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.