For the written press, the Rose Ageas Utilita Bowl is the best of grounds, and it is the worst of grounds. The press box, embedded inside the luxurious Hilton Hotel, is spacious and comfortable, with a panoramic view of the field of play. The media catering is exactly what you’d expect from a 4-star hotel – delicious and plentiful, with cakes and puddings to die for. (Honestly if you ate them every day, you probably would die for it… due to the ensuing heart attack!)

But, there are buts! Because the hotel is set well back behind the stands and the promenade, you are a loooong way from the middle. Plus to prevent the room turning into a greenhouse in the sun, the windows have been tinted. The combination of the two means it can be quite difficult to see the ball, and you have to sort of “imagine” where it probably is by the actions of the players. (At least… you do when your eyes are as old as mine are!) And like Lord’s, the press box itself is “sealed”, so you never really feel part of the action. (Lord’s have recently tried to counter this by pumping in sound from the TV effects mic, but for me this actually makes it worse, a-la “uncanny valley“.)

As a playing facility though, it is definitely up there with the best – the outfield is like a carpet, with great drainage, which is useful when you’ve had a bucketful of overnight rain. The one slightly funky aspect is the asymmetry of the outfield when it is set up for these internationals – or perhaps more accurately, the symmetry of it, as the issue stems from the fact that the field of play is pretty-much a perfect circle. This means the straight boundaries are extremely short, but the square boundaries are massive.

Yes, there is some perspective going on in the photo above, but the square boundaries are nonetheless 50% longer than the straight. This means you have to pick your shots quite carefully – play a slog sweep well behind square, and the ball is racing to the rope; play it in front of square and you need to be hitting it a long, long way to clear the outfielders. Maia Bouchier of all people should know this, having played a lot of matches here for Vipers over the past few years, but after England got off to a very fast start, she was caught in just that trap – holing out to a catch by Georgia Plimmer at deep midwicket.

Danni Wyatt and Nat Sciver-Brunt both showed the way to play here, NSB focusing on the sweeps and the reverses, and Wyatt on the cuts through backward point, allowing them to accelerate through the middle overs as New Zealand’s bowlers struggled to consistently bowl to their fields. Both were eventually dismissed though – and you’ll never guess how? That’s right! (You were obviously paying attention!) Caught at deep midwicket! To be fair, they’d given themselves the platform by that stage to take risks, and it meant that England’s pinch hitters* could come in at the end and drive a few more big nails into the coffin. Freya Kemp and Alice Capsey both came in hitting boundaries from the off at a Strike Rate of 150+ to get England over the 200 mark.

(*Yes – this is the correct sense in which to use the term “pinch hitter” borrowed from baseball – someone who comes in at the end, not the beginning!)

Except… no… that’s not quite what happened, is it? Kemp did come in to whack 26 off 17 balls; but it was Heather Knight who walked in at the death instead of Capsey. Knight faced 4 balls but never looked like finding the boundary and so England missed reaching 200 by a frustrating 3 runs. Did it make any difference at the end of the day? Of course not – not today. But one day it might.

Nonetheless, 197 is still a massive total in women’s T20 cricket – the Ghost is a typical score in T20 internationals between the Championship sides in the past few years, and England left it for dust. New Zealand’s highest ever successful chase in T20s is 174, achieved last year against South Africa; so they were going to have to bat out of their skins to get anywhere near England.

England had earlier opted to play not just three but four spinners, one of whom (Linsey Smith) regularly opens the bowling for her region at this very ground; so if you are going to play four spinners, you have to back them… right? To open the bowling, right?

Nope – apparently not! Instead, England opened with Nat Sciver-Brunt and Freya Kemp, neither of whom are really proper opening bowlers, and both of whom are coming back from injuries which mean they’ve had very restricted bowling opportunities in the past few months. The 5 overs Kemp bowled for Vipers last week were the first she has bowled all season, and it showed. With her shoulder strapped up more heavily than Hannibal Lecter under interrogation, her opening overs were very, very ordinary – she has obviously lost a yard of pace, which she might one day get back, but right now she shouldn’t be opening the bowling for her club side, let alone England. Though at least her opening overs were better than her final ones, which were just quite bad bad. Why would you flog her like this, when other bowlers had overs remaining? Answers on a postcard to H Knight, 12 Wendy Way, Somerset. (That’s not her actual address (I hope!) but you might as well send it there as to her actual home – she isn’t going to read it either way!)

Again… it didn’t really matter, because when the spinners had finally got the ball in their hands in that post-powerplay phase, they’d taken New Zealand down. Sarah Glenn took 3 in an over – tying Suzie Bates in a knot, then ghosting one beautifully through Maddy Green, before Sophie Devine gifted her the third, caught at long on – and it was time to start the car. Jess Kerr had some fun, making a quick 38 off 26, but there was no pressure at that point, and she was dropped more often than a plate at a Greek wedding along the way.

England’s fielding generally was half-baked, to put it politely; but it sums up the day to repeat that it didn’t matter, because they’d hit a bag of runs, and the spinners had bowled well. But if England are looking for lessons on the road to the T20 World Cup, where there will be far harder games than this, they are there – it’s just a question of whether they will heed them.

England ground out a win in the foreshortened 3rd ODI at Bristol, despite an improved performance from New Zealand, who put 211 on the board in 42 overs, after having been bowled out for 150-odd in both the previous games in this series.

I choose my words carefully – it was an “improved” performance from the White Ferns, but not a “good” one. Accounting for the lost overs, a typical 1st innings score in an ODI between the ICC Championship sides in this “cycle” would be around 210, so 211 was average, both in the literal and figurative senses.

The mainstay of New Zealand’s innings was 57 from Melie Kerr. It was a solid knock yet again from Kerr, who is averaging nearly 50 with the bat in ODIs in the past couple of years; but I do feel that having her bat at 3 is a sign of the weakness of rather than strength in the New Zealand lineup – a Strike Rate today of just 70 meant that New Zealand were always going to struggle to get close to the kind of run-a-ball total that wins the big matches these days. It might seem harsh, but contrast it with the 3 big innings in England’s innings today, with Strike Rates of 90 (Nat Sciver-Brunt), 100 (Amy Jones) and 117 (Alice Capsey) – at the end of the day, those are the rates you need to be scoring at to win series and trophies in the professional era.

New Zealand’s key antagonist today was a rejuvenated Lauren Bell. Warming up on the outfield before the game, Bell looked fired-up; and as soon as she got the ball in her hand out in the middle, she looked like a different player to the one who has struggled of late. Instead of searching for new deliveries, she fell back to her old faithfuls – the in-swingers and in-duckers, and… what do you know… the results speak for themselves!

Bell’s opening spell was aggressive and conceded just 11 runs in 4 overs, without reward; but you knew a wicket was coming, and it came with a “Classic Bell” delivery in the 22nd over – an unplayable ball, which Sophie Devine in full flow could only parry onto her stumps. Another jewel of a ball did for Melie Kerr, who was beaten for pace; then at the death, Bell’s slower balls came out to flumox Izzy Gaze and Lauren Down, who holed-out in virtually identical fashion to Nat Sciver-Brunt at mid off. The bottom line: a first 5fer in professional cricket, at a decent Economy Rate of 4.11.

The only caveat on England’s bowling was that Charlie Dean and Sarah Glenn were clearly less effective without Ecclestone bowling at the other end – not that either were terrible; but having Ecclestone building the pressure in tandem really makes a difference, particularly to the wickets column today – Dean and Glenn bowling 13 overs, 79 runs for 0 wickets, between them.

England’s chase got off to an odd start. Tammy Beaumont basically walked after being given out LBW to a ball that looked in real-time to be sneaking down leg, and proved on replay to be not so much “sneaking” as “galavanting” past the leg stump. She should have reviewed. She should at least have considered reviewing. Then Heather Knight joined her back in the pavilion, having lumbered her way to 9 off 21 balls. I don’t want to labour the point on the captaincy, but I will just say this – if Grace Scrivens had come in for this game, and scored 9 off 21 balls, everyone would be pointing loudly at it as evidence that she wasn’t ready or up to it. Just sayin’!

Sophia Dunkley then played the exactly the kind of innings that got her dropped in the first place this summer, before Amy Jones, clearly still wearing her new reliable pants, put things back on track in partnership with The Marvellous Mrs Sciver-Brunt™ who just keeps finding ways of finding ways – England wouldn’t be half the team they are without her. The only question today was whether she could get to a record 10th ODI century before running out of time – it looked on at one point, but the clock was ticking and Alice Capsey did absolutely the right thing in not trying to do what Sciver-Brunt had done for Maia Bouchier in Worcester.

Sciver-Brunt herself is not really one to get fussed about centuries or records – she is the ultimate team player – but nonetheless, they are coming to her, and it can only be a matter of “when” not “if” she finally pulls clear of Charlotte Edwards and Tammy Beaumont, and closes in on Suzie Bates’s 13 ODI tons, and perhaps even Meg Lanning’s 15.

Ben Stokes reckons he was quoted slightly out of context by Fox Cricket on Twitter today.

But who needs context? We can say one thing tonight:

“Nat Sciver-Brunt will live forever in the memory of people who were lucky enough to witness her play cricket.”