WOMEN’S ASHES 3rd ODI – Nat-ional Treasure

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It was 4th time lucky for Nat Sciver-Brunt – having scored a record third hundred in a losing cause against Australia in the 2nd ODI, our National Treasure finally hit one to set up an England win at Taunton.

The result means of course that England win the ODIs, having also won the T20s, to tie the multi-format series… but still had to watch Australia presented with the Women’s Ashes trophy.

As I am writing this, the players are milling around on the boundary ahead of the ceremonies, and to be fair neither side look too chuffed – Australia have lost 4 out of 6 white ball games; England have “lost” the Ashes – the faces on both sides say it all.

England’s mission this summer was to “inspire and entertain” and they certainly did that today, delighting a sellout crowd in deepest, darkest Somerset.

England got off to a shaky start, losing two quick wickets, but a huge partnership of 147 between Heather Knight and Sciver-Brunt took them from 12-2 to 159. The Australians must have been ruing allowing Knight to bat herself back into form at Bristol – she played the most assured innings she has in a while for England; whilst Sciver-Brunt just did what she does, giving the Australian bowlers nothing through the middle overs.

The job wasn’t quite done though. At 40 overs England were 198-4 and heading for around 250, which didn’t feel like it would quite be enough. It needed a brilliant 43 off 25 balls from Danni Wyatt to push England’s total to a much more imposing 285.

Wyatt did that damage in the 40-45 over phase, achieving a run-rate of over 10 in that 5-over period; and although the rate slowed again after she got out, crucially England’s tail still managed to bat at over 6/ over in the final 5 overs, despite losing wickets.

In the chase, Australia also lost early wickets – Lauren Bell will be particularly pleased with finding the edge of the left-handed Phoebe Litchfield’s bat, with Sophie Ecclestone taking a good catch at slip; whilst Cross got one to wobble through Alyssa Healy, who has had, it is fair to say, a mixed few weeks – she has averaged just 15 on this tour, but on the other hand she has captained Australia to an Ashes “win”, which can’t be too bad as consolations go.

Australia’s 3 and 4 – Ellyse Perry and Tahlia McGrath – threatened to do what Knight and Sciver-Brunt had done, but a moment of wicket-keeping magic from Amy Jones did for McGrath and gave England a glimmer of hope. Jones with the bat this series has fared little better than her Australian counterpart, averaging 17; but with the gloves she has once again shown there is no doubt who is the best in the world; and whilst she maintains that level, you can see why England aren’t even thinking about any other options.

After a break for rain, and a slightly adjusted DLS total, Australia came out fighting again, with Ash Gardner looking dangerous, but her run out for 41 was the start of a collapse which saw Australia subside to 199 all out, with the crowd really getting behind the team as they finished the job.

In the press conference after the game, Heather Knight admitted that it was a “disappointment” not to have regained the Ashes; but they have massively outperformed expectations – mine more than any. I feared Australia taking home a 16-0 whitewash; so 8-8 and two series wins for England is a huge achievement.

Whether this is just a blip for Australia, or we’re looking at a team past their peak, will emerge in the coming months and years. But when England next face them… perhaps in the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh next autumn… they will at last know that this is a team they can beat. And if they do, this will have been where it started.

4 thoughts on “WOMEN’S ASHES 3rd ODI – Nat-ional Treasure”

  1. Do not change the Ashes points system (heard murmurings in the media) – we’ve been through this so many times in the past and there is no perfect system.

    There is one tweak that could be considered in the case of 8-8 (ie what happened here)

    Use the format results to differentiate and, if this fails, then the number of matches won. It needs to be format first then matches won otherwise the Test just gets devalued. If the teams are still tied after this then the team holding The Ashes retains them.

    There are 2187 possible combination of results (ie win, draw/tie/abandoned, loss across 7 matches). Only 321 of these produce 8-8. In only 24 of these 321 can one get a team winning the formats but losing more matches than they won (and 12 of these involve ODI or T20 abandonments). In other words, using formats won followed by matches won won’t completely remove what might appear to be “unfair” results but it reduces the risk.

    In this series, the score was 8-8 but with England winning the formats 2-1 (and, not that it matters, the matches 4-3), then under the above tweak they would have won The Ashes.

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  2. More wonderful performances from these special England players. NSB *is* a national treasure there can be no doubt! It’s clear they all believed they could win, and they went out there and made it happen in 4 of those games. I didn’t think they would, but this Ashes England have been full of surprises and mostly good ones.

    Australia’s chase crumbled away. That’s a sentence rarely written in recent years. Their mantle of invincibility is gone. Their crown started to slip with the first T20 loss at The Oval, and at Taunton it at least felt like it fell to the ground with an inauspicious clang.

    A telling stat: England bowlers and bowling all-rounders took 60 out of 66 wickets this series. Australia bowlers and bowling all-rounders took 35 out of 65 wickets (yes that’s right, England took more wickets than Australia in this series!).

    But only 35 out of 65 wickets to actual bowlers! And that’s being generous, counting Perry and Sutherland as bowling all-rounders. Not only do Australia’s batters / batting all-rounders score most of the runs, they take about half of their wickets, too. I think going forward they will need to change that!

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