closed at 154-1 in their 2nd innings, just 16 short of England’s 1st innings total, with a lead of 269. Suffice it to say that no one has ever scored anything like that many batting last to win a Women’s Test – for England, even a draw now would be a miracle.

It might have taken a hundred years to get here, but when the moment came you can’t complain that Lord’s didn’t fully commit to its first ever Women’s Test.

A collage of old prints and photographs covered the walls of the Media Centre, depicting significant moments in the history of women’s cricket; while for the nearly 11,000 spectators who came to sit in the stands and the famous old pavillion, there were special commemorative t-shirts and hoodies on sale in the Lord’s shop.

Does the occasion ever matter more than the game? If ever it did, this was the occasion.

Like the display in the Media Centre, England’s selections looked towards the past, with two of the undisputed greats of the modern England era – Tammy Beaumont and Heather Knight – awarded the opportunity to bask in one final encore at cricket’s own Opéra Garnier. Even the debutantes were hardly fresh-faced cherubs – Alice Capsey has pulled on an England shirt almost 100 times before; while Mady Villiers will be 28 next month.

Like the XI that took this very-same field for the T20 World Cup Final less than a week ago, you’d be hard-pressed to describe this side as “forward-looking”; but it probably was close-to the best XI available. Once they decided Nat Sciver-Brunt was fit… or at least “fit enough”… to be sent once more unto the breach, I guess the conversations were around Emma Lamb vs Maia Bouchier and Tilly Corteen-Coleman vs Issy Wong.

Lamb is probably a more natural long-form player than Bouchier, but in the all-of-two opportunities they’ve each had, Bouchier has bagged a hundred while Lamb has a highest knock of 38. Wong’s selection over TCC likely came down to roles – England presumably figured that they needed a third seamer more than they needed a third spinner, especially with Mady Villiers bowling well enough to have been trusted with a decent amount of overs today.

Having won the toss and elected to bowl, England will have been hoping for quick wickets at a ground where so many wickets fell in the last (men’s) Test played here, between England and New Zealand in June, that the pitch was reported to the ICC a substandard. A wicket fell in that game on average every 25 balls.

England had India two-down in fairly short order – Shafali caught behind, hanging her bat out like it was Monday’s laundry; and Yastika bowled by a peach from Lauren Bell. But Bell soon looked tired; and Filer out of ideas, as Smriti and Jemimah began to build what was threatening to be a formidable partnership. England might not have enjoyed it, but the crowd got to witness two of the world’s most exciting batters, playing the kind of cricket the occasion deserved and looking like they could be doing it all day.

Cricinfo reported that “Jemimah’s knock was cut short on 35 by Wong” but in truth Jemimah’s knock was cut short by Jemimah, who really should have swiped-left on a ball that ugly, chasing it way outside off stump and chopping on.

The phase that followed could turn out to be a key one in the course of this match. Another quick wicket for England would have allowed them to put real pressure on India’s lower middle order; but instead Harmanpreet and Smriti rebuilt with some patience. The run rate slowed significantly, but India were the ones with time on their side; and the pair took the visitors close to 200 before they fell in quick succession – Smriti nicking behind; and Harmanpreet falling to a delivery that, if I’m honest, I didn’t think Mady Villiers had in her – doing a 3 point turn, reversing round the corner, and then parallel parking into middle stump.

This presented England with another window of opportunity which they again didn’t quite take, as Deepti worked with the tail to record her 5th Test 50, and take India past the psychologically significant 282 mark. What’s so special about 282? It is the highest score anyone has ever made in a Women’s Test and lost the match – New Zealand in 1969.

With India 9 down, and the shadows starting to creep onto the Lord’s outfield, the last thing England’s opening batters would have wanted was to go out and face 10 overs of the new ball after a long, hot summer’s day in the field; but Sophie Ecclestone wasn’t in the mood to hang around herself in the heat, so England’s Tammy Beaumont and Maia Bouchier were soon out in the middle with just over half an hour to negotiate.

It could have gone worse, I guess, with ball tracking showing that Heather Knight would have been toast and marmalade if India had reviewed an appeal from Kranti Gaud in the 8th over. But with Tammy Beaumont already halfway to the Post Office with her pension book in-hand, England go into day 2 at 21-1, optimistically already needing something quite special to even save this match, let alone win it.

This week:

• Hayley Matthews speaks out about financial disparities
• Where did South Africa’s tournament go wrong?
• We were wrong about Sophie Molineux
• Where next for NSB and England?
• Olympic qualification
• UK government call on ICC to recognise the Afghanistan Women’s team