This week:
- The RHF Final brings the season to a close
- We look back on our favourite moments of the summer
- What increased prize money for the Men’s World Cup might mean for the Women’s game
Month: September 2023
RHF TROPHY FINAL: Vipers v Blaze – Every Won’s A Windsor
Chasing a lowish total in the RHF Trophy final, Southern Vipers lost their top order cheaply, but came back from the dead thanks to a rearguard action led by top scorer Emily Windsor, to lift the title at Northampton.
Oh no… hang on… that wasn’t today… it was two years ago – chasing 183, Vipers were 109-7, but Windsor and Tara Norris brought it home with an unbeaten stand of 78, with 2 balls to spare.
It was actually a lot less squeaky this time. Vipers were 109-5 when Windsor came together with Freya Kemp, but whereas last time they had ground-out the runs they needed, this time they cruised to victory.
Two years ago, it didn’t feel like Windsor was the kind of player who could have gone at over a run a ball for 15 overs. She was someone who had evolved up in the old county pathway, where keeping your wicket intact was prized above all, and her run rate in 2021 reflected that – 47 off 97 balls – a strike rate of 48.
But times have changed, and Windsor has changed with them. From 109-5 today, Vipers needed another 92, and they got them at well over a run a ball, with Windsor finishing on 57 off 53 – a strike rate of 108 – more than double that of two years before.
She even did it without the feeling that she was really going for it. The ropes weren’t in miles; and the outfield wasn’t particularly quick, though it was in notably better nick than it has sometimes been at this ground by the end of the season. But she pushed and prodded, guiding the ball into the gaps – taking the boundaries when the ball had the legs, and running hard when it didn’t.
Freya Kemp also deserves a lot of credit for holding her nerve, and resisting the temptation to play the big shot which could have been her… and the Vipers… downfall. Given that there wasn’t a lot of batting to come, her 32 off 35 balls was almost as important as Windsor’s innings.
It so nearly wasn’t to be for the Vipers today. Josie Groves looked to have turned the game with 3 wickets in 8 balls, including the two set batters, the Georgia’s Elwiss and Adams. Quite how Groves got the ball to flutter like the first butterfly of summer, past the bat of Georgia Adams, I’ll never know. Possibly Groves won’t either. It looked set to be her day, and I even had the headline ready – Get On The Grovey Train – a much better headline than the one you’ve just clicked on too!
Groves didn’t deserve to be on the losing side today. Neither did Grace Ballinger who opened the bowling with more dots than the morse code – 5 overs in the powerplay, 3 maidens, and just two runs. Nor did Marie Kelly, who has been on the wrong end of the result in all 3 domestic finals this season.
It has been a cruel summer indeed for Blaze, who headed the table in the Charlotte Edwards Cup, and were at the top of the ladder in the RHF Trophy until literally the very last moments of the season, with Vipers overtaking them by a cat’s whisker on Net Run Rate in the final round of games in the group stages.
So the Vipers juggernaut thunders on. They lost games this summer, most notably to Sunrisers in the season-opener at the Ageas back in April. But when it mattered, they dug deep, and never more so than today. We’ve made a choice in cricket – the “winner” isn’t the best team through the season, as it is in football, where the league rules all – it is the team which handles the pressure of the big moments at the climax. And once again, that was the Southern Vipers – in 2023, cricket belongs to them.
OPINION: ‘Equal pay for equal play’ – what Birmingham council can tell us about the risk of unintended consequences
By Andy Frombolton
The ECB’s recent announcement of equal match fees for the England women’s team was widely welcomed as a positive step towards genuine reward parity.
The accompanying statements focussed on principles of equality / morality, and the purpose of this article is not to question this rationale, but to consider some possible consequences.
Absent investors with a long-term viewpoint (e.g., the original IPL franchisees), the fundamental concept that the total amount which any sport can pay its players / officials will be capped by the revenue it generates is both obvious and uncontentious (hence footballers earn more than cricketers who earn more than netball players who earn more than shot-putters) i.e., popularity determines pay. It could be argued therefore that it is dissonant to subsequently argue that within a particular sport male and female players should be paid equally, i.e., reward need not be linked to the value which the same free market assigns to each team’s respective endeavours. The principal counter argument is that the women’s game has been denied the opportunity to develop its own revenue stream (recognising that it is pure conjecture what the potential market might be).
The ECB’s statement acknowledged that the ‘investment’ [i.e., higher fees] is made “ahead of revenues” or, to be more blunt, the additional expenditure must come from the ECB’s existing revenue streams. TV deals – the major source of income – are fixed until the end of 2028 for domestic games and 2031 for ICC events and the value of Metro Bank’s ‘long term’ sponsorship of women’s cricket was agreed before this announcement. Ticket price sensitivity for the women’s game is not well understood and there has to be a concern that higher prices could adversely impact the excellent progress in increasing attendances suggesting that there is limited scope for increasing gate receipts in the short term.
So, if there’s no more money overall, then paying increased match fees now (whilst also gradually increasing base salaries) must necessitate cuts elsewhere. But to what? The ECB has remained silent on this matter. Cuts to the ECB’s staff? Cuts to marketing budgets? Cuts to coaching? Cuts to the support it provides to grass roots cricket? Or cuts to the women’s game beneath the professional level (as if the vital county game could be less loved)? There will be immediate and ongoing consequences.
However, these risks are dwarfed by the implications of implementing a reward structure which is primarily driven by legal principles of equality. At which point we need to go back to 2012 to consider the (seemingly-unrelated) story concerning Birmingham council mentioned in the article’s title. To recap, the council was taken to court by female employees claiming sex discrimination in respect of pay (simplistically, the council paid male workers, such as refuse collectors, different bonuses to female workers, such as care assistants or cleaners, despite them being employed on the same grade). N.B. This is not to directly equate this situation to male and female cricketers in terms of their respective skills nor to argue that the Birmingham decision was wrong, but to look at what happened next.
Firstly, expert legal advice had been that backdated claims could only be made within 6 months, but the Supreme Court unexpectedly ruled 6 years. Secondly, although the original claim was made by just 175 women, the ruling extended to anyone in the same position. Subsequently, tens of thousands of new claimants came forward. Despite having already paid out over a billion pounds in claims the council’s current equal pay liability is estimated to be in the region of £650-760m (a sum equivalent to its annual budget) and a few weeks ago it issued at Section 114 notice (akin to becoming bankrupt) principally, although not entirely, due to its inability to meet its liabilities for equal pay. The consequences for Birmingham residents in respect of any non-mandatory services will be rapid and brutal.
Returning to cricket, no former women England cricketers have announced a claim for back pay – but there’s probably a lawyer ready to argue the case. The ECB, having equalised match fees, has also announced a timetable to equalise base salaries, but these timings might easily be forced by events outside of their control in other sports. For instance, the Scottish Football Association (SFA) has just settled a claim with its women’s team regarding equal pay and equivalent benefits to the men in respect of training facilities, hotels and travel, kit, medical and nutritional resources.
Had the case gone ahead and been lost by the SFA, a legal precedent would have been set that would have had wide-ranging consequences for all sports. In the subsequent press announcements by the Chief Executive there were also interesting allusions to the claimants having possibly accepted elements of the reward/revenue argument: “We must now look forward with a shared goal: to return to major tournaments, working together to bring success on the field that will in turn encourage broadcasters and rights holders to do more to bridge the value gap that remains the biggest obstacle on the journey to equality within the women’s game globally.”
The issue is that the ECB’s position hasn’t settled the debate, it’s catalysed it. Which other groups else might have a claim? Equality legislation doesn’t just cover sex, it also covers other characteristics such as disability and age, so the same arguments which have been powerfully deployed to underpin the women’s claim must surely also apply to the disability teams (since they too have ECB contracts)? But why not also to the various age teams? (They don’t have contracts, but is this ageist?) The potential list is a long one.
Where will the money come from then?
It would have been possible to design a reward structure which provided equality in those key non-pay areas covered by the SFA claim and gave commitments regarding promotion and marketing of the women’s game, but also included a (significant) element of reward being based on market-determined value. (Pending the time when tv rights and sponsorship can be marketed and sold separately there are objective ways of calculating a fair revenue split.). Such an arrangement would have ensured that the ECB’s total pay and reward bill was managed, but this opportunity has now passed.
The clear end state must be that the women’s game has control (and also responsibility) for its destiny. Player reward would then be an issue for the women’s game alone – determined not by seeking an equitable share of a pooled pot but by the realities of stand-alone revenue generation. As I’ve noted in previous articles, no one can know what this might look like although any comparisons with pay and reward in the men’s game would be moot (although initial baseline (quantum) expectations will have been set by the current ECB deal).
‘Equality of opportunity’ is something which everyone should be able to agree on, but similarly everyone needs to recognise that it’s not the same as ‘equality of outcome’.
The ECB seems to have implemented a policy without adequately consideration as to how to control it. The danger illustrated by the Birmingham situation is that what begins as a contained, fair and reasonable argument can, and in this instance is quite likely to, spiral in unpredictable and exponential directions; each new claim building on the last.
The players might be happy, the PCA might be happy, fans of equality might be happy. But will this victory be both fleeting and pyrrhic? For the sake of the game we all love, let’s hope not.
The CRICKETher Weekly – Episode 182
This week:
- Raf tells Parliament how to fix women’s sport
- Sunrisers shine & Diamonds decline in the RHF
- We get cross about the lack of a Blaze home ground for the RHF Eliminator
- England v Sri Lanka ODIs reviewed
- What next for Bess Heath?
ENGLAND v SRI LANKA: 3rd ODI – iCharlie
A typical score in a normal, 50-over ODI between the ICC Championship sides is 245. Crudely adjusted for a 31-over game, a par score today would have been 152. England had more than that after 17 overs, and finished on 273-8, which would have been a decent outing in a full 50-over game.
In truth, 31 overs is more like an extended T20 than a shortened ODI, and England treated it as such. Nat Sciver-Brunt hit the fastest hundred ever by an English woman in an ODI, and Maia Bouchier played admirably fearlessly for her 95. I’m normally a paid-up member of the No One “Deserves” a Hundred club, but I’m temporarily resigning my membership here to say that today The Mighty Bouch Deserved a Hundred!
England got off to a shaky start, scoring just 28-2 in the 6-over powerplay, but then Sciver-Brunt and Bouchier exploded, rocketing along at nearly 12 runs per over during the Early Middle and Middle phases. Sri Lanka’s bowlers had no answers. We talk about players “milking” singles sometimes in long-form cricket; but here NSB and Bouch were basically milking boundaries, finding the rope 33 times between them.
At one stage 300 was a possibility, but the run rate fell off a bit in the late middle phase, and it was actually only after NSB and Bouch were dismissed that it went up again, as England’s late middle order continued in T20 fashion – sacrificing 6 wickets in the final phase but getting the run rate back over 8 again.
Bess Heath had license to have a bit of a bash, and grabbed 21 off 14 balls on debut, though there was a certain inevitability about her being caught off a slog-sweep on the boundary out towards cow corner – Sri Lanka had planted not one but two catchers there for a reason! It would be unfair to say that Heath is one-dimensional – she brought out a couple of other shots today, including a reverse slog-sweep – but she needs to watch how Nat Sciver-Brunt plays to take her game forwards into 3 dimensions over the next couple of years.
Now… having just spent several paragraphs raving about England’s batting, I’m about to say something controversial. NSB shouldn’t have been Player of the Match. Hundreds might not quite be two-a-penny, but they are pretty common these days – there have been 15 tons scored for England in the past 5 years. In that time there have been just four 5fers. With bowlers only permitted to bowl a maximum of 20% of an innings, grabbing a 5fer is a much more impressive, and consequently rarer, achievement.
So… yes… I’m saying it: Charlie Dean should have been Player of the Match for her 5fer.
They were proper Off-Spinner’s Wickets too – Dean doesn’t get a lot of turn, but she does get some, and she showed today that you don’t need a lot if you land the ball consistently in the right spot. In life generally, if you keep asking the same question over and over, you’ll not only annoy people, but you’ll likely get the same answer. But spin bowling is a bit of an exception to that rule – you ask the question… then you ask it again… then you ask it again… then you get the answer you want, as a catch is nicked to the keeper or back into your own leaping hands, or the ball shimmies through the gate and onto off stump.
Lauren Filer also picked up another 3fer and a Player of the Series award of a bottle of “I Definitely Can Believe It’s Not Champagne But They Sponsor Us, So… Yer”. Player of the Series was nominated by the Sky Sports comms team, and I can see why Charles Dagnall likes Filer – he doubtless sees something of himself in her – tall and quick and “a bit ‘ard”. But the jury is still out for me. How she fares in India will be a key test, if England are trying to build a team to have a shot at the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh next October. And if she does well and proves me wrong, I’ll be the first to stand up and say it.
And with that, another international summer ends. England have had their ups and downs; but they finish it on a positive note – with 5 more ICC Championship points in the bag, and only denied a 6th by the weather in Northampton, when it would have taken a miracle of saintly proportions for Sri Lanka to have salvaged the game if the rain hadn’t intervened to do so for them.
Perhaps even more importantly, England have started to rebuild for the future. They haven’t found all the combinations yet, and the captaincy succession remains an issue in the shorter term, though it becomes increasingly clear that Grace Scrivens is the answer a little further down the line. But under Jon Lewis they have taken steps they didn’t take under Lisa Keightley, and that is really the story of this summer – the one which would be keeping me awake at night if I was an Australian looking at the next ten years.
THE HUNDRED: Reflections on the Women’s Hundred
By Andy Frombolton
Trends in team scoring
Welsh Fire twice set a new record for the highest first innings score in the women’s Hundred. There were 5 scores above 150 (compared to 7 in 2022 and just 2 in 2021) and 2 under 100 (compared to 3 in both 2022 and 2021)
However, the average (mean) 1st innings score was 129 (one and ‘a bit’ runs higher than 2022), which was disappointing for advocates of longer boundaries (which were seen at most grounds this year, although not always at Cardiff). The argument ran than bigger boundaries would address the binary “1 or 4” scenario which small dimensions impose on many batters without adversely impacting boundary hitting.
In this year’s tournament 55.6% of all runs came from boundaries (46.1% 4s and 9.5% 6s) compared to 57.7% last year (47.6% 4s, 10.1% 6s); so, whilst the second part of the theory was proved correct, the hoped-for increase in 1s and 2s didn’t materialise. Having watched every game there wasn’t any single explanation – a general lack of game awareness (many potential 1s and 2s weren’t taken), poor batting (inability to work the ball into gaps) and/or fitness levels all contributed.
Men’s and women’s scores compared
There are many differences between the men’s and women’s game and it doesn’t follow that scores (or their composition) should be the same. Nevertheless, comparisons can be useful if they either draw out systemic differences or alternatively if they highlight areas where the women’s game can seek to improve.
Stop hitting the ball in the air!
Total sixes hit were 111 (102 in 2022; 91 in 2021) and the biggest hitters in the women’s game, such as Smith (top with 8), Devine and Dottin can clear any boundary. But only 9 batters hit more than five 6s; up from 6 last year (102 6s) and 4 (91) in 2021.
For comparison, the men hit 355 6s and 28 male batters hit 5 or more 6s, the top 2 both hitting 17.
165 women batters were out ‘caught’ by fielders other than the keeper i.e., there were 1.5 dismissals ‘caught’ by a fielder other than the keeper for each 6. (This isn’t to say that every batter who’s out ‘caught’ is trying to hit a 6 but it is a useful proxy.) 214 men batters were out ‘caught’ by fielders other than the keeper i.e., 0.6 dismissals caught in the field for each 6 hit.
Simplistically, the men hit 3.5x more 6s than the women and the women lose 2.5x more wickets for each 6 hit which leads to a fairly obvious conclusion …
… those women batters who are able to clear the boundary should carry on but, on a pure risk:reward basis, the vast majority would be better advised to eschew aerial shots.
Boundary hitting – the impact on team scores
For this next piece of analysis, we need to make 2 assumptions (i) bowling standards were the same in both tournaments (i.e., male and female bowlers bowled the same percentage of ’bad’ or ‘boundary’ balls), and (ii) any ball that could theoretically be hit for a 6 could instead be hit for a 4.
As already mentioned, there were 111 6s in the women’s tournament and 355 in the men’s. However fewer balls in total were bowled in the women’s tournament so, on a pro rata basis, the men would have hit 329 6s in the same number of balls i.e., 218 more than the women (= -1308 runs impact).
The women however hit more 4s than the men – 811 vs 734. Making the same adjustment for the lower number of balls bowled, the men would have hit just 680 4s (i.e. 131 fewer); meaning that 60% of the 218 ‘bad’ balls which weren’t hit for 6 were still sent to the boundary (= +524 impact)
Finally, you also need to consider what happens to balls which aren’t hit to the boundary. These went for 0.75 runs per ball in the men’s games and 0.68 in the women’s; meaning that the remaining 87 ‘bad’ balls which weren’t hit for a boundary would go for 59 runs.
The net runs difference would thus be …
(-1308 runs in 6s) + (524 runs in 4s) + (59 runs off balls not hit to the boundary) = 725 runs.
… which equates to approx. 12 runs per innings.
Top run scorers and batting strike rates
What could teams do to increase scores?
| Men | Women | |||
| Batters with the most runs | Runs / % of all runs | SR | Runs / % of all runs | SR |
| 1-8 | 1972 / 23.5% | 155 | 2074 / 29.4% | 143 |
| 9-16 | 1469 / 17.5% | 155 | 1307 / 18.6% | 119 |
| 17-24 | 1119 / 13.3% | 139 | 1027 / 14.6% | 120 |
| 25-32 | 1024 / 12.2% | 144 | 810 / 11.5% | 120 |
| 33-40 | 841 / 10.0% | 137 | 607 / 7.3% | 117 |
| 41-48 | 654 / 7.8% | 126 | 472 / 6.7% | 121 |
| 49-56 | 484 / 5.8% | 126 | 319 / 4.5% | 111 |
Interestingly, the top 24 batters in each tournament collectively score very nearly the same number of runs.
But this dramatically illustrates the disproportionate reliance of the average women’s team on their top one or two batters. In men’s cricket, a team can lose a couple of top order wickets and this hardly impacts their SR wheras in the women’s game, after the top 1 or 2 batters it becomes almost largely irrelevant which batter is in since typical SRs hover around 120 regardless.
The route to higher scores …
More 1s and 2s. Game awareness needs to improve. It might be argued that having more fielders in the ring makes it harder to score singles, but the counter-argument is that there should be more 2s if balls are hit through the gaps thus requiring an inner fielder to turn and chase or interception by an outer fielder (each of whom has to cover a greater percentage of the outfield than in the men’s game).
On average women’s teams lost only 5.7 wickets in the first innings (a number which has actually gone down each year of the Hundred) and reached their halfway score at 52 balls (i.e., there was rarely a surge at the end of an innings). The main explanation is that most teams are far too reliant on their top few batters who thus daren’t risk exploiting the powerplay because the consequences for their team’s score are too big if they get out early.
I floated one idea last year how teams could accommodate the realities of top batter dependency and go harder during the powerplay if they utilised ‘attritable openers’ – a role with no equivalent in the men’s game – whose only job is to score [typically a small number of] runs very quickly without consideration for their wickets. This could be bowlers ‘with a good eye’ or the lower-middle order batters who currently get no/little chance to bat. With more chance of facing ‘pace on the ball’ and one less outfielder to beat this could present huge opportunities for anyone willing to take on such a role.
Note that 9 times this year teams came within 10 runs of a successful run chase (5 times chasing 137 or less). If chasing teams could marginally increase the run rate off non-boundary balls and deployed a couple of attritable pinch hitters with SRs of 150+, the combined effect of these 2 minor changes should change the result in most of these games. Conversely, a team batting first and using the same tactics could post totals beyond most oppositions far more regularly.
And what should bowling teams do?
As already noted if you take out most team’s top 2 batters, the subsequent batters are unlikely to hurt you with their SR and hence the principal task is no longer taking wickets but restricting the runs.
So which bowlers had the best SR?
| S Munro |
| AC Kerr |
| LF Higham |
| S Glenn |
| GL Adams |
| FMK Morris |
| MLL Taylor |
| S Ecclestone |
| GA Elwiss |
| M Kapp |
| KA Levick |
| S Ismail |
| EL Arlott |
| R MacDonald-Gay |
| KL Gordon |
| LCN Smith |
(NB Munro and Taylor both played 2 games.)
And then consider then the 16 bowlers with the lowest ER.
| M Kapp |
| S Glenn |
| FMK Morris |
| KL Gordon |
| HL Baker |
| S Ecclestone |
| LCN Smith |
| CE Dean |
| KA Levick |
| GL Adams |
| S Ismail |
| K Moore |
| EA Burns |
| SAE Smale |
| A Wellington |
| LF Higham |
Notice anything? Whether you want to take wickets or stifle runs, ‘slow is the way to go’ (a tactic which served Sri Lanka well in the T20s). If the women’s game is to evolve its own distinct tactics then unless you have a tall speedster or one skilled in variations / swing then abandoning the convention of having two or three seamers in your squad is a logical step. Why not have one fast bowler and 5-6 slow bowlers?
Birmingham Phoenix or Manchester Originals – please feel free to adopt any/all of these strategies next year.
The CRICKETher Weekly – Episode 181
This week:
- England v Sri Lanka – the T20 series post-mortem
- The return of Meg Lanning
- England A to tour New Zealand
- Shocking disparities in pay for women umpires
ENGLAND v SRI LANKA: 1st ODI – The Three Three-Fers
England avenged their defeat to Sri Lanka in the T20 series with a thumping win in the first ODI at Chester-Le-Street, taking just 18 overs to overhaul Sri Lanka’s 106 all out.
It was a win created by England’s new-look bowling attack – not just in terms of the two debutantes, Lauren Filer and Mahika Gaur, but also leg-spinner Sarah Glenn, who has been very-much a T20 specialist in her England career thus far, having played only played a handful of ODIs whilst racking-up 50 T20 caps. All 3 finished up with 3-fers, with Glenn doing so at an economy rate of just 2.5.
Gaur and Filer make an interesting combination because they are such very different propositions for a batter. Apart from the occasional (largely ineffective) short one, Gaur aims to keep the stumps in play every delivery; whereas Filer is looking to bowl shorter and wider, with a little bit more pace to try to hurry the batter into a mistake. Whist the vast majority of Gaur’s deliveries were hitting the stumps; the bulk of Filer’s were missing.
Both proved effective today against a Sri Lankan line-up whose confidence seemed to rapidly drain away once Gaur had dismissed Chamari with a ball the pitched on middle and danced off the seam, away from the left-hander, to hit off. Two overs later, Gaur proved it was no fluke, bowling a very similar ball to Anushka, with pitched on the right-hander’s off stump and dived back through the gate to hit middle. Brought back with Sri Lanka 9 down in the 30th over, Mahika pulled the trick off a third time to wrap-up the innings.
The pattern here of course is that it is one trick; but it is a very good trick that ought to make even the best batters wary. There will be answers – getting forward being the most obvious – but that seriously limits the batter’s options, and it definitely something some will find it difficult to adjust to, having become accustomed to playing late, as you can usually do in the women’s game.
Filer’s tactics are much more overtly aggressive – with that extra pace and lift, she’s looking to bully the batter into making an error, and that worked today against Sri Lanka’s middle order, as it did a couple of times in her only other international appearance prior to today, in the Test against Australia earlier this summer. But she needs to develop more of an armoury, or she is going to get worked-out by the top players, who will just wait of anything slightly off line and then crash it to the fence; and given that her line strays a fair bit, that’s 8-12 an over she’s going to go for. (Even today she was England’s most expensive bowler.)
Mahika will get the headlines – people love an ingénue – but Glenn was really the pick of the bowlers today. It is a big call to play her as the only specialist spinner in Ecclestone’s absence – most would have done with Charlie Dean, especially as she offers a little bit more of a solid batting option.
(Though I guess Alice Capsey might take issue with that, arguing that she too is a specialist spinner, and it does look like the plan was for Capsey to play as a “proper” all-rounder and bowl 10 overs today.)
Glenn delivered though, bowling with pinpoint accuracy and working her arsenal of top-spinners to deceive the batters on bounce, meaning playing across the line to her is a risky move, especially because she is attacking the stumps, so if you miss… she hits – either stumps or pad.
With the bowlers having done their job to such effect, all England’s batters needed to do was not do anything stupid, and the game would be won in time for an early tea, which is pretty-much the way it went down.
Emma Lamb and Tammy Beaumont played painstaking cricket for the first 5 overs, and I did wonder if somebody had dared them to try to win it in 50 overs; but then in the 6th over, Tamy flipped the switch and we were suddenly hurtling along. Tammy got to 32 before she was dismissed – it looked like she hadn’t noticed the slip that had been put in for the new bowler, sending a catch straight to her. Emma Lamb then actually did do something stupid – trying to play a T20 shot, when there is a reason she has played just one T20 for England!
Heather Knight looked much more in control than she does in T20s these days. Somehow knowing that she doesn’t have to go at a run a ball, and she can actually leave the odd one, allows her to relax and… go at a run a ball! (It makes no sense, but then not a lot does if you stop to think about it!) She might have a trip to the headmaster’s study though, after arguing with Sue Redfern on her way back after being given out caught behind (fairly, as far I could tell from the replays on the big screen) and then running out of time on the review.
It didn’t matter much though – England only needed a handful by that point, and they got them with no further alarms.
So, the order of the universe is restored, at least in terms of ODIs, and England are back on top, with some exciting new bowlers to give us all hope. If they can do the same again twice next week, the T20s will all be forgotten, if they aren’t already. We shall see…
ENGLAND v SRI LANKA: 3rd T20 – Game, Set & Series To Sri Lanka
Prior to this match, England had played 184 T20 internationals, and had been bowled out in just 15 of them. They’d only been bowled out in consecutive matches twice – in 2011 (both to Australia) and 2018 (to Australia and India). Add Sri Lanka in 2023 to that list now.
And it goes without saying that when you’re bowled out, you almost always lose the game in international T20 cricket – England haven’t won a T20 in which they were bowled out since 2011, back in the days when 120 was a pretty good score. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t change this evening in Derby.
England were pretty abject from the first ball, when Danni Wyatt prodded a catch to cover as if she was still taking throw-downs before the start of game. Alice Capsey looked like she might be in the mood; but within 2 overs the only “mood” she was in was a stroppy one, having been hung out to dry by Maia Bouchier.
Bouch needed to make up for it big-time and she played some sumptuous strokes along the floor to get herself a start. Her 23 off 18 balls ended up being England’s highest score, but it could have been more, and it should have been more. There was no need to suddenly go aerial, and she didn’t get anything like enough power through the ball – sending it straight to the fielder on the long-on boundary.
And it was all downhill from there for England. Sri Lanka bowled really well at Chelmsford in the 2nd T20; but here England were largely the authors of their own tragedies. Heather Knight played a poor shot; Amy Jones got Amy Jonesed; Freya Kemp only has one way to play, and tonight wasn’t the night for it; and suddenly England’s tail was exposed again.
Sarah Glenn and Dani Gibson got England to a slightly more respectable total than Chelmsford, with a bit of smash ‘n’ grab; but they aren’t the players who we should be looking to to ever do much more than that. Sri Lanka’s bowlers kept pressing, and got their reward – bowling the hosts out with 6 balls left out in the middle.
I guess England’s only hope was to take early wickets and hope Sri Lanka collapsed; so they stuck to Plan A and opened the bowling with Mahika Gaur and Kate Cross. But Plan A didn’t work. Cross’ first over was the most expensive of the match; and Gaur’s second was the second-most costly. By the end of the 4th over of the chase, Sri Lanka needed under 5 an over, and you could probably have started the car at that point.
Chamari was imperious again, and was rightly rewarded with the Player of the Series gong at the end of the game. Sri Lanka remain awfully dependent on her – you do get the feeling that if she’d had gone early, a chase of 117 might have been too much – but she nonetheless left the rest of the lineup with work to do when she holed-out for 44. But what she had done was scored those 44 runs so quickly that the rest could just knock it around for singles and still win easily. And England had no answer to that – they kept an extra fielder in the ring for most of the latter stages, but there were still enough little gaps to be found by the Sri Lankans, who knew they didn’t need to go huge.
Sri Lanka’s patience was their biggest asset after Chamari’s dismissal. Harshitha managed the chase brilliantly, keeping things bubbling-over – they needed under 4 an over, and ticked along at exactly 5 from the 8th over on, to win the game with 18 balls to spare. Again, it wasn’t quite the margin of victory they’d enjoyed at Chelmsford, but it is still a decent win in this form of the game, and it’s not like there were any prizes for Net Run Rate anyway!
England’s bowling wasn’t awful, but it needed to be brilliant if it was going to rescue such a poor batting display, and it wasn’t. The quicks looked toothless, and the spinners didn’t trouble the Sri Lankans too much either, because it is hard to trouble batters who only need to chip it around at less than a run a ball.
A year ago, England scraped a win in the T20 series against India, with more than a little help from the autumnal weather (which the Indians found very uncomfortable) and then went on to lose the ODI series 3-0.
This time around, it is the T20 series which they’ve lost, with still the chance to redeem themselves in the ODIs. England are expected to have Nat Sciver-Brunt back for the ODIs, with Tammy Beaumont coming in as well, to open in place of Wyatt. That will give them a bit more backbone, and hopefully a bit more balance – when every batter is a “see ball/ hit ball” type, when it goes right, it can go very very right, as it did at Hove; but when it goes wrong, it tends to go quite badly wrong, as we’ve seen now at Chelmsford and Derby. These are ODIs which England need to win, with ICC Championship points on the line. Anything less than 3-0 to England and questions will be asked.
REPORT: Cheshire Women’s League T20 Finals Day
By Martin Saxon
Senior Knockout Cup: Didsbury Swordettes 1st XI v Nantwich Vipers 1st XI
Nantwich became the first club to retain this trophy since Chester Boughton Hall in 2009 as they completed a nailbiting one-run win.
The Vipers were pegged back in the first eight overs via economical spells of 0-12 and 2-13 respectively from Hannah Jones and Hannah Marshall but did well for the next 11 overs as Grace Michell played the anchor role and Hannah Bratt supplied the most eye-catching cameo.
Didsbury captain Roshini Prince-Navaratnam brought herself on for the final over and when she conceded just one run, many spectators thought this could be a crucial contribution, with her side now needing just 88 to win.
This very promising Nantwich attack have been bowling sides out cheaply in all competitions this year though, and they recovered superbly after Prince-Navaratnam and Kashmira Shinde took Didsbury to 35-1 after four overs. Bethan Robinson and Eleanor Sinker were among those recovering from expensive first overs to bowl three more miserly overs.
Didsbury eventually needed six from the final over, but a superbly composed effort from Izzi Pearson ensured they managed just a single from each of the first four balls, before two dot balls with a run out from each completed the match.
T20 Divisional Competition: Didsbury Swordettes 1st XI v Chester Boughton Hall Deemons 1st XI
Didsbury won this competition for the first time, and after two last ball finals in 2021 and another earlier in the day, they won here by a slightly more comfortable 12 runs.
After their disappointment earlier in the day, it initially seemed that it might be a double disappointment for the South Manchester club, who were 50-4 after 13 overs. Ali Cutler bowled four overs for just 11 runs, but this was surpassed by Gemma Rose’s 2-7, with both wickets being caught and bowled, the first of which was a truly spectacular effort.
It took Hannah Jones (38 not out from 30 balls) and Hannah Marshall (32 from 40) to get the scoreboard moving as they more than doubled the score in the remaining seven overs, taking their side to 106.
Chester also scored relatively slowly in the first two-thirds of the innings, but if Didsbury were already preparing to celebrate, they were given a fright by Rose, who cleared the boundary twice in her cameo of 22 – had she stayed a little longer, the result could have been different.
Jones returned to bowl the last of her four overs in the 19th over, conceding just three here and only five in total in her four overs. The 20th over was the last of three excellent overs of death bowling from Zara Matthews.
Their dream of being the first club since Chester in 2013 to complete a treble in Cheshire women’s cricket died earlier in the day. Didsbury, however, will still complete a double if they secure at least seven points from Sunday’s league match and clinch the League Championship in the process.
Development Knockout Cup: Chester Boughton Hall Deemons 2nd XI v Nantwich Vipers 2nd XI
Chester ensured they would be taking home at least one trophy after a relatively comfortable win in their first final of the Development Cup, the competition for division three and four teams.
Chester took regular wickets from the off, but Nantwich’s scoring rate remained good. Only when Flo Seymour reached the retirement score did the innings fall away. Lucy McCarten and Ava Rogers both finished with three wickets.
Chester knocked off 38 of the 91 they required via the opening stand between Ffion Jones and Holly Cooke, with the pair building the innings well and gradually accelerating at the right time. Liv Fuller’s 20 not out completed the chase with 21 balls still remaining.
Hale Barns CC was a superb host venue, and the League also extends its thanks to umpires Chris Moore, Duane Jones, John Bone and Jeff Langham.
CRICKETher 