Following Australia’s romp to victory against South Africa yesterday, England already knew coming into the match that they’d be playing their semi-final against South Africa in Guwahati, in the far north-east of India, on Wednesday. Both sides will feel a sense of deja-vu: Guwahati was the setting for their opening match of this World Cup, with England winning by 10 wickets after bowling South Africa out for 69.

But in a tournament already scarred by washouts the weather is once again threatening to play a role, with the chances of rain during the scheduled hours of play in Guwahati being from 40-52%. The good news? There is a reserve day! The bad news? The chances of rain on the reserve day are 19-64%!

We’d obviously be desperately unlucky to have two days of possible play rained off, but given the way things have unfolded during this World Cup, it would hardly be a shock; so it’s important to consider what would happen in those circumstances, which is that the higher-ranked team from the group stages would go through to the final.

And thanks to their win versus New Zealand today in Vizag, that team would be England, who leapfrogged South Africa to finish in 2nd place behind Australia.

England may have finished the group stages in 2nd place, but they’ve done so despite being about as mediocre as a middle-aged white man on a committee, in particular with the bat. But determined to show that anything the batters could do, they could do too, it was England’s bowlers who picked up the mantle of mediocrity today, sending down a succession of half-trackers and full tosses which New Zealand’s batters contrived to either miss or send straight into the hands of fielders, as if both sides were conspiring to prove the old mantra that s*** gets wickets.

Suzie Bates, whose (final?) World Cup finished with a grand total of 40 runs, got the party started by spooning a full toss from Linsey Smith straight down the throat of Emma Lamb. Not for the first time in her career, Smith appeared to temporarily totally lose her radar. (Long-suffering followers may remember her getting monstered by Lizelle Lee in a KSL final in Brighton.)

Fortunately, England have lots of bowling options in these situations. Oh… no… hang on… I’m getting breaking news: they don’t! Especially when Sophie Ecclestone loses her footing on the boundary and crashes over on her left shoulder. It says a lot about just how much England don’t want Nat Sciver-Brunt bowling 10 overs, that England’s management initially kept Ecclestone out there; then after she’d had some treatment, sent her back out again to bowl 4 balls before she called a halt to it, having taken a wicket with… well… shall we just say it wasn’t the best ball she’s ever bowled, and leave it at that?

I don’t really blame the selectors in there here-and-now for England’s lack of options in these situations – they are playing the hand in front of them. But there is a long-term issue going back to the early days of professionalism under Paul Shaw, of focusing on primary skill-sets rather than all-round performance. Bowlers are coached to bowl, and batters are coached to bat; and if you are in the England squad as a bowler, you’ll get surprisingly little specialist batting coaching.

Hence Danni Wyatt-Hodge’s bowling was allowed to lapse, as was Sophia Dunkley’s – she basically doubled the amount of overs she’s bowled in professional cricket this year when she was wheeled-out in an emergency today. Similarly, Charlie Dean’s batting has improved only marginally in the 4 years she’s been a centrally contracted professional cricketer. It’s difficult to believe Australia would have similarly overlooked the opportunity to see the potential and make an allrounder of Dean.

There might be rain forecast for Guwahati, but England will be sweating on the fitness of Ecclestone, whose shoulder is currently “on ice”.

On a more positive note, England will be happy to have got another score out of Amy Jones, who started slowly, scoring just 26 runs off her first 50 balls, before accelerating to finish 86* off 92 balls. With England finally putting Emma Lamb out of her misery, Danni Wyatt-Hodge also got a run-out, though by the time she came to the crease England only needed 11 from 23 – 23 overs, that is, not balls! The thing in these situations is to keep cool and not do anything silly, and she didn’t, finishing 2* off 11. The assumption has to be that she will now play in the semi-final, and (if England should make it) the final.

After the game, all of the attention was on Sophie Devine, with this being her final ODI. It’s been a long and winding road from her debut in 2006, with the pinnacle being lifting the T20 World Cup last year. She’s made a few bucks in recent years, but it is worth recalling that for the first 10 years of her career she was doing it purely for the love of the game. She was always the same enthusiastic, positive personality, even when she was slumming it over in England playing county cricket over the New Zealand winter, back in the days when all you went home with at the end of the summer was the smile on your face.

Perhaps we sometimes over-romanticise those days of players sleeping on each other’s sofas for weeks just to play a few county knocks on a Sunday, but those days made people like Sophie Devine the women they are, and we’ll not see their like again. If Sophie shed a tear as she left the field one last time in ODI cricket, that’s ok. And if I did… that’s ok too.