One short day in the Emerald City
One short day to have a lifetime of fun

An evening which began with the Wicked cast performing One Short Day (before segueing into Defying Gravity which will surely be the theme of most of the night’s headlines, but… we’ve done that one!) ended with Danni Wyatt-Hodge having “a lifetime of fun” in front of almost 15,000 spectators on the emerald-green grass of Edgbaston, as England got their World Cup campaign off to a storming start with a huge win over Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka were, it has to be said, woeful. Winning the toss and deciding to put England in must rank up there with Napoleon waking up one June morning in 1815 and thinking: Waterloo looks like a nice place for a battle!

The last two times England played Sri Lanka in T20s, it was England who were on the wrong end of the results – bowled out twice, for 104 at Chelmsford and 116 at Derby. The tables were utterly turned today, with England losing just a single wicket on the way to 219 – their second highest 1st innings total in T20 internationals.

Amy Jones opened the batting, as she had in the warmups, with the out-of-form Sophia Dunkley effectively making way for Nat Sciver-Brunt to come into the XI. Jones on her day displays an effortless eloquence with the blade; but this was not that day. She struggled to find the middle of the bat, to the extent that I wondered if a muddle of meddling Munchkins had stayed behind after the Wicked performance, and were moving the boundary ropes out by 10 metres every time Jones took strike. Nonetheless, Sri Lanka’s total inability to bowl to their fields gifted her run after run and she somehow finished up with 50 to her name before becoming Sri Lanka’s solitary scalp of the evening as yet another mistimed drive actually found a fielder who wanted to catch it.

To be fair, this was not the easiest batting has been at Edgbaston, which has seen a few run-fests in county cricket this season, albeit primarily due to the use of pitches on the edge of the square creating a very short boundary on one side. The pitch today – bang in the centre, as befitting the occasion – seemed a tad stogy, and the outfield was also slow, having taken a lot of rain in the past couple of weeks following a prolonged dry spell.

Consequently even Danni Wyatt-Hodge didn’t look quite as fluent as she had done in making a century here for Surrey in the One-Day Cup  back in April, so of her now-three T20 international hundreds, this was probably the most hard-won; but arguably by that token possibly the most satisfying? Wyatt-Hodge has a point to prove in this tournament, having been sat on the bench when England won the 50-over World Cup in 2017. As part of the squad back then, she got the medal… and the prize money… but she must have been frustrated not to win them on the pitch. Now, with another home World Cup comes another opportunity, and with today’s performance she has already guaranteed that if England make that final at Lord’s, this time her part will be drinking the drinks rather than running them.

Perhaps the scariest England performance though for any future opponents watching-on was that of Nat Sciver-Brunt. Despite having barely played any cricket for months coming into this tournament, she found her groove and hit a devastating 46 off 22 balls which drove the final nails into the Sri Lankan coffin.

With Sri Lanka facing a target of 220, the game was basically over as we were tucking into our curry-supper in the press box. (The food quality always goes up a notch when the ICC are in town!) Even a half-competent performance from England’s bowlers would have been enough, and that’s pretty much what we got. Freya Kemp picked up 4 wickets by deploying the cunning tactic of bowling slowly and methodically at the stumps and waiting for the Sri Lankan batters to miss it, which inevitably they eventually did. I still don’t think she’ll be giving any of the Australians, Indians or South Africans nightmares ahead of a potential knockout game; but it does show that if you are going to bowl slowly and methodically, doing it at the stumps at least means if they miss, you hit.

Dani Gibson was a tad expensive; but I’d be more concerned about Sophie Ecclestone, who looks a bit out of ideas. The fact that England have an oven-ready replacement in Tilly Corteen-Coleman should give them more comfort than it will give Ecclestone herself. England’s next two games, against Ireland in Southampton on Tuesday and Scotland at Headingley next weekend, are the ones where TCC might be expected to play, and a couple of good performance in those matches could actually displace Ecclestone for the remainder of the tournament, which would have seemed unthinkable two summers ago, when Eccles was topping the ICC rankings in both formats.

This was of course just one short game, on one short day; and Sri Lanka were awful. But alongside the win against India at Taunton, England will feel there is a momentum building this summer. The ECB, who have rested so many hopes for the growth of the game on this World Cup, will be feeling it as well. Perhaps more surprisingly, I’m starting to feel it too.