Ash Gardner spun Australia to victory on the final morning at Trent Bridge, eclipsing the performances of 10-wicket Sophie Ecclestone and double-centurion Tammy Beaumont, taking a sensational 8-fer in the second innings to finish with match figures of 12-165 – the second-best match figures ever recorded in a Women’s Test.
England were clearly the underdogs going into the final day, needing another 150-odd runs with just 5 wickets in hand. And it was the latter number that was the more important – with 90 overs to bat, if they stayed-put, they were almost certainly going to win the game. But it is a fine balance for players who have been selected and groomed for aggressive white-ball cricket. Amy Jones blocked out 13 balls without scoring before dancing down the track and playing a lovely lofted drive, straight out of the one-day playbook. Two balls later, she tried to do the same again, missed it, and Healy took the bails off with Jones about a millimetre short – such are the fine margins of elite sport.
It was the second time in the match Jones had given her wicket away, and whilst there is no doubt whatsoever that she remains the best wicket-keeper in the world, you can’t carry a keeper who is struggling with the bat in international cricket these days, and feels more and more like the only thing keeping her in the team [sorry…!] is the lack of an alternative – if Bess Heath could keep like Ellie Threlkeld (or Threkeld could bat like Heath) I suspect Jones’s days would be numbered.
Sophie Ecclestone was able to hang around for half an hour, and does look like a potential replacement for Katherine Brunt’s role in the batting line-up – coming in somewhere between the bottom of the middle order and the top of the tail. But like Brunt, she is someone who is going to give you the odd 30 and the very occasional 50 – not a regular contribution. And that’s not a criticism of her – her role is to carry the team’s bowling, as she did throughout this match. Any contribution with the bat is a bonus not an expectation. To be honest, we shouldn’t even have had to see her bat today – if England’s top order had done their job last night, she’d still be in the pavilion right now, preparing to celebrate a famous win, not commiserating over a demoralising defeat.
And this defeat will be demoralising for England. They now need to win 5 of the 6 white ball games against a team who have lost just one white-ball match in the past two years, and whom England haven’t beaten in any format since a dead-rubber win at Bristol in 2019. That’s a psychological hurdle the size of a double-decker bus, and England are trying to jump it Evel Knievel-style… on a moped.
From an Australian perspective, they’ve taken a bit of stick from the press back home, particularly the bowlers; but they’ve got the job done. It was like they somehow understood the 5 day format better than England. So they didn’t rush to play shots; they didn’t panic over batting out a maiden to Sophie Ecclestone; they gave their bowlers time to work their spells. In the end they “used” the extra day, where England ended up just trying to survive it.
Could England have made some different selections? Given Gardner’s dominance in the final innings it does look like Jon Lewis, for all his red ball experience (250 First Class matches – the vast majority of them in England, including at this very ground) disastrously misread the pitch and conditions. My guess is that his lack of experience in women’s cricket didn’t help: he applied some logic from the men’s game – “the quickest bowlers can blow a team away” – without understanding that the quickest bowlers in the women’s game just aren’t that quick. They can hurry a batter into a mistake, as Lauren Filer did on more than one occasion in this match, but they mostly aren’t going to blast anyone away in the way that a Mitchell Starc or a Jofra Archer can.
Playing Dean instead of Filer would also have given England a slightly more Test-friendly tail. It’s easy to look back in hindsight though, and as Mark Robinson once told me in a press conference, “cricket isn’t played in hindsight”. The team England put on the pitch was a team that could have won this match – they got reasonably close, which is perhaps the key reason why the defeat will be so demoralising – it’s the hope that kills you, and all that! This was their one chance to win back the Ashes, and they didn’t quite have enough batting or enough bowling to do it. Oh well… there’s always next time.
CRICKETher 
An accurate and amusing assessment!
After England fought so hard to achieve a good 1st innings total…and the difficult task of taking 20 wickets, it was very disappointing to see our top order batters succumb so easily to Gardner’s bowling( especially as she’s more renowned as a batter?!)..Australia not even needing to use Jonassen or King on day 5, was a measure of Gardners prowess.This left a massive task for our lower order and they simply weren’t up to it.
Misreading of the pitch(& Heather would have chosen to bowl, had she won the toss),especially given the forecast, led to poor team selection, though I thought Filer had a better game than Bell.
Amy was untidy behind the stumps( partially due to wayward bowling at times)& her batting has been below par this season.Personnal events off-field may help account for this.Maybe Amy needs a break & England need to give Threlkeld a chance she would deserve, along with other changes, for the white ball phase of the series?
Despite any criticism, the whole match was a triumphant success for women’s cricket, Trent Bridge and the crowd…who all contributed to a record-breaking event.Loved it!
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For all the talking-up of this being a 5 day Test, it only lasted 373 overs and 3 balls, well within the 408 overs that used to have to be bowled in a 4 day Test. In effect the customer has had to turn up on 5 days whereas before they would have only had to turn up on only 4 days. (I realise 5 days are more likely to produce a result simply because of weather issues but 5 day Tests are not 25 % more cricket than 4 day Tests, they are only 9.71% more cricket)
It will be interesting to see how many 5 day Tests are played before the number of overs bowled exceeds 408.
Quite contrary to what one might have expected, this 5 day Test produced the fastest run rate of any Test played by England (3.671). To put this in perspective this was only the fifth Test involving England in which the RPO exceeded 3. So, well done to both teams for that.
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It was the last hour or so of day 3 with wayward bowling and the rash shot selections of the top 5 in innings 2 which cost us! Shame case we are not that far behind!
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Thank you for your reports – I’ve only started watching women’s cricket since the hundred last year so I don’t know very much about it and love reading all your comments .
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So what made the difference:
Lower order runs – I know the last 3 wickets went for 0 in the Aus 2nd innings, but there was still clear evidence of their tail being stronger. An England no 8 just wouldn’t make 137, nor would we add 95 for the 9th wicket. An earlier report referred to Cross ‘not being expected to hang around’, but Australia’s no 9 certainly is
Fielding – although nothing that could be described as a ‘dolly’ went down, it seemed for the first half of the Aus 2nd innings that the only way we could get a wicket was bowled! Australia fielding was not brilliant 100% of the time either, but you just feel they would have held some of the half chances that England spurned
Marginal umpiring – The two lbws early in the England 2nd innings were disappointing. I know they were both umpires’ call, and can’t be called howlers – just what happened to the idea that batters get the benefit of the doubt when on field decisions are made?
Winning mentality – quite simply Australia are very used to winning!
I was fairly confident when I saw the inexperience of Australia’s seam attack, and this did lead to a spinner taking 12. Maybe bodes better for matches when no one can bowl more than 1/5, having said that, I’m not sure anyone except Ecclestone will be worrying Australia.
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On form why not pick winfield Hill to keep as well
Try charlotte Dean and remove Duncley for Maire Bouchier
On a positive note despite losing the game we did get the mighty aAustralians out twice.
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It’s a genuine option John. All those players have been in good form so far this season.
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Jones’s last 5 ODI innings :innings : 39, 28, 29, 70*, 32*
Jones’s last 5 T20 innings : 21, 12, 40, 47, 2
(these are just facts – others to judge them)
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How many of those against Australia though? 😉
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Like Lamb, Capsey (only has 4 ODI innings), Dunkley, Wyatt and Beaumont, none of Jones’s last 5 ODI innings have been against Australia
Like Capsey, Dunkley, Sciver, Knight and Wyatt, none of Jones’s last 5 T20 innings have been against Australia
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Clanger, remember this article? https://crickether.com/2023/06/01/womens-ashes-come-back-with-your-shield-or-on-it/
Jones’ stats in this are what I was alluding to.
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England have had players scoring a double-ton, and taking a 10-wicket match. We’ve scored nearly 650 runs, dropped about 6 catches and forced the opposition to achieve once-in-a-career best figures of 8-fer. I’m happy with England’s performance in this Test, barring the dropped chances and batting collapse really.
Unfortunately England are not a great ODI side these days, as we saw last summer against India. There’s a small chance we could win 1 T20, but realistically I think the series will be done come next Wednesday. All we can try and do in the ODIs is try and put some totals on the board. Maybe try and break 300, the Aussies won’t like that.
Let’s just move on, and make sure England can still beat Sri Lanka – a series that might prove to be more of a challenge than expected.
“if Bess Heath could keep like Ellie Threlkeld (or Threkeld could bat like Heath) I suspect Jones’s days would be numbered.”
Bess Heath is a good wicketkeeper.
I’ve seen her with some neat stumpings but never given away too many byes or dropped catches. She will only improve if given a bigger role and responsibility. The other option is LWH of course, the more established player although she might suffer from the same mental scars against the Aussies that Jones does. I’m not sure how well Threlkeld would do at international level but there’s only 1 way to find out.
“Playing Dean instead of Filer would also have given England a slightly more Test-friendly tail.”
Surely it’s Cross or Bell who should miss out rather than Filer, based on that performance?
“Could England have made some different selections? Given Gardner’s dominance in the final innings it does look like Jon Lewis, for all his red ball experience (250 First Class matches – the vast majority of them in England, including at this very ground) disastrously misread the pitch and conditions.”
It’s always the same, and we never learn.
We always make the same mistakes mis-reading conditions and having the wrong field totally unsuited to the conditions. Like the myriad slips we had in place who were all too far back for most of the bowling innings.
Knight might have said she wanted to bowl first, but that was simply aggressive Jon-ball talking, wanting to get 20 wickets. This was a bat first pitch make no mistake.
With the “not one step backwards” approach, England have painted themselves into a corner now, and have no recourse but to go all out for the aggressive approach. At least that way we can see it through to the end and claim some kind of artistic high ground. Sometimes it feels like that’s all we have left. It does seem from the outside, that the cult of Baz-ball/Jon-ball is an irrefutable echo-chamber of attacking intent, a black hole that once entered, can never be left. But inside, it can be fun. Fun, to ease the misery of losing Ashes series – and that’s part of the attraction!
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Life is not lived backwards or in retrospect, I get that, but we should evaluate how things have gone so we can apply the lessons for the future. Everyone should be prepared to do that in elite sport, as in so many other walks of life.
I still cannot understand the thinking behind anyone wanting to bowl first in a 5-day match, unless, as you say, the attack consists of Walsh, Ambrose, Donald, Paterson, Marshall, Brett Lee, etc.
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Seen in the context of a long series of draws between the 2 sides, Ben, and England being so desperate to get the Ashes back, the decision to bowl first was supposed to be because we needed 20 wickets to win. England did take 20 wickets in a Test, for the first time in a while too.
However England probably didn’t select the right bowling attack (or batters) to do this efficiently enough, and bowled and caught poorly for too long for this to work. The gamble failed, and this is why I say England are now bust in the series.
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Why doesn’t England select inform players ? (Australia dropped Perry until she found form)
Why didn’t England promote the players that performed in the England A warm up games ?
(against the main Australian squad)
Why don’t England A coaches select players that have performed well at regional level ?
(Where is the reward for improving your game and performing well)
Australia make their centrally contracted bowlers bat in the top 5 when playing at club level (just below our regional standard), so that, should the top order fail, they will have had experience at batting under pressure and are able to add 30-50 runs each. Why do coaches in England (at all levels) say that because you are a bowler you bat 10 or 11 and so the first chance you get to bat for long periods of time could be in an international game ?
…..and we wonder why we can’t beat the Australians.
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Good questions. And the impact of coaching is never considered enough when comparing International sides. Plenty of work is done on comparing players but coaches work with all of them. Given the dominance of one side over the other, it’s hard to conclude anything other than Australia’s coaches must be better.
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