England
This was another ruthless performance from England; but it wasn’t the “same” performance. Moving out the boundaries gave the batsmen different challenges – you could see they were looking to bunt it short and snatch a lot of sharp singles, for example; and Nat Sciver played very differently – knowing there were an extra few yards to find those sixes, she looked instead to find the gaps more along the floor.
Pakistan
Again… Pakistan weren’t awful, but their fielding would be one area where they could really improve things in time for next year’s World Cup. Talking of which… you’d still definitely think they ought to qualify – they might not have been able to derail the England train on this tour, but they will be hard work for the likes of Ireland nonetheless, and if they aren’t back in 2017, it will be a surprise.
Alex Hartley
Mark Robinson (generous with his time, as always, to talk after the close) mentioned that England always intended to try to give Hartley a game in this 3rd ODI of the series; and the only person more delighted than us to see her receive her cap today, appeared to be Hartley herself! Spinners have the hardest job on debut – there is so little margin for error with the art – but Hartley got a good first over in, which was important.
She got a little bit expensive at the end of her first spell, with her economy rate edging towards 10 in overs 3-through-5, so Knight withdrew her; and she then came back later with a strong second spell, with an economy rate of just 3 in her final 5 overs. She didn’t take a wicket, but it was a very good response nonetheless and we will be seeing her again in an England shirt, for sure.
Katherine Brunt
This was Brunt’s first 5-fer since 2011, when she took 5-18 in an ODI against Australia at Wormsley. We mentioned in an earlier Random Thoughts that it is hard for her, because her reputation precedes her and the batsman usually try to just see her off, so it was great to see her get a reward and her name of the board again!
Amy Jones
They say sometimes with goalkeepers in football that they’ve had a good game if you don’t notice them; and it is very much the same with wicket keepers. Has anyone noticed Amy Jones? No – not really, because she hasn’t brought the attention to herself by doing anything horrendous… and that’s the way we like it.
Tammy Beaumont
TB has been England’s outstanding player in this series. Presented with a gilt-edged invitation to succeed, she did so in No Trumps and you can’t ask more than that. There will be harder series to come, but she has probably bought her ticket for a long time to come on the strength of these performances, and she deserves it.
CRICKETher 
There are loads of records that have been broken in this series – although nearly all related to batting should be taken with a pinch of salt. The 55 yard boundaries at Worcester skews the stats (note the difference in 6s hit between Worcester at 55 yards and Taunton at 60 yards).
It is possible to make the claim that, despite the short boundaries, the 342 runs acquired by Beaumont is worthy of the 3 match ODI series record for England (beating Jan Brittin’s 258). Edwards tonked 380 in a 5 match series against South Africa in 2004 and is England’s bi-lateral series record.
I think it’s the 8th time an England player has carried their bat throughout an ODI innings batting 1st. Edwards has achieved this most often (3 times – which includes her 173)
One unwanted record; Hartley has achieved the worst ODI bowling figures on debut by an England player with 10-0-53-0. The previous record was Jo Chamberlain managed 8-0-46-0 on her debut. If ‘worst’ is measured by economy then there are worst ones than 5.3 (although only 3 cases involved more than 4 overs : 8-0-46-0, 8-0-44-0 and 8-0-43-0 – ironically this last one is Georgia Elwiss !). None of the contemporary spin bowlers had spectacular debuts (Marsh 10-2-41-1, Hazell 9-0-41-1 and Grundy best of all with 10-1-35-1). Good idea to give a debut to a player in a match with loads of spectators and live TV rather than a reserve day at Leicester with no TV – um.
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Personally I’d say that the 3rd ODI team batting was just as good if not better than the 2nd ODI. The bowling (if not the fielding) seemed to be slightly less wayward and less conducive to big hitting. England were content to smack 4s and 2s rather than sixes. The way they approached 360 plus from at one point looking like they might only scrape 300 was amazing. I prefer the 60m boundaries to the 55m.
It’s not actually that easy to say too much about Pakistan’s bowling and fielding performances, at least compared to what you might expect based on previous scores. This is because before this series in the ICC women’c championship, they have nearly always batted first, meaning that when the game finished the chasing side that beat them had overs left (in fact, often quite a few) except for the few cases where Pakistan won. In many of the former cases, their opponents could well have topped 300. In fact the only instances I could find where their opponents batted first were Si Lanka scoring 178 and 242 (both of which were successfully chased) and WI scoring 281 against them (on a Gros Islet pitch – probably not great) which they failed to chase by over 100 runs. So given the unfamiliar conditions I’m not sure what we’ve seen over the last week is too uncharacteristic of them.
It’s not often in the past few years that England have appeared to be on an up, rather than a down. We shouldn’t take too much away from England’s batting performances – they have been scintillating. Beaumont was phenomenal to watch – her nifty footwork, true striking and sense of freedom was wonderful. She has barely put a foot wrong and in the 3rd ODI, everything she tried came off. I have to say I was impressed by Knight, the dominant Winfield and also Elwiss who actually posted her highest ODI score, which seems to have gone unnoticed by most people. Maybe she can make it at number 3 after all. I’m also pleased for Brunt to be taking many wickets again. Anything to switch her spells from 6-4 to 5-5 or 4-6 would probably help even more.
As for Hartley, it was hardly the debut dreams are made of, but I saw enough to suggest she has some promise, and is well deserving of more opportunities to show it. Finally it was good to see ST at the ground soaking up the atmosphere, hopefully she will be back in the team soon.
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