Author: Syd Egan

Lydia Greenway Voted England Fans Player of the 2015 Women’s Ashes

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Whilst Ellyse Perry was rightly awarded overall Player of the Series in the 2015 Women’s Ashes, England fans have had their say, voting for batsman and superstar fielder Lydia Greenway as their England Player of the Series.

Greenway hasn’t had the easiest of times recently, after a run of indifferent scores led to her being dropped for the final Women’s International Championship ODI of England’s winter tour to New Zealand in February.

But she has come roaring back in the Women’s Ashes this summer, starting off with a half-century in the 1st ODI at Taunton, and going on to top the list of England’s run-scorers in the series, with 202 at an average of 34.

This summer has seen a renewed determination from Greenway to defend her wicket. Having largely pared back her game to a big, solid forward defensive and of course her trademark sweeps, her Strike Rate has been down somewhat on her career overall; but at a time when England’s middle-order has needed backbone more than anything else, the new Greenway’s presence has been a welcome one.

Meanwhile her sharpness in the field continues to be worth an extra 10-20 runs in every game she plays; not to mention her 4 catches and 3 run-outs in the series.

Scotland’s Future On A Knife Edge

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The head of women’s cricket in Scotland, Kari Carswell, has told CRICKETher that Scotland’s international future hangs in the balance, due to ECB plans to exclude them from the Women’s County Championship as part of the reorganisation of domestic cricket in England following the establishment of the Women’s Cricket Super League in 2016/17.

As well as being ICC Associate Nations, Scotland along with Ireland and the Netherlands, play as “counties” in England’s domestic competitions – the 50-over Women’s County Championship and the T20 Cup. (Scotland are currently in Division 2 of the County Championship, along with Ireland, whilst the Netherlands lie in Division 3. In the T20 format, Ireland are in Division 1, while Scotland and the Netherlands compete in Division 3.)

However, back in June the ECB announced that 2016/17 would see the introduction of a new Super League; and that whilst the County Championship would continue, the three Associate Nations would be excluded from it.

Scotland boss Kari Carswell described her reaction to the news:

“I have no doubt that women’s cricket in Scotland will continue to move forward regardless,” she told CRICKETher, “but it is a concern to us.”

Carswell stressed that she is sympathetic to what the ECB are trying to do with the Super League:

“It is obviously something needed. You can see that by the recent Ashes series that the step between County Championship to the next level is obviously quite big. So it’s the right thing for them to do.”

And she told us that it would be “absolutely awesome” if any Scotland players were to play Super League, mentioning in particular their highly rated young left-arm orthodox, Kirstie Gordon; and former “Wildcat” Leigh Kasperek, who recently made her New Zealand début:

“Kirstie is part of the development program with the ECB just now. We’ve never held anybody back – Leigh played at Essex and is now playing for New Zealand – so if there’s girls that want to go and play, absolutely!”

But whilst being supportive of Super League, Carswell is very worried for the future of Scotland as an international cricketing nation if they are excluded from the Women’s County Championship, arguing that the opportunity to play regularly as a team is vital:

“Replicating a competitive fixture list of 16 games will be difficult, and is something that we will have to look at. We have absolutely loved being part of the County Championship and I would like to think that we have added something to the program. As an Associate you are trying to get better and trying to do all the right things; but at the end of the day you need to play quality cricket to measure yourself.”

Scotland’s only other option for competitive cricket comes from the European Championship, but Carswell believes this isn’t enough of a foundation upon which to build a national team:

“If we only go back to only playing the European Championship once every 2 or 3 years, it will be a step backwards in my opinion.”

Pointing out that Scotland don’t currently receive any ECB funding, and play all their matches “away” to minimize the travel costs for other counties, she continued:

“We would like to think that we would still easily fit in to a regional set up – a north group would be perfect!”

All hope isn’t lost for Scotland – but Carswell’s pleas betray what a knife-edge this is on:

“We have had conversations with the ECB about trying to stay in – trying to convince them that we can still be part of a regional program. There needs to be a bit more dialogue between us and the ECB; because we would love to stay in it!”

Random Thoughts: Women’s Ashes 3rd T20

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Dead Rubber Bump

Dead rubbers are funny things – sometimes they bounce, as the Southern Stars did in their last series against England in Australia, where they romped home in the last two T20s despite having lost the Women’s Ashes; and other times they don’t, as when a clearly exhausted Australian team collapsed to one of their heaviest ever T20 defeats in Durham at the end of the 2013 tour.

Yet if this was a bounce, it wasn’t a very convincing one – really more of a bump. England’s openers bowled very well once again; but the batting was as fragile as ever and if anyone really believes this lumbering victory gives them Momentum Going Into The World T20™ then I’m afraid they need their head examined.

Lauren Can’t Win-Field

Lauren Winfield is a fine batsman who has scored oodles of runs at county, averaging 63 in domestic cricket this season. Obviously she is clearly struggling in an England shirt, but her tame (virtually identikit) dismissals at Chelmsford and Hove were indicative of mental not technical flaws in her game.

England seem to wonder why players like Winfield and Amy Jones bat at international level like they are afraid to say boo to a mouse; but maybe it is because they constantly stand on the precipice of being dropped, and that’s a scary place to be!

So cutting Winfield today was the worst thing England could possibly have done – reinforcing all those negative preconceptions going on in her head; and perpetuating the cycle of mental failure which bedogs her. It England man-management at its absolute worst; and especially crazy given the dead rubber nature of this game.

Sciver Owes Shrubsole

Nat Sciver took home career-best figures with both bat and ball today; but in the latter case she really owes a lot to Anya Shrubsole. England’s swing-star set the trap for the Aussies with her opening 4-over spell of 4/11, leaving them under severe pressure. Sciver then reaped the rewards as the Southern Stars looked to hit out, as first Ellyse Perry played-on off a pretty nothing delivery, and then Blackwell, Harris and Coyte all got caught as they attempted to force the pace through the final third of the innings.

Perry Ms Consistent

Ellyse Perry scored 16 off 21 balls today and took 1 wicket – it certainly wasn’t a match-winning performance. In fact, looking back over the whole series, Perry didn’t really produce the archetypal “match winning performance” at all. Her best displays were either overshadowed by others – Lanning in the ODIs and Jonassen in the Test – or in a losing cause, at Taunton.

And yet when all the numbers had been totted-up, there she was – at the top of the table with both bat and ball, having scored more runs (264) and bagged more wickets (16) than anyone else, to take the Player of the Women’s Ashes Series award for a second consecutive time.

Being a great all-rounder isn’t actually about the “great” performance – it is about consistency; and that is what Perry brings in bottles to this Australian team. The ICC are shortly supposed to be publishing new “combined” rankings for women’s cricket – if Ellyse Perry’s name isn’t at the top of the all-rounders list… then there is something wrong with the list!

Connor Draws Line In The Sand on Women’s Tests

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Women’s Test cricket is under attack – and this time not just from the usual trolls on Twitter; but from influential voices within the men’s game.

The Guardian’s Cricket Correspondent, former Test bowler Mike Selvey, who has almost 25,000 followers on Twitter, described the recent Women’s Ashes Test as “the worst possible advertisement” for the women’s game and called upon those who support the concept of women’s Tests to “think again… [and] let go.”

Meanwhile in The Times, Sky presenter and ex-England captain Mike Atherton (over 100,000 Twitter followers) called the Test “tedious viewing” which had “set back the cause of women’s cricket”.

It is obviously very disappointing to see the likes of Selvey and Atherton use their pulpits in the national press to publish such destructive attacks on the women’s game, especially given the likelihood that not only is this the only column each will write on the  subject this year, but probably also the only such piece many of their congregation will read.

Fortunately, any decisions on the future of women’s Tests will be made not by members of the Third Estate, but by those responsible for the custodianship of the women’s game at the ECB, Cricket Australia and the BCCI in India – among which none are more influential than the Head of Women’s Cricket at  the ECB, and chair of the ICC’s Women’s Cricket Committee, Clare Connor.

And Connor is making a stand.

Asked by CRICKETher about her commitment to the longest form of the Women’s game, she drew a clear line in the sand:

“I would never want to be part of an administration that strikes a line through Test cricket. I would hate that.”

And regarding the Test’s place in the Women’s Ashes points format:

“We’ve kept [women’s Test cricket] alive by this bigger scenario; and I will fight to continue to do that.”

But it was when asked “Why?” that Connor’s true passion rang through:

“[It’s for] the players – it’s sacred for them – it’s one of their proudest moments.”

An administrator she may be these days, but like the child, the player inside never dies… and the player inside Clare Connor is alive and kicking and ready to fight for women’s Test cricket.

Random Thoughts: Women’s Ashes 2nd T20

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Bowling Like Goblins

As at Fortress Chelmsford, having won the toss Charlotte Edwards handed her bowlers and fielders the responsibility of trying to hold-back the fearsome artillery barrage of the Australian batting line-up. And once again they bowled like goblins.

Anya Shrubsole was in especially malevolent mood, going for just 2.5 runs per over and taking two crucial wickets – Ellyse Perry for 7 in her first spell; and Grace Harris in her second.

Harris in particular was looking very threatening. As she almost effortlessly swept Hazell so far over cow corner that the farmer was starting to worry about his windows, we tweeted that England needed her gone… shortly after which Lauren Winfield dropped her at mid off – a fairly regulation chance made actually very difficult as it went straight through the beam of the floodlight. So it was a massive fillip for England going into the final overs when Shrubsole removed her LBW.

A word too about Heather Knight – asked to bowl just the penultimate over, after it looked suspiciously like Edwards had miscalculated, and having been a bit expensive in Chelmsford, Heather conceded just the five singles to Jess Cameron, who showed in the final over just how dangerous she can be – taking Nat Sciver for 13 and somewhat spoiling the all-rounder’s figures in the process.

Batting Like Gnomes

Meg Lanning conceded afterwards that the Aussies felt in the innings break that 107 was going to be very difficult to defend; and moreover their decision to drop a spinner (Osborne) in favour of a seamer (Rene Farrell) was possibly looking very questionable at that stage.

But if the Southern Stars were worried, they’d reckoned without the ineptitude of England’s top-order, who batted with all the elegance of garden gnomes who’d spent one too many long summer days sitting out in the beach-bleached Brighton sun.

The tragedy, as Edwards admitted in the press conference, is that we know these players can bat. We’ve seen Lauren Winfield play for Yorkshire this season, smashing it all over the shop against bowlers who aren’t Ellyse Perry admittedly, but aren’t trundling mugs either. But here she was once again tamely caught, playing an outfield shot into the infield, in an almost identical manner (albeit the other side of the wicket) to her dismissal at Chelmsford – hitting out without the “hitting” bit.

Only Danni Wyatt’s all-too-brief cameo displayed the positivity that England have been talking about all summer – looking for the scoring strokes and scampering between the wickets, like an open-topped roadster roaring down the highway, leaving the soccer mums in their minivans for dust; and the way she got out was desperately unlucky, given how rarely her chances seem to come around.

Heads In Places

For England fans, it was deja-vu all over again. Unless Edwards or Taylor make runs, we are so often left with Lydia Greenway shepherding the tail – a job she has done so successfully that she is now England’s highest run-scorer in this series; but it betrays huge problems further up the order.

When asked what new head coach Matthew Mott brought to the Southern Stars, Meg Lanning credited him with getting their heads in the right places.

England’s aren’t; and that’s the real story here.

OPINION: First Thoughts on Death of a Gentleman

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We were at the Gate Picture House in Notting Hill last night to see Death of a Gentleman and hear a passionate Q&A by writer-director Sam Collins.

Although it focuses exclusively on men’s cricket, Death of a Gentleman offers a veritable all-you-can-eat buffet of food-for-thought on the state of the game and its governance.

Perhaps somewhat incongruously, women’s Test cricket is actually in a slightly better state right now than it has been for some years. There were 3 Tests played in 2014, involving four different countries – England, Australia, South Africa and (amazingly, given the general attitude of their governing board to both the women’s game and Test cricket in general) India.

2015 will probably see just one Test – the much derided recent encounter in England – but at least the multi-format Women’s Ashes seems to have secured some sort of future for women’s Test cricket in the medium term, as the points system appears to have already acquired for itself the aura of a tradition which will hopefully insulate it against the base commercial pressures it is nonetheless certain to face.

Nevertheless, it is clear that if men’s Test cricket is a ship awash upon an ocean of troubles, the women’s equivalent is more of an open lifeboat in a gale-force storm, the ship having long-since sunk. The Women’s Ashes alone can’t sustain the format as anything more than a quaint anachronism.

To be fair, the ECB, the BCCI and CA have shown that they don’t want the format to die completely, having all played Tests in the past year. The challenge now is to begin to rebuild – for Australia and India to schedule a Test when they meet next Easter; for England to invite Pakistan to play a 4-dayer when they are here in 2016; and for the ICC to set up the redistributive mechanisms which can bring the game back to the smaller nations.

Because if men’s Test cricket is worth saving, so is women’s – we need to change our cricket too!

Random Thoughts: Women’s Ashes 1st T20

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Less Swagger More Dagger

This wasn’t a swaggering victory of the kind we saw in the 1st ODI, but it was in a way more convincing. There at Taunton England won with 9% of their balls remaining, which is a good margin to-be-sure, but they were 6 wickets down at the end and it they’d lost another one it would have been touch and go. Here at Chelmsford, they cruised over the line with a whopping 13% of their innings to spare, loosing just 3 wickets along the way, with Knight, Greenway and Wyatt all still in the traps.

Won & Lost In The Field

England bowled well to restrict the Aussies to what was by their own (very high) standards a below-par score; and they batted well too of course. But it was the fielding that was the real difference between the teams. Danni Wyatt set the tone early on with an excellent stop on the edge of the circle, and from there England were at the top of their game, as testified by 4 catches, 3 run-outs and the concession of just 9 boundaries against the biggest-hitting unit in the business.

In contrast, Australia were poor between the wickets. Grace Harris appeared to make the rookie error of assuming the ball was dead; while Erin Osborne got into such a mess with Jess Cameron that Sarah Taylor had time to stop and tease her before she removed the bails.

Then in the field the Southern Stars made fumble after fumble. Elyse Villani missed a fairly straightforward chance to run out Charlotte Edwards early on; and then when presented with a golden opportunity for redemption, dropped the England skipper at mid off. Late in the innings, not one but two Aussies got easily to a ball that was almost trickling to the boundary; but each seemed to think the other would actually field it – in the end neither did, and it popped over the rope for 4.

Wyatt Whyatt?

In 3 T20 series since the last Women’s Ashes in Austrlia, Danni Wyatt’s batting record now reads as follows:

DNB, DNB, 0, DNB, DNB, DNB, DNB

That’s 6 “Did Not Bats”, and one sort-of* duck incurred when she was looking to hit out as she came in with just 7 balls remaining against South Africa in Birmingham last September. (* She ran a leg bye of her first ball to retain the strike going into the final over… which I sometimes think on occasions like this should count for something!)

To be fair, she has of course bowled in that time… one over, against New Zealand in the winter.

I’m sure that if you asked her, she’d say she’d rather be playing than not, especially when the team is winning; but England need to be careful how they manage their asset here – it is exactly this kind of treatment that made the highly talented Susie Rowe shrug her shoulders in despair and go back to hockey.

Wyatt doesn’t have that particular option, but she might find herself with an interesting dilemma come next January: star in the final of the WBBL… or come back to England to prepare for a tour to South Africa where her contribution is likely to be equally minimal, if indeed she is picked at all. Under such, it would be difficult to blame her if she then told the England management just exactly where they can stick their not-very-central contract.

3 Reasons England Can Still Retain The Women’s Ashes

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The Women’s Ashes resumes in Chelmsford tonight with England needing to win all 3 T20s to retain the trophy for a 3rd consecutive time.

We admit the odds are very-much against England, in favour of the double-World Champion Australians; but here are 3 reasons England can still do this:

The Lights

The first two T20s are being staged under lights at Chelmsford and Hove. Playing night cricket really is a change-up, particularly in the field where the ball can be coming out of a dark sky only to jump at the last moment into the dazzling glare of the floodlights – the last time England and Australia played at Chelmsford there were several dropped catches!

So it will be a whole different ball-game out there under the lights, which could give an edge to the more experienced side – and that side is England, whose big players have many, many more matches under their belts than the younger Australians.

The Crowd

England Women have played an annual T20 fixture at “Fortress Chelmsford” every year since 2010 and they have never lost there – beating New Zealand (twice), India, Australia and South Africa. A big part of the reason for this? The crowd!

The crowds at both Chelmsford and Hove are likely to be big (Chelmsford is a sell-out, and Hove all-but) and highly partisan. The Australians aren’t used to playing in front of crowds at all, let alone hostile ones; so the Southern Stars won’t just be taking on 11 English… they’ll be taking on 3,000 of them!

The Bowlers

Although England have underperformed with the bat for most of this series, their form with the ball has been pretty good. In their armoury: Katherine Brunt, who bowled what Aussie opener Nicole Bolton described as the fastest, most hostile spell she had ever faced in the Test; Anya Shrubsole, the player of the tournament from the last World T20; Dani Hazel, the ICC’s official No. 1 ranked T20 bowler in the world; and Jenny Gunn, the second-most capped international T20 player of all time.

In contrast, while their batsmen excelled, Australia’s bowlers looked innocuous last week against Ireland – failing to bowl out the Irish (who lest we forget, play in the second division of the English county championship*) in any of the 3 matches.

Can We?

So can we do it? The odds are against us; but perhaps England fans can take faith from the immortal words of Bob The Builder:

“YES WE CAN!”

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* To clarify, Ireland do now play in the first division of the T20 County Cup, while remaining in the second division for the 50-over Women’s County Championship.

NEWS: Australia Steamroll Ireland; Irish Take Hope For World T20s But Have Dilemmas Going Forward

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Australia’s Southern Stars have plundered the Emerald Isle, winning their 3-match T20 series 3-0 in the kind of style that should make England very worried indeed as the Women’s Ashes recommence in Chelmsford on Wednesday.

Meg Lanning (43 off 38 balls in the 1st T20), Ellyse Perry (55* off 46 balls in the 3rd T20) and Elyse Villani (80 off 53 balls in the 3rd T20) all found some form with the bat.

The biggest revelation though was Grace Harris. The 21-year-old Queenslander made her debut in this series and bagged a 2-ball duck in the 1st T20. In the 2nd, coming in with 2.3 overs to go, she soon found herself on the wrong end of an on-field talking-to from vice-captain Alex Blackwell for not pushing a second run.

A response was needed… and boy did Harris respond: by hitting the first 4 balls of the final over for 4 consecutive 4s. Then in the last T20, pushed up the order to 3, she smashed 39 off just 21 balls, as Australia posted a near-record 186. Harris’ final innings left her with a series-leading Strike Rate of 193; and doubtless had England’s coaching staff scrambling around looking for plans on how to bowl to her – they are going to need them!

As for Ireland, they were well-beaten, but not totally embarrassed. Australia are the World Champions for a reason, and while the Irish maintain their official ODI status, they are really more at home in English county cricket, where they finished mid-table in this season’s Division 1 T20 Cup. Their big goal is next year’s World T20 in India, for which they seek to qualify later this year, and it will be something of a surprise if they fail to do so.

The big worry for Ireland however has to be what happens when they lose their county championship games, following the introduction of the Super League, in 2017. They have their own recently instituted Super 3s of course; but without the genuinely competitive environment which the county championship offers, they are likely to suffer going forwards.

One hope must be that some of the younger players, like promising 17-year-old leg-spinner Elena Tice, make it to Super League; but that offers its own dilemmas for Ireland – Tice was born in Basingstoke and any success she finds in Super League might just end-up with her crossing the Irish Channel on a more permanent basis.