In the press box for a women’s international, there is usually* at least one television screen showing the game, upon which somebody occasionally tries to turn the sound up to hear the commentary. I’m not a very assertive person generally, but on these occasions I find myself suddenly turning into one – strongly requesting that the commentary be turned off again because I find that it tends to bleed into what I write.

As a society we treat television with a reverence we once reserved only for altars, and when the commentators say something, the words turns to truth inside your brain like those of a priest.

Watching a series on the sofa at home however requires the commentary – silence is too weird and there is no option to just hear the ambient sounds of the game – so we are stuck with it. Words turning into truth: England bowled brilliantly; England batted brilliantly – they said it, so it must be true. And the scorecard reflects that: South Africa bowled out; and England winning with 75 million balls to spare.

South Africa 125 v England 128-1 #SAvENG 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2024-11-30T18:34:22.354Z

And yet… sometimes reality breaks through the veneer. Danni Wyatt-Hodge attempts a lofted drive over midwicket. It comes off the toe-end of the bat. “Wonderful batting,” screams the commentary. The ball plugs a few yards short of the boundary. “She might not quite have timed it, but…”

So was it “wonderful batting”? Even if she “might not quite have timed it”? Let’s ask Barack Obama!

“Wonderful batting… she might not quite have timed it, but…"

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2024-11-30T18:00:58.235Z

Thanks Barack – I agree!

I get that the job of the commentator is to apply lipstick, even when it’s a pig; but honestly – sometimes you wish they’d just admit that it’s a pig. Because this game was a pig. South Africa didn’t care; England didn’t care; nobody really cared. You could see from the reactions of the players – England didn’t really celebrate wickets or catches; South Africa shrugged and looked slightly sheepish as they collapsed first with bat and then with ball.

It doesn’t help when you go into a match missing so many of your match-winners. In the past couple of years, only 4 batters have won more than one T20 match for South Africa – i.e. been the top performer in a game South Africa won: Tazmin Brits (6 times); Laura Wolvaardt (5); Chloe Tryon (2); and Marizanne Kapp (2). Of those four, just one was playing today – Tryon; with Brits “rotated”, Wolvaardt unwell and Kapp rested, after playing in WBBL.

South Africa were never going to win this game, so you have to ask: what was even the point? Why were England there? If you are going to have a practice match, have a practice match. Put some cones out – go crazy! Everyone bats twice; one hand one bounce; jokers are wild! But please… don’t make the rest of us watch it, while the commentators pretend this pig is a princess.

I could say more – about how England bowled poorly; and batted little better.

Or… or…

I could go and have a beer and a pizza.

🍻 🍕

————–

* Yup – usually! (For a men’s international, there will always be a TV; but for the women’s matches it isn’t always the case, often because at the smaller grounds like Leicester we’ve been shuffled off into a hospitality suite which doesn’t have a Sky feed for the TV.)

For just the 4th time in over 200 T20 internationals, England posted a total of over 200 versus South Africa in Benoni. To put that in perspective, a typical 1st innings score in games between the 10 sides that competed in the recent T20 World Cup is 147 – a number England flew by in the 15th over of their onslaught.

England 204-4 v South Africa #SAvENG 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2024-11-27T17:32:06.091Z

The only thing that looked like potentially stopping England was when a floodlight cut out at the end of the 9th over, causing the umpires to suspend play for some minutes while power was restored. It appeared to be the result of a localised power cut – the drone camera showed the entire town apparently without power – a common fact of life in South Africa. When we were there for the World Cup last year, all of the grounds had industrial generators to provide backup power in these circumstances, so presumably one of these failed to start up when the grid went offline.

For South Africa, this was the 3rd time an opposition has hit 200+ against them, but the first time ever outside Somerset – the two previous occurrences having occurred on a single day in 2018, when first New Zealand (216) and then England (250) did the damage in a Tri-Series at the County Ground in Taunton.

The only time a side hitting over 200 has ever lost a women’s T20 international was when Hayley Matthews hit 132 to help West Indies overhaul 212 against Australia last year; and South Africa initially came out like a team who knew the odds were stacked against them, going at under a run-a-ball in the powerplay to reach 30-1.

Annerie Dercksen looked to inject a bit of impetus into South Africa’s chase, and with her and Laura Wolvaardt at the crease the hosts actually topped 10 runs per over in the post-powerplay early middle phase, before Dercksen discovered (as so many have before) that swiping across the line to Sarah Glenn is a dangerous game.

Even before Dercksen was dismissed for 24 off 15, the required rate was beginning to ratchet up, from just under 13 at the end of the 10th over to more than 18 at the end of the 15th; and although Tryon’s and de Klerk’s innings of 30 and 32* might look on paper to have been the more significant contributions, the pressure was well and truly off for them, with absolutely zero chance of South Africa getting anywhere near England’s total by that stage.

England 204-4 v South Africa 168-6 #SAvENG 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2024-11-27T19:08:26.341Z

Nonetheless, the fact that South Africa actually outscored England at the death is worth noting. Glenn aside, England’s bowling was scrappy – reflected in the fact that although England were the ones that scored 200, South Africa struck the two highest grossing overs of the game – 18 off Dean in the 10th, and 21 off Nat “Shiver” Brunt, as the South African commentator kept referring to her, in the 19th. Lauren Filer was wildly inconsistent, and Freya Kemp once again didn’t look like an international class bowler – something with which Heather Knight presumably agreed, because she didn’t give her another over after the first one went for 14.

Glenn though was at her gravity-defying best, taking all 4 wickets bowled by putting pressure on the stumps and using her limitations as a weapon – a bit of variation in pace and length; a bit of overspin – just enough to slide the ball past the batters when they were tempted to play across the line.

The award of Player of the Match to Glenn was perhaps an indication that England’s massive 1st innings total was given a significant boost by a poor South African performance with the ball and in the field. Danni Wyatt-Hodge’s partnership of 112 off 63 balls with Nat Sciver-Brunt would have been somewhat smaller if Wyatt hadn’t been dropped twice early doors – the Jafta chance behind the stumps would have been a spectacular take, but the Mlaba one of the boundary really should have been taken.

What England did do well was to relentlessly keep going towards the 200. Once Wyatt-Hodge was out would have been easy to retrench and slip back to 175/185; and with the first 5 balls of the 17th over having gone for 4 singles and a dot, the 200 was slipping away. But Sciver-Brunt wasn’t having any of it – stepping up and bashing the final delivery of the over for 6 to maintain the momentum. A useful cameo from Amy Jones, in the kind of situation where she excels – playing a short innings to put the cherry on the cake – sealed the deal for England’s batters; and as we’ve noted, the psychological barrier of 200 is a formidable one. It proved far too formidable for South Africa today.

A half century from England’s clockwork soldier – Nat Sciver-Brunt – got them over the line in the 1st T20, despite a team performance that was really little improved from their previous outing – the humiliating defeat to West Indies in their final group game of the World Cup last month.

Even so, England probably still wouldn’t have won it, were it not for a disastrous 15th over bowled by Ayanda Hlubi which cost 22 runs. How much must Laura Wolvaardt have been wishing she could have turned instead to Marizanne Kapp, who is being rested for this series having been playing for Melbourne Stars in WBBL?

South Africa 142-5 v England 143-6 #SAvENG 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2024-11-24T15:08:35.352Z

The trajectory of England’s innings was clearly heading for defeat going into that over, although to fair with NSB at the crease you never know.

South Africa 142-5 v England 143-6 #SAvENG 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2024-11-24T15:07:42.257Z

But at a stroke, they went from being slightly behind the rate, to well ahead of it, and with Sciver-Brunt ticking along like a Swiss clock England were able to see out the game with 4 balls to spare.

England had one other huge slice of luck at the death – Sciver-Brunt was hit on the pads by Nonkululeko Mlaba with ball tracking showing that the ball was hitting the stumps; but to South Africa’s frustration it was only just hitting, and “Umpire’s Call” came into play, so because the umpire had originally called it ‘Not Out’, it stayed that way.

I wasn’t previously a huge fan of “Umpire’s Call” but reading Daisy Christodoulou’s brilliant book on VAR in football has somewhat changed my mind on this – although it leads to decisions that are objectively “wrong” (like this one) it acts counterintuitively to defuse the tensions around marginal decisions that exist in football by prioritising the human element in close-cut calls.

The real piece of luck for England though is having Nat Sciver-Brunt in their team at all. With Meg Lanning semi-retired, and Ash Gardner becoming more and more a spin bowler who occasionally does something with the bat, is there any doubt whatsoever who the best player in world is right now?

Matches Won for England 2022-24

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2024-11-24T15:18:42.229Z

Since the start of 2022, NSB has won 15 games for England with the bat – 6 more than the next player – Alice Capsey, who was bizarrely dropped for this series… then recalled… then told she definitely wasn’t going to play… then asked to be ready to put on the wicket-keeping gloves if anything happened to Amy Jones today!

Yes, you read that correctly – a player who has never played as a wicket keeper in a professional match, was England’s backup option if the worst happened, after Bess Heath was put on a plane back to England with a broken thumb.

To be fair, this probably falls into the categories of both  ‘Unlikely’ and ‘Could Happen To Anyone’ – most teams don’t carry around a third keeper. But it does nonetheless feel very ‘England’ for this to have happened right now. They are all-but dead in the water, being kept afloat by one exceptional player.

The rest of the batting lineup didn’t so much drape themselves in glory as cover themselves in ketchup. Sophia Dunkley, who has apparently been told she has a free pass for this series, and Maia Bouchier, both got out trying to play flashy premeditated dinks, which were wholly unnecessary at that stage in the game, with predictable results. As Taylor Swift didn’t quite say: You play stupid shots; you lose stupid wickets.

#SAvENG 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2024-11-24T14:23:55.805Z

Heather Knight faced 4 balls, and honestly looked like she didn’t quite know what country she was in. Possibly because… she doesn’t quite know what country she’s in, having gone from the UAE to Australia to South Africa in the space of a month. International travel across time-zones is hard, and it gets harder as you get older (believe me!) but hopefully the money she got from her fly-past of WBBL was worth it.

And we haven’t even got to the bowling!

After the previous generation of England coaches worked so hard to turn Lauren Bell’s potential into consistency; the currently generation are starting to look culpable for totally breaking her. We’ve seen death overs before where she’s been taken to town by brilliant batting; but this felt like something else – Nadine de Klerk (whose own recent form with the bat has been indifferent, at best) didn’t need to take her to town – she took herself, willingly.

Sophie Ecclestone didn’t really have a great day with the ball either, getting through her 4 overs mostly on reputation; though being introduced in the 3rd over probably didn’t help. Heather Knight seems to be calling on her earlier and earlier, desperate for something to happen when her initial plans wobble; but it is very odd considering how adamant England are that their best batter (NSB) can mess others around to enter the fray at her prefered moment after the powerplay, moving Capsey hither and thither as collateral damage; but not their best bowler?

For everyone else, it is hard to look at the figures and say they were “bad” exactly; but they weren’t good. Sarah Glenn looked a bit off; Freya Kemp is not really an international class bowler in her current form; and Charlie Dean bowled one very good ball, but that was about all. Collectively, it’s the same old same – England failed to take wickets – they simply don’t have any penetration beyond Ecclestone, who most teams wisely now just try to see off.

But they still won. And in the moments after the final ball was bowled, the camera panned to Jon Lewis in the dressing room looking rather smug. He was right – they are a brilliant team, and winning this match proved that. Didn’t it?

This week:

• All the gossip from THAT Jon Lewis presser
• Is Instagram really to blame for England’s World Cup woes?
• Does the uneven spread of England players across the counties matter?
• Shock exit for Strikers in WBBL