This week:

• Bend It Like… Wyatt Hodge
• England revert to JonBall after Smriti Mandhana’s hundred
• Charis Pavely shines for England A v New Zealand A
• Dean to captain in The Hundred but who will lead Rockets?

I still remember to this day, the rousing speech given by our primary school football coach, as we chewed our half-time oranges during a big match against our local rivals.

“Lads,” he said. “If they can score 8 in the first half, we can score 8 in the second!”

Yes – winning might have been beyond us; but an honourable draw was still very-much on the cards.

Dear Reader, we did not score 8 in the second. (They did though… and more, if I recall!)

To be fair to Charlotte Edwards, who I’m guessing found herself delivering a similar sermon in the innings break at Trent Bridge today, a team has successfully chased more than the 210 England needed to surpass India here. Hayley Matthews scored 132 off 64 balls as the West Indies overhauled Australia’s 212 with one ball to spare, at North Sydney Oval in October 2023.

Nat Sciver-Brunt did her best to emulate Matthews – reaching 66 off 42, before snicking an attempted cut to Richa Ghosh behind the stumps. But the game was already gone by that stage, with the second of England’s three Genuine International No. XIs having already joined her at the crease. (Linsey Smith isn’t a complete mug with the bat at county level, but in international cricket she is not… and nor should she be expected to be… any great shakes.) Lauren Bell holed-out on the deep midwicket boundary 4 balls later, and India celebrated an elephantine win by 97 runs.

The significance of the margin of victory should not be lost on England. If Alice Capsey had snaffled that half-chance to catch Smriti Mandhana in the second over when she was on 13… and no one else had scored any more runs than they did… India would still have won. Smriti’s glorious century – her first in T20 internationals – was mathematically all-but irrelevant.

It was a majestic performance from India’s stand-in skipper, who can time a cricket ball like no one else. Her opening two boundaries were just dinked down the ground – off any other bat in the world, they’d have been fielded by the bowler; off hers they were being gathered in from the fence. She took risks later on, but with malice aforethought – slog-sweeping Sophie Ecclestone’s first ball back in international cricket, she could have been caught by one of two fielders on the midwicket boundary; but it hovered between them before falling just over the rope for 6. It was a statement shot; an “I’ll show you who’s boss!” shot. Another 6 followed, and a 4 from Shafali, as the over went for 19. Ecclestone wasn’t totally knocked out of the game – she did come back – but for the first time in almost a year she didn’t bowl her full complement of overs in a T20 international. It wasn’t quite the comeback she’d have been hoping for.

In some ways, it is a bit of a surprise that Smriti hasn’t scored a T20 international hundred before – she’s one of the great players of her generation, twice Wisden’s Leading Woman Cricketer in the World, and in the 11th year of her stellar career. If she has a flaw, it is that she too often goes for one big shot too many and gets caught – 69% of her international innings end this way, which is on the high side. And indeed that is how it eventually ended for her today – Ecclestone getting a modicum of revenge in the final over. But by that time India had passed 200 and England had been put very firmly in their place. The second innings was a formality, only confirming what we already knew – today was not their day.

Defeats happen of course – even Australia lose games occasionally! But the concern for Charlotte Edwards ought to be that this summer is risking looking awfully familiar to anyone who watched the last few years of JonBall. England can beat the lesser sides black and blue, but as soon as they come up against a better team (even if they are only better “on the day”, as the West Indies were in that T20 World Cup “Virtual Quarter Final” which England lost) they struggle to take wickets and then collapse like a line of dominoes as soon as they are put under any pressure.

It’s not just one or two players, but Danni Wyatt-Hodge is bagging so many ducks for England that she could consider an alternative career as a gamekeeper; whilst Amy Jones appeared to just give up after a ball from Radha slid past her, and Richa was able to complete the stumping despite fumbling it horribly.

Alice Capsey was on a hiding to nothing already by the time she came in, but yet another soft dismissal, giving Arundhati Reddy catching practice on the ring, evoked memories of Lauren Winfield-Hill, whose England career never really took off despite opportunity after opportunity, but whose career international T20 average is actually (just) above where Capsey’s is now – 20.45 for Capsey, vs 20.55 for Winfield-Hill.

I didn’t expect England to win every game in this series – India are a good side, even with their current injury crisis – it wasn’t going to be a whitewash. I did however hope that England would start to show some steel, but there was precious little evidence of that today.

This week:

• A hectic 2025 World Cup schedule
• Sophie Devine’s impending ODI retirement
• 4 England squads in the same week 🤯
• English players win big in the WBBL draft
• Does decoupling The Hundred risk downgrading the women’s comp?

This week:

• Ecclestone returns for England v India
• Wicket-keeping succession plans
• Who will feature for England A v New Zealand A?
• T20 Blast: Somerset v Lancashire (Taylor’s Version)

It’s fair to say that there could have been an easier day for Taunton to host their first stand-alone Women’s Blast fixture. With their men’s team playing against Gloucestershire in the “Cider Derby” just up the road in Bristol, and that game also being shown live on Sky Sports, the task of getting cricket fans through the gates at the County Ground in one of cricket’s smallest towns (Taunton isn’t even officially a city!) must have felt like all the Labours of Hercules.

So, tossed a curveball by the fixture computer, Somerset decided the answer was to throw one back – hiring the Taylor Swift tribute act Forever Swift to do a post-match show and pricing the tickets at an “I’m Cutting My Own Hand Off ‘Ere Guv” £5 – less than a pint of beer.

And it worked! Somerset sold over 2,500 tickets, in addition to their 1,000 women’s memberships. Even the weather, which had looked decidedly dicey in the forecast, chose to be kind – it wasn’t warm, but the rain stayed away, and right on time at 6:30 Tara Norris opened the bowling to Bex Odgers, and a new era was underway at Taunton.

Norris’s first over was solid; but it was Kate Cross, opening the bowling from the same end as she did for England here less than a week ago, on her way to 3-21, who got the breakthrough, bowling Amelie Munday for a 6-ball duck.

Odgers made the early running for Somerset, playing a couple of nice strokes and easily finding the ample boundaries at Taunton; but was stumped by Ellie Threlkeld for 18 off 18, two balls after the end of the powerplay.

Odgers was replaced by veteran Fran Wilson – now coming towards the end of her career, back at the county where she began it nearly 20 years ago. Wilson opened her account with consecutive 4s off Sophie Morris; but at the other end Niamh Holland really struggled to get going, and was eventually run out for 10, ball-watching after being called through for a quick single by Wilson. At the halfway mark, Somerset were 49-3 and needing something special from the lower middle order if they were to stay in the game.

Sophie Luff hit Grace Johnson for a 10-run 12th over, but when Fran Wilson tried to take the same attitude into the following over she was comprehensively bowled coming down the pitch to Sophie Morris. Luff followed her back soon afterwards, offering a lame leading edge to Alana King off Tara Norris.

Inexplicably, Amanda-Jade Wellington was carded to come in behind both Charlie Dean and Alex Griffiths; but when she did finally reach the crease, after Dean had been caught behind trying to ramp a bouncer (yes… really!) off Kate Cross, her impact was immediate. Her presence seemed to spark Griffiths into life too, and the pair put on 45 off 26 balls for the 7th wicket as a strong Death Phase saw the hosts recover to 132-7 – Wellington checking out on 25* off 14 balls.

With Eve Jones back at the top of the order for Lancashire after a month-long injury layoff, she and Emma Lamb played positively to finish the powerplay 43 without loss. There were a couple of half-chances – a difficult caught and bowled; a run out that might have been close with a direct hit – but it wasn’t until the final delivery of the 9th over that Charlie Dean got the breakthrough – Jones LBW for 28. Lamb followed the very next ball for 32, scooping to short backward square; and suddenly Lancashire had two batters on 0 at the crease.

Fi Morris (once of this parish, in her Western Storm days) and Seren Smale made lumbered progress, and Smale (11 off 13) knew it – eventually losing patience and taking a huge swing at Amanda-Jade Wellington. It was hit into space, but went so high that Charlie Dean had plenty of time to position herself beneath it and poach the catch.

Dean then added a little revenge for her own wicket – bowling Ellie Threlkeld for 1 – and Lancashire, who had been up at 78% on the win predictor at the halfway stage, were looking at a non-trivial 28 off 24 balls. Wellington’s final over went for just 5; but Ailsa Lister, who is having the time of her life recently, thumped two 6s off Alex Griffith to help turn the equation on its head to 9 off 12.

But was there one more twist in the tail-end of this game? A brilliant double-wicket 19th over from Dean, who finished with figures of 4-9, left Griffiths to defend 8 off the last over. Singles off the first two balls kept Somerset in with a shout, but luck intervened on Lancashire’s behalf as a big, eyes-wide-shut heave from Lister took an edge past the keeper for 4. Lister then grabbed two more to get the visitors over the line with 2 balls to spare.

This week:

• Making the most of the Women’s Blast
• Reflections on England v West Indies
• World Cup venues announced… but won’t someone think of the freelancers?
• After visiting every ground in England, which are our favourites?

In the end, it was barely a contest – the rain tried its hardest, but it couldn’t quite put a stop to England’s onward march, despite holding them off for 5 long hours through the afternoon. After delays and DLS, England raced to their target of 106 with more than 10 of their 21 overs to spare, completing a whitewash across both white ball series against a sorry West Indies.

There was some consternation in the press box when it was announced that England’s DLS-adjusted par score was one run less than the West Indies had scored – meaning England needed only to equal West Indies 106 to win the game. Usually when the first innings is interrupted early, the DLS par goes higher than the first innings score, so everyone (including me) was expecting it to be at least 120, after the West Indies had reached 106 following the 5 hour rain delay.

But reflecting on it, we should not have been surprised – losing early wickets kills you in DLS, and that’s what West Indies had done, slumping to 4-3 in the 4th over, and going into the rain interruption at 43-3 after 12 overs.

So although West Indies made a decent fist of the post-interruption phase to reach 106, boshing 60 runs from the final 7 overs, England were left requiring just 106 in 21 overs. If this had been a T20, we’d expect them to chase that in their sleep; and with further rain still a possibility (and no result if it curtailed the game prematurely before the 20 over mark) they didn’t hang around.

NSB, opening the batting for only the second time in her international career, was happy to let Sophia Dunkley dominate the strike for the first 5 overs, but then took the reins once Dunkley was dismissed for 26 off 21. Having been 9 off 10 balls at that stage, NSB accelerated to finish with yet another half-century – 57 off 33 balls – striking the ball by the end with such swashbuckling confidence that she was almost (almost!) showboating.

Speaking to the media after the game, Charlotte Edwards was quick to acknowledge that there would be sterner tests to come, not least India who arrive later this month for 5 T20s and 3 ODIs, starting in Nottingham on the 28th.

“We absolutely know that in a couple of weeks time at Trent Bridge it is going to be tough – they are one of the best teams in the world and they’ve got some of the best players,” Edwards said.

“But we can only play what’s in front of us; and when I think how ruthless we’ve been, how clinical we’ve been, that’s probably what’s impressed me the most.”

With her having said that, it will be interesting to see where England go in terms of selection for the India series. If this series has been the unqualified success that suggests, then you’d expect no changes; but if you want to have real competition for places, the players out there in domestic cricket need to feel they have a chance to break through, and it isn’t just the same 15 time and time again.

Perhaps the most pressing conundrum for Edwards will be Linsey Smith, who has been consistently excellent, but had to make way today in order to give Sarah Glenn a game, and could well find herself sidelined again if Sophie Ecclestone does indeed walk back in for the India series, as Edwards hinted she would, despite the announcement today that Ecclestone will be taking a break from domestic cricket.

I think this is the key test for Edward’s mantra that performances on the pitch are what matter, and that there should be no free rides. I believe that Edwards believes she believes this; but whether she actually does remains to be seen.

My 2nd-favourite journalist Jonn Elledge¹ once wrote an article for the late-lamented City Metric website explaining why it is actually mathematically inevitable that if you wait ages for a bus then two will turn up at once² – a phenomena known as “bus bunching”… apparently!

So, what does “bus bunching” tell us about Amy Jones, who after scoring her first hundred in 12 years of international cricket at Derby in the 1st ODI, went on to immediately score her second just 5 days later in the 2nd ODI here at Leicester? Absolutely nothing, that’s what!

However, if you’ve made it this far into the report without tuning-out it does mean that you’ve probably learnt something today; which is more than England or the West Indies did from a rather dull and distinctly chilly encounter at Grace Road.

England won the toss and elected to bat. Again. Amy Jones scored a century. Again. Tammy Beaumont scored a century. Again. West Indies batted long. Again. But still lost by three-or-four country miles. Again.

England looked more relaxed today, like they’d realised the game they were playing was more Candy Crush than Dark Souls, and they set off at a decent rate of knots – scoring 77 in the powerplay, compared with just 45 in the 1st ODI.

But they didn’t quite capitalise on that start, and the journalists in the press box who had already begun looking up what sort of a record 400 might be were ultimately disappointed. (For what it’s worth (not much!) it would have been England’s highest, but nothing like the highest overall – New Zealand’s 491 v Ireland in 2018 – weirdly not the game Amelia Kerr scored her double-century in, which was also on that tour, but where New Zealand “only” made 440.)

Emma Lamb made a half-century, which was encouraging, but only in the sense that me baking a basket of current buns last weekend was encouraging – it’s good that I did it, but I’m still probably not winning Bake Off this year.

366 is still a huge score obviously – a typical 1st innings score in ODIs between the Championship sides recently is around 256 – so England might have some justification in saying I’m being a tad negative about what they’ll feel was an impressive display of batting power, pulled-off without getting sucked into the reckless black hole of Jon-Ball. But it does say something when a team hits a 350+ total, but you know that the moment that will stick in your memory is not anything England did, but Realeanna Grimmond’s astonishing leaping catch to dismiss Emma Lamb.

Twenty-year-old Grimmond, playing in her debut ODI, then went on to top-score for West Indies with 53 off 72 balls. It wasn’t anything like enough to give them a chance of winning the game; but it shows there is some potential there, which the West Indies need to build a side that can improve enough over the next World Cup cycle to redress their failure to qualify for India 2025.

Similarly with the Windies’ other twenty-year-old opener, Zaida James, who played the shot of the day off Lauren Bell, whipping an admittedly poor delivery through the covers for 4. Cricket is a game where you can either play a shot like that, or you can’t. And if James can do it once, she can do it again.

It’s almost like… you wait ages for one young West Indian cricketer to emerge, and then two come along at once.

It’s called “bus bunching”… apparently!

—————

1. Since you’re asking, my favourite journalist is Stephen Bush. [Ed: Wot? Not Me?]
2. You can still read the text here, but the visualisations appear to be sadly lost in the bits and bytes of time.

You know that scene in a hundred movies, where someone surveying some carnage or other asks “Who could have done this?” And the reply comes “There’s only one man who could have done this…!”

Hold that thought!

It’s the 14th over at Durham’s Riverside Ground, and leg-spinner Katie Levick is bowling to England’s Sophie Ecclestone, who is always a threat with the bat, even if she doesn’t come off very often. Suzie Bates, who is marshalling the field, has Ecclestone (7 off 12 balls) locked down by a packed off side. Trying to break the shackles, Ecclestone slog-sweeps against the spin, getting a bit of a top edge but with acres of space on the leg side it looks quite safe from the fielder on the midwicket boundary.

The fielder though is having none of it – she sets off like a sprinter out of the blocks, running fully 25 yards before diving at full stretch plucking the ball out of the air inches from the ground. Who could have done this? I knew immediately. There’s only one woman In The World who could have done this: Mady Villiers!

It wasn’t really a particularly pivotal incident in the game – in fact it arguably damaged Durham, because (for all her potential to cause havoc) Ecclestone wasn’t looking in great nick, and she was replaced by Ailsa Lister, who was – of which, more anon. But it was one of those moments that reminds you why you travel 300 miles (via Derby and Manchester) to watch a game of cricket on a sunny-but-deceptively-chilly afternoon in Chester-le-Street.

The actual key turning-point in the match was Suzie Bates – given out stumped by Ellie Threlkeld on 49, just when it was starting to look like Durham were going to cruise it. Looking at the replay frame by frame, it’s very tight – Bates’ foot is definitely up two frames before the bails are broken; and definitely down the first frame after. As for the critical frame in-between…? On balance, I think she’s home; but the umpire obviously didn’t, and Bates had to go. From that point, Durham seemed to deflate. Bess Heath, who had made a promising start to get to 13 off 13, gave herself up – caught by Tara Norris off a rushed pull – as the hosts subsided to 122 all out, and an 18 run defeat.

Earlier in the afternoon, Lancashire had been made to work hard for their 140. An 11-run opening over, with a brace of 4s struck by Tilly Kesteven, very much did not set the tone. It was followed by a miserly 2-run opening over from Grace Thompson, who has the second highest dot ball percentage in the One Day Cup this season. Thompson’s first wicket-taking intervention however was as the catcher – pouching Kesteven in the 3rd over for 11; before coming back on to take 2 wickets in 3 balls, leaving Lancashire 3-for-not-very-much after 3 overs.

Lancashire retrenched and rebuilt, but it was slow going, and they looked to be heading for a well under-par 100-120, until the aforementioned dismissal of Ecclestone brought Scotland’s Ailsa Lister to the middle. Lister has been struggling this season, but she came good today – smashing 42 off 23 balls, including a six off the final ball of the innings. It wasn’t just the runs that Lister hit herself either – Ellie Threlkeld, who had been going at under a run-a-ball, significantly upped her strike rate too, in a Big Hitting Death Phase that took Lancashire to 140. With a little help from the square leg umpire, it proved plenty.