As the two captains – Heather Knight and Tahlia McGrath – stepped out into the pouring rain to shake hands, Taylor Swift’s ‘Cruel Summer’ rang out over the speakers at Manuka Oval.

I don’t think Heather Knight is a Swiftie (70s rock gods Queen are more her cup of tea) but she might empathise particularly with one line in the bridge of Taylor’s hit tonight:

Said “I’m fine” but it wasn’t true.

England came almost as close as close can be to finally getting some points on the board in this Women’s Ashes. The teams went off the field for rain in the 9th over with England just ahead on DLS, after Sophia Dunkley had swept Alana King for 4. (If they’d gone off one ball prior to that, Australia would have been ahead.)

England v Australia at Manuka

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-01-23T08:23:23.526Z

The weather forecast suggested the rain might be locked-in, but it eased and the players returned to the field. With drizzle persisting but not quite turning into downpour, the lead shuffled back and forth until England lost those two crucial wickets in the 13th over. By that stage in the game, wickets don’t do massive damage to the DLS Par Score, but they did enough to put England 10-or-so runs behind which they couldn’t quite make-up.

Australia 185-5 v England 168-4 (T: 175) #Ashes 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-01-23T11:57:19.384Z

Even so, with Australia penalized for their slow over rate by having to bring an extra fielder into the ring in the final over, England clearly felt they could get the 22 runs they needed from the final over, which became 18 off 5 balls when the rain intensified and the players left the field for the final time. In the press conference afterwards, Knight said it was “the right decision” but she clearly was not “fine” about it at the time, making her feelings clear to any TV viewers with the ability to lipread a smattering of Anglo-Saxon.

Australia 185-5 v England #Ashes 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-01-23T09:48:57.039Z

England’s real problem though wasn’t the weather – it was their lack of death bowling, as they let slip a decent position, conceding 53 runs off the last 4 overs as Grace Harris and Tahlia McGrath ran riot. Australia had been heading for around 160; so to actually post 25 more than that was the real death-blow to England – if they had been kept to 160, England would have won the game outright, with an over-and-a-half to spare, before the rain came.

The result of course means that Australia have now won the Ashes outright, as opposed to having merely “retained” them. That was their initial goal going into the series, so they’ll be happy about that. One of the Cricket Australia staff I spoke to expressed disappointment that it “wasn’t how we wanted to win it”; though whether they’d have felt the same if the trophy hadn’t already been secured, I’m not so sure! Their goal now will be a whitewash; England will still be trying to save a little face by getting something from the final two games.

I’d definitely expect a couple of changes now for the final T20 in Adelaide. Lauren Bell, who left the field today after feeling unwell, will surely be rested; and given that the Ashes are a now distant speck in England’s rear-view mirror, flogging Nat Sciver-Brunt and Sophie Ecclestone in a meaningless T20 ahead of the Test feels a tad pointless, to say the least. What matters now for the game as a whole is that we get an entertaining and… dare I say it… inspiring Test match next week at the MCG.

To be fair to England, they gave it a shot – Sophia Dunkley came back into the side and played like I’ve never seen her play before, blowing doors open with 59 off just 30 balls – but it wasn’t enough as Australia retained the Ashes at the first opportunity, taking an effectively-unassailable 8-0 lead in the series, which they only need to draw to keep the trophy.

Australia 198-7 v England 141 #Ashes 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-01-20T11:31:19.762Z

A night which ended with Australia reaching for the moon, began with their captain Alyssa Healy reaching for the moon-boot after a flare-up of the foot injury that kept her out of the T20 World Cup semi-final defeat back in October. The Australian camp will deny it, but there is an argument that they are a stronger side without Healy – there isn’t much to choose between Healy and Beth Mooney keeping wicket, and Georgia Voll opening the batting looks like the player Healy used to be in her prime.

Voll gave Australia an explosive start in the powerplay, whacking a fearless 21 off 11 balls. Given a life as Lauren Bell made a total Horlicks of a straightforward catching opportunity, she simply smacked the next ball for another 4. One facet of this Australian team under Shelley Nitschke is that everyone is very clear about their role, and Voll’s is to go as hard as possible; so although she didn’t last long, she did her job on the night, putting England on the back foot right from the get-go.

Beth Mooney’s role on the other hand is to go deep. Taking her innings all the way into the 18th over today, she faced 50 deliveries and made them count for 75 runs; but the key was letting others play around her. Phoebe Litchfield wasn’t quite hitting her marks, despite one remarkable switch-hit 6, but she still kept the field busy with her disruptive strokeplay – which Beth Mooney admitted post-match had been a deliberate strategy to unsettle England’s fielding. England made error after error, including a mix-up between Nat Sciver-Brunt and Charlie Dean which could have got rid of Mooney when she was on a run-a-ball 23; and there was also a caught behind/ stumped opportunity around the same time which Amy Jones couldn’t snaffle.

Heather Knight said post-match: “If we’d conceded less we’d have been in with a real chance.” Given that Australia finished 7 down with not a lot of batting to come, getting rid of Mooney for 50 fewer runs would have made a real difference.

As it was, Mooney pushed on, as Australia upped the run rate in the middle overs, scoring at over 10 runs per over through both middle phases. Tahlia McGrath produced a brilliant cameo, just when Australia looked like they might be starting to dry-up – scoring off every single one of the 8 balls she faced before she was bowled by Sophie Ecclestone, including four 4s and a 6.

Australia 198-7 v England 141 #Ashes 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-01-20T11:31:45.399Z

In a sense, it could have been even worse for England if Georgia Wareham had been able to recreate the innings she played in Hobart, where she made 38 off 12 balls – instead “only” grabbing 11 off 10, to leave England requiring 199.

Within two overs of their reply, England were in deep trouble, losing both their openers to ducks – Maia Bouchier slog-sweeping to a quite deliberately placed Georgia Wareham at deep square, and Danni Wyatt apparently trying to run Kim Garth down through the vacant slip area which… turned out not to be vacant at all, but occupied by Phoebe Litchfield. (I know Litchfield is small… but she’s not that small!)

The game looked to be over at that point, but Dunkley’s daring innings gave England a slither of hope – at 10 overs they were ahead of where Australia had been, and with only 3 wickets down it felt like something extraordinary might be about to happen; but within another two overs both Dunkley and Knight had departed and the game was up – the Ashes were gone.

England were predictably insisting to the media in their post-match interviews that they could still save some pride by drawing the series, and it is the one thing that might yet save Jon Lewis’s job. But it feels like an Australian whitewash is now the most likely outcome, and even if England can salvage some or all of the remaining points it shouldn’t change the fact that they have gone backwards in the last two years under the current leadership. They are bullies who can whop the small teams, but as soon as they come up against the big guns they collapse in a heap. They are a squad set up to win these big run chases, but when push comes to shove they can’t even actually do that – even when Jon-Ball works, it doesn’t work. It’s time for the management to pay the price for that.

This week:

• England whitewashed in the Ashes ODIs
• What can England change in the T20s?
• Aimee Maguire let down by coaches

The ground formerly known as the Bellerive Oval is now officially named the Ninja Stadium – so-called sadly not after the legendary Japanese assassins, but a brand of air-fryer – making it the only cricket ground in the world to be named after a kitchen appliance. And it was England who got air-fried today by an Australian performance that was just too good.

England were in the game with Australia at 59-4 in their knock; and question marks of one kind or another over all their remaining batters – Beth Mooney, Tahlia McGrath and Ash Gardner. The ruthless Australian press have been calling for one of Mooney or McGrath to make way for the young, exciting Georgia Voll, and whilst her bowling definitely keeps her in the XI, Gardner’s batting numbers have been less than stellar of late – though she did post a career-best 74 in the recent series versus New Zealand.

But all three came good, before an incredible cameo from Georgia Wareham put the game beyond England. Mooney and McGrath made half-centuries whilst Gardner completed her first ever international hundred. 59-4 became 257-6, and eventually 308-8, as Wareham plundered 38 off just 12 balls – a Strike Rate of 316 – the kind of number only usually seen when someone only faces a couple of deliveries.

All-told, Australia added 104 runs in their last 10 overs; and suddenly… having been on course for 250… they were over 300. England didn’t bowl badly in that death phase – Lauren Bell and Sophie Ecclestone did very little wrong – but the Australians were seeing the ball like a beach-ball by that stage. They took risks, and not every one came off – Gardner and McGrath were both dismissed going for big shots – but enough did to get them to that 300.

It is the magic number in women’s ODIs – 300 has been successfully chased in women’s ODIs just once, by Sri Lanka, who overhauled 302 against South Africa last year. So it was always going to be a near-impossible proposition for England here, with big boundaries and a slow outfield making it tough to get over the rope either aerially or along the floor.

There is no text-book or manual to tell you how to chase 300; but Sri Lanka’s approach (or rather, Chamari Athapaththu’s approach, as it was she that scored the vast majority of the runs) was probably the only way – to keep up with the rate from the start. But against the discipline of Australia’s bowling, that was never going to be easy. England kept ahead of the worm, so that at 25 overs they were 122-3 where Australia had been 115-4; but at no point was England’s overall run rate ahead of the required rate, meaning that the only route to victory lay in emulating Australia’s massive finish, but with all the added pressure of chasing.

It didn’t happen, but it was never going to. Tammy Beaumont and Nat Sciver-Brunt accumulated well, both passing 50; but it would have taken one of the greatest innings of all time to turn the tide of this game, and that wasn’t to be. By the time Danni Wyatt-Hodge and Amy Jones reached the crease, the required rate was starting to go vertical – they needed to force the pace, but inevitably that meant wickets started to fall, and some special catching from Australia put the boot in. Phoebe Litchfield took the catch of the summer, pedaling backwards; then Kim Garth said ‘Hold my beer’ and took an even better one diving forwards; before Ash Gardner finally said ‘Hold both beers’ with a relay-catch to herself on the rope.

Could England have done anything differently? Not today, no – unlike the 2nd ODI, this was not a match they could have won. As Journey didn’t quite say: “Some you win; some you lose because you played badly… and some you lose because you’ve been run over by a freight train.”

So now we move on to the T20s, with England 6-0 down. Assuming we don’t get rained-on, England need to win every remaining game – all 3 T20s plus the Test – to win back the Ashes. Heather Knight made the point in her press conference that England were 6-0 down last time, and came back; though of course they didn’t actually win in 2023 either – just tied the points series, meaning Australia retained the trophy.

There are a couple of fresh faces we could see in the T20s – the batting will obviously be re-jigged with Danni Wyatt-Hodge moved up to the top of the order, opening up a slot for Dani Gibson (or possibly Freya Kemp?) to come in at 7, and we could see Sarah Glenn brought in to give Lauren Filer a rest. (England would doubtless ideally like to rest Bell too, but Heather Knight strongly implied in the post-match press conference that she will play – she has been too good to leave on the bench.) Gibson and Glenn do obviously both bring something different, but is it enough to arrest the momentum of the rampant Australians?

As tall-orders go, it feels like a hundred storeys. But if they do it, it will be the stuff of stories.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle once said that “Hope is a waking dream” and so it proved for England, as their Ashes hopes were raised by a brilliant bowling performance, before being dashed once again with the realisation that when it comes to batting, England Gonna England.

Australia 180 v England #Ashes 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-01-14T02:22:08.930Z

The Junction Oval, in Melbourne’s beautiful bohemian beach-side suburb of St Kilda, has been a bit of a first innings graveyard of late. Since New Zealand struck 231-8 here in March 2019, no side has made it to 50 overs in the 4 subsequent completed ODIs; yet Australia looked well set to tally-up a decent total at 131-2 nearing the half-way mark.

Then Sophie Ecclestone removed Beth Mooney in the 23rd over; and that seemed to prompt Heather Knight to make a game-changing decision – bringing Alice Capsey on to bowl for the first time in the series, in the 24th over.

Capsey has been in pretty woeful nick with the bat, but she had a decent WBBL with the ball, taking 13 wickets in the 8 games she played before jetting off to South Africa with England – could she bring something here? The answer soon looked clear, as she dropped new batter Sutherland off her first delivery. Sutherland then added insult to injury by smashing Capsey back over her head for six off the final ball of the over.

It must have been touch and go whether Capsey would get another over, but Knight tossed her the ball once more, and this time Capsey got her revenge. Sutherland came down the pitch; Capsey adjusted and pushed it wide, looking for the stumping. Knowing she was gone if the ball went past her, Sutherland stretched for the shot and mistimed it straight to Knight at cover.

Another Capsey over followed, and another wicket – that of Ellyse Perry, given out LBW on review after the umpire initially shook her head. Perry had been looking in dangerous form – she was on 60, with a hundred beckoning – but Capsey had a ball with her name on it, and she was back in the pavillion with Australia starting to wobble on 149-5; which became 150-6 as… who else… Alice Capsey bowled Ash Gardner for just 2.

England were up and running in this Ashes as Sophie Ecclestone took another couple to bowl Australia out for just 180 – their lowest 1st innings total in a 50-over game in the professional era. If England couldn’t win this one, you had to ask, when could they win?

Australia v England 2nd ODI

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-01-13T23:08:45.751Z

Reader… they did not win.

It’s not unknown for England to shoot themselves in the foot, but this time they shot themselves full in the face – batting so slowly that they wouldn’t have won the match even if they’d had another 10 wickets in hand.

Australia tried their best to make it an even contest at the end. Annabel Sutherland, bowling the 48th over, dropped Amy Jones, then gifted her two head-height no-balls, meaning she had to be removed from the attack leaving Tahlia McGrath to bowl the final ball of the over. Having declined the opportunity of a run off the first free hit to protect No. 11 Lauren Bell, Jones scooped the second free hit to deep square and yet again declined the run, apparently having forgotten it was the final ball of the over. This left Bell to face Megan Schutt from the other end, who promptly bowled her to finish the game with England 22 runs short of victory.

The blame shouldn’t lie entirely with Amy Jones, but it does feel like she got it into her head that all England needed to do was bat it out, and they’d win the game, and was then totally unable to shift that mindset when it stopped being true. It is all very well declining single after single to protect your two No. 11s (yes… this England side goes up to 11 twice, with Laurens Bell and Filer in the lineup!) but once you get to the point where you need 6 an over, you can’t really afford to do that any more because it is going to leave you short even if you make it to 50 overs.

Some credit must go to Alana King who bowled with brilliant aggression; but even with King, England were the architects of their own downfall. Danni Wyatt presumably thought she’d picked a wrong-un from King, and had to watch in horror as a conventional leg-break spun back onto her off stump; whilst Charlie Dean decided this was the time to try an audacious ramp – brilliantly anticipated by Beth Mooney, who left her position at slip to get herself behind the keeper (as she is entitled to do in response to the stroke that the batter’s movements suggest she intends to play) to make the catch.

And so all that good work done by England’s bowlers was undone by yet another half-cut performance with the bat. An Ashes series which could have been levelled 2-2 is now 4-0 to Australia, with just a couple of days before we go again for the 3rd ODI in Hobart. England could make changes – Sophia Dunkley and Dani Gibson both travelled to Melbourne, so will presumably be available in Tasmania, and Kate Cross apparently isn’t totally ruled out of the last ODI; but it feels like we are very-much in “moving deckchairs on the Titanic” territory here.

Aristotle once also said: “Excellence is never an accident.” It isn’t. And nor is mediocrity.

If there’s a better place in the world to watch live cricket than North Sydney Oval, I’ve not been there. With its compact nature and delightful “Olde Worlde” feel, provided by its green-painted tin-roofed stands which were partly imported from the SCG when that was rebuilt in the 80s, it somehow draws you into the action in a way that the bigger first-class grounds never do. If a cricket ground can have “soul”, then North Sydney Oval has it like Otis Redding, sittin’ on the dock of the Sydney bay.

England v Australia at North Sydney Oval

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-01-11T23:31:33.596Z

Over 6,200 Sydneysiders turned out to enjoy it on a beautiful summer Sunday, and were rewarded with a home win in the first match of the 2025 Women’s Ashes, with Alyssa Healy making her first “score” of the Aussie season – 70 off 78 balls – to put the hosts 2-0 up in the series.

It hasn’t been the easiest few months for the Australian skipper, and had she not been captain her place in the XI would almost certainly have been at real risk with the recent form of Georgia Voll, who in just 3 appearances this antipodean summer has scored more international 100s than Alice Capsey has in almost 3 years since her debut.

Prior to today, Healy’s 9 matches this summer in the green and gold had seen her pass 30 several times, but no further. With two different injuries nagging at her knee and foot, we wondered who she needed more – her coach or her doctor?  But all those worries evaporated today into the hazy blue New South Wales sky, as Healy turned on the class when it really mattered. Having kept wicket energetically, she then batted with an authority that made a mockery of any suggestion that her 34 years were starting to take their toll.

Coming into this match, England insisted they were in brilliant form after their success in South Africa – that tour wasn’t officially a multi-format points series, but if it had been, England would have won it 14-2. Those of us who raised question marks at the beginning of that tour were beginning to feel like killjoys by the end, but the result here suggests that we may actually have had a point.

Australia were not at their brilliant best; but against them England nonetheless looked very, very mediocre at times – those times being mainly between 10:30am and 4:30pm. Outside of those times, there were some positives – England joined arms to belt out the national anthem prior to play; whilst later on Heather Knight and Lauren Bell performed their post-match media duties with customary aplomb.

But in terms of the actual cricket, it didn’t go quite so well. Lauren Bell sending down 9 overs for 25 runs – an Economy Rate of 2.8, by far her best in ODIs – was probably the best of it; but she couldn’t make it count in the wickets column, which is what England really needed having been bowled out for only just north of 200.

England 204 v Australia #Ashes 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-01-12T02:39:41.603Z

A typical first innings score in meetings between the top 5 sides since 2020 is 264; and on a pitch which looked decent (if slightly sweaty, after a night under the covers) 280 felt more like par going in. Australia’s run rate would have put them at around 260/270, even though they took their foot off the gas at times, which obviously they had the luxury of doing, chasing the target they were chasing.

The bottom line: 204 was not nearly enough. England sold their wickets far too cheaply, with Heather Knight and Nat Sciver-Brunt particularly standing out in the “What Were They Thinking” stakes. My advice? If you want to be out on the pull in Sydney, try Kings Cross on a Saturday night, not North Sydney Oval on a Sunday morning.

Both captains made a lot in the press conferences yesterday of getting those first points on the board; of getting momentum in what is a punishingly quick series – tomorrow, we take the first of 6 internal flights to play 7 games (including a 4-day Test) in 22 days. And it is Australia who now have those first points and that momentum. All is not lost for England by any means – there are still 14 points to play for. But they are going to have to bat a lot, lot better if the final scoreline isn’t going to look much more like that South Africa series than the last, tied Women’s Ashes in England in 2023.

This week:

• We’re at North Sydney Oval!
• Knight calls for more support for Afghanistan women’s team in exile
• Team news ahead of the first Ashes ODI
• 2 contrasting approaches to Ashes training