New Zealand recovered from a sticky start to overcome England on DLS on a mizzly day in Cardiff.

England fielded just one survivor from their last visit to Wales, when they recorded a consolation win in the final match of the 2015 Women’s Ashes – Heather Knight scoring 1 not out from 3 balls that day. 11 years later, Knight has come and gone from the captaincy, which is now in the hands of Charlie Dean, standing-in (you’d suspect not for the last time) for the injured Nat Sciver-Brunt.

NSB was England’s top run-scorer (and Player of the Match) back in 2015 and today showed how much her batting is missed by England when she is unavailable. England somewhat drifted during the middle overs, taking advantage of the huge square boundaries at Sophia Gardens to run plenty of singles, but unable to find enough boundaries to really accelerate the scoring rate until the final few overs, with Amy Jones, having one of her increasingly rare batter days, hitting a quick 27 off 21 balls.

Alice Capsey flattered to deceive with a run-a-ball 45 which should have been more. Her opportunities have been limited by coming in down the order – generally entering the fray at 7 in the past couple of years. By coming in at 4 today, she had a decent amount of time to build an innings, and lay the foundations for something bigger and better. But a rush of blood to the head moment saw her skipping down the pitch and getting left in a tangle by Rosemary Mair, resulting in catching practice for Izzy Sharp on the ring. After 86 white-ball internationals, Capsey really ought to have a higher top score than 67 – the talent is still there to be unlocked, but one of Charlotte Edward’s biggest challenges remains to find the key, because without it, in the absence of NSB, England’s middle order continues to look decidedly lightweight.

New Zealand’s efforts with the bat exposed the reality of England’s situation. Despite Lauren Bell having put them on the back foot with three early LBW wickets, including Suzie Bates in the final ODI of her career, New Zealand recovered thanks to a rebuild from Maddy Green and Brooke Halliday, which hauled-down a significant DLS deficit courtesy of those early wickets. That got the White Ferns back to level-pegging at the 20-over mark (at which point we had a game), and then sufficiently ahead to make the abandonment an easy decision for the umpires.

(In an ideal world the umpires wouldn’t even know the DLS par score when making a decision whether or not to take the players off, when waiting an extra ball can be the difference between one team winning or the other; but I realise this is would be utterly impossible in practice. I’m absolutely not suggesting that the umpires would be consciously biased; but there can also be unconscious biases about which team “deserves” to win, which I think could play into those decisions in some circumstances. However, that definitely wasn’t an issue today, with New Zealand 17 runs to the good.)

Given the fine margins, Dean arguably kept Ecclestone on for one over too many at a critical point in the chase. On a pitch that was greener than an unripe plum, Green and Halliday played her warily for a couple of overs before working out that it wasn’t doing anything for her, and hitting her for 9 (after which Dean should have called it quits on Ecclestone’s behalf) and then 13. It probably didn’t help that England’s only other option on the day (with Charlotte Edwards presumably having instructed Dean not to bowl Jodi Grewcock) was Dani Gibson, who doesn’t really look like an international class 3rd seamer – Rosemary Mair looked a good two or three cuts better today in that guise; and it isn’t like Gibson made up for it with the bat.

Reflecting on the series as a whole, I suspect if you’d offered New Zealand a share of the ICC Championship points at the outset, they’d have bitten your arm off up the shoulder, so it is they who will walk away the happier, especially considering that their win was much less squeaky than England’s. With points being won away from home tasting all the sweeter, they’ll feel satisfied that, having also beaten South Africa and Zimbabwe, they’ve made a positive start to their 2026-29 campaign.

There is a long, long way to go until the next 50-over World Cup; but New Zealand look like a settled side. England, meanwhile, look like a side which still have a lot of evolving to do if they are to develop into contenders by 2029.