After an unprecedented 20,000 spectators turned out for England’s Ashes T20 at Edgbaston on Saturday night, normality was restored a short drive down the road on Sunday at Worcester, as the proverbial man and his dog watched Sparks defend 233 to beat Thunder.

Under heavy skies, Thunder’s bowlers had the better of the early exchanges, with Sparks openers Eve Jones and Bethan Ellis bowled by Tara Norris and Mahika Gaur respectively. Erin Burns brought a little impetus to proceedings, but by the end of the powerplay she too was back in the pavilion, spooning a pretty innocuous delivery from Gaur to Deandra Dottin on the ring at backward point, leaving Sparks an anaemic 32-3 at the 10 over mark.

But Ami Campbell (68) and Abbey Freeborn (67) steadied the ship with a game-changing partnership which ultimately reached 139. It was somewhat attritional cricket early on, with Campbell and Freeborn digging out the runs at 4/5 per over, while Thunder’s attack toiled without making the breakthrough as Sparks reached 105-3 at drinks.

It was until after the 30^th over, with Campbell and Freeborn both having passed 50, that the pair started to cut loose, upping the run-rate to more than 8 per over. But both were dismissed in the space of 4 balls – first Campbell, stumped in slightly strange circumstances after failing to connect with a Tara Norris bouncer; then Freeborn bowled by Laura Jackson; whilst in-between, Davina Perrin also came and went LBW to Norris for a golden duck.

This left Sparks’ tail with an uphill task to post a decent total, but a decent 33 off 36 balls from Charis Pavely was the key to them reaching 233-10, bowled out off the final ball of the innings.

In reply, Seren Smale looked to play positively from the start, finding the boundary 3 times in Katie George’s opening over, which went for 15; but at the other end her opening partner Naomi Dattani was having a nightmare which culminated in a 12-ball duck as she was bowled through the gate by Georgia Davis.

Thunder looked well-placed at the 20-over mark with Smale having passed 50 in the previous over, and Deandra Dottin going at a run a ball; but after being dropped off the first ball of the 20^th over, Dottin was adjudged LBW off the second for 21 off 23 balls.

Smale carried Thunder’s hopes through to the 39^th over, but having batted for over two hours and worked her way to 94 off 125 balls, she played a tired club off Katie George, and watched in despair as it fell into the reliable hands of Eve Jones at mid on.

With the required rate having climbed to 6.6 runs per over going into the final 10, Thunder didn’t have time to hang around, but needed to balance that against having only 4 wickets in hand. That soon became 3 when Liberty Heap edged George to Freeborn behind the stumps, exposing the Thunder tail, which lasted until the 49^th over when a smashing diving catch by Dive-ina Perrin ended things with Thunder 30 short on 204 all out.

Australia ground out a win off the penultimate ball in a slightly scrappy game at a packed-out Edgbaston. A crowd just shy of 20,000 (19,527) cheered every boundary, roared for every wicket, sang along to every cheesy song, and even booed the TV umpire when Alice Capsey was adjudged (probably fairly, it should be said) run out.

It was certainly a contest, but whether it was a “good” contest could… well… be contested! If they are really honest, neither side will go back to the hotel tonight feeling they played well.

Only 3 England batters made it into double-figures. Sophia Dunkley had a good game on paper with 56 off 49 balls, but it was a really weird innings – Australia had clearly decided that the way to get her was to bowl bouncers outside off stump and get her caught on the boundary, and it is true that she wasn’t dealing with them convincingly, but she was mostly just pulling them weakly through mid on. That wasn’t where the trap was set, so she survived long enough to get a half-century and finish England’s highest scorer. With Wyatt, Capsey and Sciver-Brunt facing 20 balls at the other end, and hitting just two 4s between them, it felt at times like watching a men’s county T20 cup game from the 00s, before anyone had really figured out how to play the then-new shortest form of the game.

Heather Knight coming in at 5 found some form – playing a couple of nice shots rampy shots on her way to 29 off 22, but couldn’t push on; and at 115-4 going into the death, England looked like they were going to struggle to make a par score, especially when Dunkley was dismissed off the first ball of the 17th over. But Amy Jones played a fantastic hand to smash 40 off 21 balls, including two 6s and get England up to a defendable total. Jones was really the only England batter who looked like she knew where the middle of her bat was, and combined with some good work later behind the wicket, including the kind of stumping to get Tahlia McGrath that no one else currently playing the game can pull off, there was a rare case for selecting someone on the losing side as Player of the Match.

As for Australia, they were poor in the field – probably the worst performance I’ve seen from them in the professional era. It wasn’t so much that they let run outs and catches go begging… though they did… but that they let England nurdle the ball around for large chunks of the game, because a fielder was never quite in the right place. This is where they really miss Meg Lanning – Healy just isn’t as proactive and doesn’t have Lanning’s attention to detail, which meant that Australia gave up maybe 20-30 more runs than they would have if Lanning had been out there.

With 150 on the board, England will have felt that they had a chance at the innings break, but they were going to need to take wickets – a required rate of under 8-an-over wasn’t going to trouble Australia if batters got set, and so it proved. Ironically, Australia also only had 3 batters make double-figures,  but the difference was that those 3 – Mooney, McGrath and Gardner – did it up top, so although Australia went into the death still needing 8-an-over, they had the wickets in hand to handle any calamity.

With 16 still needed off the last two overs, England made the interesting decision to bowl Lauren Bell in the 19th, saving Ecclestone for the last. The theory these days is generally that the 19th is the key over – that’s “make or break” time, when you bowl your best bowler, hoping that they can keep the ask high enough for the 20th over that the pressure of it being the “final over” does the rest. Bell going for 11 off the 19th probably reinforces that case, though she did take the wicket of Perry with a lovely slower ball.

This left Ecclestone with a lot of work to do, defending 5 off 6 balls. Sutherland sent the first of those 6 balls back with interest over Ecclestone to the boundary, leaving Australia needing just one more; but the pressure then got to Sutherland, and after two dots she panicked, edging behind to leave us all wondering if a super-over was on the cards, with that one still required off two remaining deliveries. Could Ecclestone pull off the miracle? She could not… and it was probably too much to expect. Georgia Wareham got just enough on her first ball to dash through for the single, and Australia won with a single ball to spare.

The Ashes still aren’t mathematically gone – if England win all of the remaining games, they can still snatch back the trophy; and today will have given them hope (false hope, perhaps, but still hope) that they can challenge Australia on their day. But they now need “their day” to come 5 times in the next 3 weeks, and that feels like optimism taken too far.