England ‘A’ flew back from Australia yesterday after a tough few weeks against their Australian counterparts. The first T20 was a close match – Alice Capsey hit 44 off 31 ball as England ‘A’ set the hosts 129 to chase, which they did with just 3 balls to spare.

But it was largely downhill from there. Australia won the 2nd T20 easily, and though England did set them 158-7 in the final T20, with Eve Jones and Emma Lamb both hitting fifties before the rain came and washed out any chance of a result, it went from bad to worse in the One Dayers, with the Aussies running out easy winners in all 3 games.

Nonetheless, as cliched as it might seem, it is important to take the positives from a tour like this. It wasn’t all about winning, it was about the experience gained and the lessons learned, in particular for some key players who will no doubt be back in Australia one day on a real Ashes tour.

Batting Rankings

Wunderkind Alice Capsey had a good T20 series, but the real winner here was Emma Lamb. Lamb has of course already played for England, though she didn’t face or bowl a ball in her only appearance; but with her performances on this tour she has staked a clear claim to open the batting for England going forwards, and Lauren Winfield-Hill is going to have to have a very good next few weeks if she is going to keep Lamb out much longer.

Bowling Rankings

Kirstie Gordon hasn’t played for England since July 2019, and could theoretically return to Scotland this summer; but continues to make the case for an England recall with her aggressive left arm spin. Having said that, the emergence of Charlie Dean might make that more difficult, especially if Dean matures into a “proper” batter at international level.

Lauren Bell meanwhile seems to have leapfrogged the other contenders in the fast bowling department with her performances in Australia. After being added to the Test squad, she was also the only out-and-out bowler retained as an option to come into the World Cup squad, should injury strike anyone in the main squad during the final two Ashes ODIs. Like Lamb, her debut will come, if not this winter, then almost certainly in the summer.

The England ‘A’ team flew home yesterday, after a chastening series against Australia ‘A’ – Australia winning 5 of the 6 matches played between the two sides, with the other game a wash-out. Only one match – the first T20 – could really be described as ‘close’.

However, 4 players from the ‘A’ team impressed enough with their performances to stay in Australia pending the announcement of England’s World Cup squad, which is expected on 9 February – next Wednesday.

Lauren Bell, Georgia Elwiss, Eve Jones and Emma Lamb will be available to be selected as one of the 18 players (15 squad players plus up to 3 reserves – see here for a quick explainer of how that works) travelling to the World Cup in New Zealand immediately after the Ashes.

There are cases for all four to be included in the 18. Having Elwiss – a classic “utility player” – as one of the travelling reserves would make a lot of sense. However, it feels likely that the others have been retained in case anyone gets injured in the final two ODIs, so their various fan-clubs should probably keep the champagne on ice for the moment.

Squads are now being named for the Women’s World Cup, which starts in New Zealand on 4 March – South Africa named theirs yesterday, and England’s is expected to be announced next week, on 9 February.

As well as the 15 players included in the main squad, South Africa also announced 3 ‘Travelling Reserves’ – something all teams are able to do.

Up to 3 reserves are able to travel with each team. They will fly to New Zealand and quarantine along with the official squad; and will to all intents and purposes be part of the squad, except on match days.

They will only be eligible to play if they are swapped into the official 15-player squad in the event that an injury (or “The Dreaded ‘C’ Word” – COVID) forces a squad player to withdraw from the competition; so they won’t be able to be used to just rest or rotate squad players, and they won’t be able to act as substitute fielders, but they could still be called-upon at a moment’s notice, should the worst happen.

One final factor teams need to consider is that there is also an overall limit on the number of people able to travel to New Zealand, so some teams are opting to take fewer reserves, because this allows them to bring additional support staff.

England’s Ashes hopes went up in smoke at Manuka Oval in Canberra, despite having the Aussies on the ropes as they posted just 205-9 from their 50 overs – well short of the 287 that Australia have averaged batting first since the last World Cup.

Alyssa Healy, interviewed pitch-side about half way through Australia’s innings, said they were looking for 220-240, but they were frustrated by another disciplined bowling performance from England, with Katherine Brunt taking 3-40 and Kate Cross 3-33. Since her return to the side in 2021, after a couple of years on the sidelines, Cross has averaged 2 wickets per game in ODIs, a significant step up from the earlier in her career.

Australia’s batters struggled as a unit, but in a low(ish) scoring match if one person can stand up, that can be enough. Beth Mooney was that player for Australia – she was the only Aussie batter to pass 30, but she pushed on to make 73, and crucially made sure she was still at the crease to face the final ball.

So the key question was… could anyone from England do the same?

Although England lost two early wickets, Lauren Winfield-Hill and Nat Sciver stabilised things and looked to be building a solid platform at 39-2 after 10 overs. Winfield-Hill played some of the nice shots we know she can play, and hopes were high that this might be the day she’d finally break the “duck” that has seen her go 5 years and 46 international innings across all formats without passing 50.

Winfield-Hill was out the very next ball, but Sciver was still in a position to do what Mooney had done, and with the support of Amy Jones she continued to make progress.

Jones’s wicket is one that will continue to generate debate – it was definitely 50/50, and if it had been given the other way, it certainly wouldn’t have counted as a “howler”. One of the issues is clearly that the law is a bit vague, because waist heights are a bit vague (ask any woman who has ever bought a pair of jeans!) so it is too open to interpretation, even if (as a few people on social media suggested) we used the ball tracking tech rather than asking the Third Umpire to draw lines on the screen with their eyes.

By the time we got down to the Sciver-Wyatt partnership, it felt like it was “S*** or Bust”! The problem with playing the extra batter is that you only really need them when you are in trouble, and if you’re in trouble… then you are already in trouble, so it rarely works out, especially chasing.

Sciver’s dismissal for 45 was the moment when “decline” became “fall” – there was a gap of 28 runs between what Sciver made and what Mooney had made. And how many runs more did England need to win the match? Exactly 28! That’s not to blame Nat Sciver – the batting unit failed collectively, and the responsibility must be collective – Australia’s attack wore them down, good ball by good ball, until there was nothing left – bowled out, despite being ahead of the worm.

So we’ve lost the Ashes. Again. England might be one of the top two sides in the world, but they definitely aren’t in the top one.

We probably knew that already, to be fair; but if we needed a reminder, today was it.

Well, it’s a fair cop. I called it wrong yesterday.

Sorry Meg.

In fact, the eventual declaration from Lanning set up the most exciting session of Test cricket I’ve ever seen “live” (edging aside TOG’s* Edgbaston 2005). In fact, it’s surely got to go down as one of the most exciting sessions there has EVER been in women’s cricket. There’s a certain amount of irony that all the talk before this Test was about the problematic lack of results in recent women’s Test matches; yet this one showed us how breathtaking a draw can actually be.

Initially, all the talk was that Lanning’s “carrot” – asking England to chase 257 in 48 overs at a RRR of 5.35 – was of microscopic size. But as England gradually ate away at the target, the tone of the commentary shifted. Could England actually do this? With 8 wickets in hand, needing 104 runs going into the final hour of play and with Nat Sciver and Heather Knight both set, Australia looked distinctly nervous… and Syd and I dared to hope.

Lanning freely admitted in the post-match presser that her early plan was the wrong one: “We were too wide and full with our bowling early on.” So they changed tack – or, as Lanning described it, “flipped our thinking” – and began to attack the stumps. After Sciver pulled Annabel Sutherland to square leg with 39 runs still needed, it quickly unravelled for England… until finally the roles reversed, and English supporters everywhere were breathing a sigh of relief that Kate Cross had managed to cling on for the draw. The whole session is a good example of the way in which Lanning’s captaincy has evolved since that World Cup semi-final in 2017, when Australia’s bowlers were Harmanpreet-ed and there was, seemingly, no Plan B.

It seems to me that the result in this Test is unlikely to have any eventual bearing on the Ashes series as a whole. England won’t now win all of the three ODIs, but even if they HAD won today, my money would still have been on Australia to come good and win two of the three 50-over matches, thus retaining the Ashes anyway.

Nonetheless, I’d argue that the result is still potentially very significant, for two reasons.

One, it will have dealt a severe psychological blow to England’s confidence. You have to feel for Heather Knight. She could hardly have given more, and she must be utterly shattered right now, after spending almost the entire four days of the Test on the field. Sciver also looked desperately disappointed during the post-match, admitting: “I feel more sad [at not winning] than I do happy [at not losing] at the minute.” In a few weeks time, England are facing a period of strict isolation in quarantine in New Zealand, followed by attempting to defend their World Cup title. It’s important to move on from this “defeat” (yes I know it was a draw, but it will feel like a loss) as quickly as possible.

Two, and more importantly, is what this match will have done for the future of the Test format as a whole. It may not be fair, but it is certainly true that whenever a (rare) women’s Test is played, the players are tasked with making the case that women’s Test cricket remains relevant and exciting. In recent times, we’ve witnessed the Taunton Test in 2019 labelled “the most boring game imaginable” by journalists, while prior to that, England’s final-day collapse at Canterbury in 2015 led The Guardian’s then-cricket correspondent to call for women’s Test cricket to be abolished altogether. Compare that with this tweet today from The Telegraph’s Scyld Berry:

There have been other exciting women’s Tests – Perth 2014; Hyderabad 1995; the list goes on – but the important point is that none of them were ever televised. I’d love to see viewing figures for the last two sessions of this match! It seems to me that its denouement will have done more in four hours to convince the administrators we should have more women’s Test cricket, than I have in four (+++) years of banging the drum. England will be hurting right now, but once the dust has settled, that is certainly something to celebrate.

Kudos to Lanning and Knight for their respective roles in setting it up.

*TOG = The Other Game (Men’s Cricket)

With the final two sessions of day 3 entirely lost to the rain, and similar weather forecast for tomorrow, a draw now looks like the most likely outcome of the Women’s Ashes Test in Canberra.

The play that we did get mostly went England’s way, as Heather Knight overhauled her previous Test best score of 157 to finish on 168*. Over 60% of England’s runs off the bat came off Knight’s eponymous SM “HK” – surely one of the great individual performances in the history of women’s Tests.

There was much talk on comms of whether England would declare behind, but in my view they did the right thing of pursuing what you might call a “de-facto declaration” strategy – playing much more freely in order to close the gap on the Australian total before the inevitable final two wickets fell. This meant they didn’t take too much time out of the match, but also got much closer to the Australians than it looked like they were destined to when they took tea yesterday at 120-6. In the end the deficit was just 40 runs; and a tricky twenty minutes at the crease for Australia before lunch.

The stage was set for Katherine Brunt, and she strutted on to it as only she can – taking two quick wickets: Rachael Haynes caught by Tammy Beaumont fielding up-close off bat/pad; and Alyssa Healy caught behind by Amy Jones. It was the nightmare scenario for Australia, and gave England a real chink of light – perhaps Brunt had been right when she told the media yesterday that England could still win this?

And then the rain…

A towering undefeated 127 from Heather Knight was enough… just… to keep England in the game at Manuka Oval; but an Australian victory now feels like the most likely outcome to this Test.

The day began with Katherine Brunt completing her 3rd Test 5fer thanks to a remarkable 6th catch behind the stumps for Amy Jones – both have been brilliant for England; and Jones’ “6fer” is the joint most catches ever taken in a Test innings.

Australia had promised to push on towards 400, but instead unexpectedly declared on 337 after losing their 9th wicket. Mind games? From Meg Lanning? Matthew Mott later denied it, saying they’d changed their minds to take advantage of favourable bowling conditions in the morning; but who’s to say that wasn’t more mind games? (Mott’s entire pitch-side interview during the afternoon session was a master-class in saying absolutely nothing. Would you use the follow-on Motty? Well… it’s an interesting question… we might… or we might not! Seriously: the man should consider going into politics when he’s done with cricket!)

England walked out to bat knowing the ball had been doing all-sorts – swinging in for Anya Shrubsole and moving away off the pitch for Brunt – and the Australians soon had it singing too. There was a lot of nearly-playing and nearly-missing early on, and it felt like wickets were coming. Ever the optimist, I attempted the old “reverse jinx”, snarkily texting a friend: “I think England will be one or two down at the close… in their second innings, having followed on!”

Unfortunately, I wasn’t a million miles away – England settled into something of a routine of losing a batter roughly every 10 overs, with only Heather Knight holding them together. Knight scored 58% of England’s runs off the bat on her way to her second Test century – soul-food for starving England supporters.

But with conditions continuing to assist the Australians, the other full-time batters struggled to keep their heads above water, and it wasn’t until Charlie Dean came in that the tail started to… well… not “wag” exactly, but at least not “roll over and die”.

I’ve often worried that the English “CAG” (County Age Group) system teaches girls to value their wickets too much over actually scoring runs, which is a problem when you are mainly looking to develop white-ball batters; but at the point Dean – a player who has really only just emerged from the CAG system – came in, that was exactly what England needed. Dean blocked and blocked, allowing Knight to continue to make progress at the other end, and it was only when she lost her concentration and started to try to score runs, that she found herself walking back to the dugout. (Her CAG coach would have been furious at the limp slog-sweep she got herself out to!)

Nonetheless, Dean had showed the way, and with more support from Shrubsole and then Ecclestone, Knight took England past the follow-on target. It wasn’t a victory obviously, but much like the boy’s draw in the men’s series at the SCG at few weeks ago, it somehow felt like one; and certainly the Australian’s will have been frustrated not to finish England off before the close.

England still officially believe they can get a result from this match, with Katherine Brunt saying at the close: “I think you can win from anywhere” and promising that England would “fight like hell” for the victory. But they still trail by 102, and Australia are now in pole position to wrap up England’s first innings early tomorrow morning and then bat them out of the game. Then, as long as the weather holds (which is looking 50/50) they’ll still likely have time to bowl England out again and retain the Ashes before the ODI series even starts.

The 2022 Women’s Hundred competition will be truncated to just 6 games per side in the group stages, in order to accommodate the Commonwealth Games, which runs from 28th July to 8th August in Birmingham.

The men will play two rounds of “stand-alone” fixtures prior to the women’s competition starting on Thursday 11th August, with the rest of the competition running as double-headers, following the success of this model in 2021. This means that rather than the women’s group stages being a true “round robin”, every team will effectively skip one opponent.

As with last year, the group stages will be followed by an “Eliminator” between the second and third placed sides (played at the Ageas Bowl on Friday 2nd September), with the winner meeting the top-placed team in the final at Lord’s on Saturday 3rd September.

Although this outcome is disappointing from a sporting perspective, the ECB faced an unenviable dilemma given the timing of the Commonwealth Games, in which almost all of the top England and overseas stars are likely to be involved. There were only bad options, such as starting the competition without the big-name players, or ditching the link-up with the men’s comp completely, so on reflection this was probably the least bad choice.

CRICKETher understands that the plan is to return to a full program of 8 group fixtures (the 7 “round robin” fixtures, plus the additional “derby” match between the local rivals) in 2023.

This might be controversial, but I’ll call it as I see it: already, at the end of Day One, England are in a position where it will be almost impossible for them to win this Test.

At the toss, we finally got a glimpse of Heather Knight and Lisa Keightley’s Masterplan: bowl first, chuck in your most experienced quick bowlers (Katherine Brunt, Anya Shrubsole and Kate Cross), and hope for the best. With Brunt and, in particular, Shrubsole moving it around up top, it looked like it might just have been a genius move: Australia were 4 for 2 before I’d had time to boil the kettle.

When Ellyse Perry miscued a Nat Sciver bouncer to Amy Jones, who took an excellent running, diving catch (to add to her two smart grabs behind the stumps to see off Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney), England were ecstatic.

But their celebrations proved to be premature, especially in the face of Australia’s insanely long batting line-up. Slowly, that early momentum slipped through England’s fingers – literally slipped through them, in the case of Knight and Sciver, who between them cost England 121 runs after they put down Meg Lanning and Rachael Haynes at first and second slip respectively. Australia finished the day on 327 for 7. As Syd pointed out on Twitter, no one has ever won a women’s Test where the other team have scored over 300 on first innings.

So was England’s strategy the wrong one? Selection-wise, it’s hard to know if Lauren Bell would have outbowled Brunt, Shrubsole or Cross – although I would have liked to have seen her given the chance. But I am a bit baffled by the decision to bowl first.

This isn’t just about “the benefit of hindsight”. I’ve long argued that it’s extremely difficult to win a four-day women’s Test if you don’t bat first, and today’s events are merely a case in point. After two sessions, during which Australia scored 199 runs and lost just 3 wickets, England’s window of opportunity to control the game had all-but-closed. If they’d opted to bat, that window would (bar a horrendous collapse) have lasted a lot longer – they could have forced the pace when they chose; dug in if they’d lost a few quick wickets; and assuming they’d batted out the day, it would have been in their hands whether they came back out to bat again tomorrow.

Instead, all those decisions – including whether England’s tired bowlers have to come back out and do it all again on Day Two – are now in Lanning’s hands.

The decision to bowl first is even odder given that all the “noise” coming out of the England camp before the Test was about how challenging it is to take wickets in women’s Tests – variously blamed on pitches that are too long, batter-friendly wickets, and / or the inability to use a Dukes ball.

And so we face the first test of Australia’s own “going for the win” approach: how long will they keep batting? The truly aggressive move would, frankly, have been to have declared half an hour before the close once they’d reached 300, and given England a horrible period to negotiate. But given that they didn’t do that, they surely now have to declare overnight? 327 runs is already a VERY formidable first-innings total in the context of women’s Test cricket, and with the forecast as it is, declaring now is the only way to guarantee that they will have the time to take 20 English wickets. Plus, the pressure will all be on England, who have a big runs-deficit to overhaul before they can even think about doing anything else. (See what I mean about no longer dictating the game?)

Australia have talked a good talk over the last three Tests they’ve played about wanting to avoid yet another draw. Now’s the time for them to walk the walk as well… the question is, will they?