I made two predictions during England’s innings today – that they would get over 400, and that Sophia Dunkley was going to break Charlotte Edwards’ nearly 30-year-old record score for England in an ODI – 173* against Ireland during the 1997 World Cup in India. Like a man attempting to mow 4 gardens in one day, they were four-lawn hopes; as England somewhat squandered what felt like a real opportunity to go huge.

England lost 8 wickets caught, and the other two run out, as they were bowled out with 7 balls still in the bucket. Capsey was unlucky to see Kia McCartney get a finger onto a Dunkley drive which then went on to hit the stumps; while Charlie Dean got a good ball from Cara Murray which took an edge to Amy Hunter behind the stumps. The other 8 wickets to fall though were batter error – mostly attempts to hoik it out of the ground by players who apparently thought they’d gone back in time to 2016 when Mark Robinson’s England whacked Pakistan for 378 here on boundaries the size of a new penny!

Is Sophia Dunkley excused being caught on the rope because she got 119 off 119 balls… or all the more guilty because she’s been out there for 35 overs which should have been enough to work out that the rope was quite a long way away? Answers on a postcard to “Sophia Dunkley Competition, PO Box 119, London W1A 1AA” – the winner will receive a Magnum*.

(*The ice cream, not the champagne!)

From 242-4 at the 40 over mark, England will have been eyeing up a strong Death Phase to push past 300; instead they lost 6 wickets and gave Ireland the squeak of a chance as they finished on 291 all out.

It was only a squeak of course – 292 is a lot of runs, and while Ireland do have plenty of players that can strike at the sort of rates required on their day, the operative words here are “on their day”. Alice Tector played out a soporific 38 dots as she clawed her way to 29 off 59 balls – a Strike Rate of 43 when Ireland needed to be going at 100+. If you are scratching around for the positives, you might want to argue that Ireland weren’t going to win the match anyway, so it was a valuable hour (and a quarter!) out in the middle building up experience for the 18-year-old. At the other end, Amy Hunter looked to be working her way towards a third consecutive half century, before a Charge of the Light Brigade moment saw her ride headlong into the valley of death and get stumped off Mady Villiers.

It seems to be a dilemma faced by a lot of emerging sides that against the top teams they have plenty of players good enough not to get out, but many of those players can’t score quickly enough to have any chance of winning the game. This problem is compounded for Ireland by the fact that their best player (Orla Prendergast) is coming in at 4, so she isn’t getting time in the middle at a point where Ireland could realistically build a winning position. Today she came in with 20 overs (all but) gone and the game already a distant speck on the horizon. If Prendergast is going to be this team’s Hayley Matthews or Chamari Athapaththu she probably needs to move to the top of the order, even if that isn’t the “right” place for her to be.

Ireland made it to 40 overs with 5 wickets in hand, but lost their final 5 wickets for 10 runs, as England completed a better bowling performance, with Lauren Filer looking more threatening and Tilly Corteen-Coleman finding some turn (though she is still a liability in the field!)

England might not have hit 400; and Sophia Dunkley did not break Charlotte Edwards’ record, though she did pick up Player of the Match, Player of the Series and ODI Player of the Summer – the latter apparently being decided by the PCA’s computer, despite her not having played any of the ODIs v New Zealand. But England did the job they needed to do – there was no repeat of the slip-ups we saw in Ireland in 2024, when the hosts won two of the 5 matches. It hasn’t been a perfect summer for England by any stretch – we spoke to Charlotte Edwards after the game today, and she is clearly stung in particular by the way England performed in the Test against India, telling us that she will be arguing for some domestic red ball cricket to find a space in  the calendar going forwards, even if it is just 2-or-3 games per team rather than a complete “championship”. Next summer’s Ashes suddenly loom large, and that will be the real Test/test.