A record 10th ODI hundred from Tammy Beaumont, pulling her clear of Nat Sciver-Brunt and Charlotte Edwards at the head of the all-time list of England centurions, drove England to a massive 320 as they crushed Ireland in the 2nd ODI in Belfast.

England 320-8 v Ireland #IREvENG

— CRICKETher (@crickether.bsky.social) 2024-09-09T13:04:48.660Z

Beaumont carried her bat for 150 not out – the second highest ODI score of her career – hitting the last 50 of those runs at a Strike Rate of over 200, as England piled on the pain in the last 10 overs, which went for 99.

England 320-8 v Ireland #IREvENG

— CRICKETher (@crickether.bsky.social) 2024-09-09T13:05:12.932Z

By the 10 over mark in Ireland’s reply they had collapsed to 24-6 – the DLS par score at that stage, a whopping 221, with the only remaining doubt being whether we’d make it to the requisite 20 overs to constitute a game. At one point with about 8 overs bowled, the skies blackened and there was a scurry to rescue laptops and notepads from the front row of the press gazebo as a flurry of rain blew in; but in the end it was academic: Ireland beat the rain, bowled out within 17 overs for 45 – their lowest ever total in ODIs.

Other open question at 10 overs: would today’s debutante, Georgia Davis, even get a bowl, given how fast the game was slipping away from Ireland? But she did get her hands on the ball, and did take her first wicket, bowling Alice Tector, to whoops and cheers from the posse of Sparks players, led by Abbey Freeborn, who had made the trip over to Belfast to support her. The grin on her face as she made her way back to fine leg in front of her mates at the end of that over, was perhaps the most delightful thing I saw all day – Irish eyes might not have been smiling, but Davis ones were!

Davis then added the final wicket to her haul to finish with 2-19, with Freya Kemp also taking a brace, though the latter looked far from convincing with the ball. Kemp did however blast a rapid 65 off 47 balls with the bat – a welcome return to form after a dismal Hundred averaging just 7 at a Strike Rate of 89. She did have one enormous slice of luck today – if there had been umpire reviews, she would almost certainly have been run out early-doors; and her batting remains a tad one-dimensional. Her big shot is the slog-sweep over midwicket, which bought her half her boundary runs today – and you’d think an Australia or an India would bowl better lines to her to cut off that option, or at least put a fielder out there on the midwicket boundary. But you can only play the balls you are bowled, and Kemp was entitled to take full advantage as she did.

Another player who looked better than she has done recently was Lauren Filer, who bowled with the aggression of a woman with a point to prove after being left out of the World Cup squad. She was a little bit all-over-the-place in the first ODI on Saturday, but today she found some extra nip in what were definitely “nippy” conditions, and the Irish batters looked terrified. Filer finished with 3 wickets, but it could easily have been 5 or 6, and if she can work out how to bottle-up the way she bowled today and bring it to every game, there will be more World Cups in the future for sure.

Despite the record bowling performance though, the day belonged to Tammy Beaumont. The first time I saw her play an innings which offered a hint of what was to come was a battling innings for Kent, opening the batting with Charlotte Edwards, whose 9 ODI hundreds Beaumont pulled clear over today. Her trademark shot back then was a punched drive down the ground through mid off; but of today’s 150 runs, not a single one came in that area – instead it was the pulls through midwicket that she worked hardest, as well as running hard between the sticks, putting the teenagers on the field to shame with her pace over 22 yards.

What was the same as that early innings for Kent was the ability to dig in and fight – it wasn’t easy going early on, and she didn’t really find a groove until those final few overs; but it shows real temperament to not force the runs when they aren’t quite coming, and then to explode into life when they are. In the fifteenth year of her international career, having batted at almost every position in the lineup (in her ODI debut, she came in at 10!), Tammy Beaumont has seen it all. But more importantly, she has now done it all – she’ll be remembered as one of the greats, and we’ll miss her when she goes.

Six wickets and a cool, calm 38 not out from Kate Cross was enough for England to secure victory against Ireland in the 1st ODI at Stormont in Belfast.

#IREvENG Ireland 210 v England 211-6

— CRICKETher (@crickether.bsky.social) 2024-09-07T15:36:06.733Z

On what locals told us was the finest day of the summer in Northern Ireland, the Irish (whose team comprises members from both Northern Ireland (part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland) opted to bat first having won the toss, and would probably have settled for anything over 200, which is where the threshold of respectability lies in ICC Championship cricket right now – a “typical” 1st innings score being between 200 and 300, with 250 the average in recent years.

#IREvENG Ireland 210 v England

— CRICKETher (@crickether.bsky.social) 2024-09-07T12:55:28.928Z

England got the early breakthrough, with Kate Cross going up twice for LBW to Una Raymond-Hoey in the opening over, and getting the decision at the second time of asking; and Ireland also lost Gaby Lewis in the powerplay – dismissed by the perfect Lauren Filer delivery, bouncing into the rib-cage of Lewis, who could couldn’t get her glove out of the way in time, sending a catch lolliping up to Hollie Armitage at slip.

This brought local girl Amy Hunter (born in Belfast) and Orla Prendergast (last seen playing for The Blaze in regionals) together, who put on 53 to steady the ship as England struggled to drive home any advantage those early wickets might have given them. That’s not to say that Hunter and Prendergast quite got away from England, but both were able to milk relatively easy runs from Hannah Baker and Ryana MacDonald-Gay, and if it hadn’t been for a lapse in concentration from Hunter right after the drinks break at 16 overs, the two might have done a lot more damage.

Prendergast showed her worth to this Ireland team, continuing to push on with Leah Paul, including hitting the only 6 of the innings, before eventually holing-out off Kate Cross in the 31st over for a well-made 76 off 87 balls. It was a rapid ride downhill for Ireland from there, as they slipped from 151-3 to 210 all out as Kate Cross completed her 6fer, meaning ultimately that they left the field disappointed, with a total they would probably have taken at the start of the day.

With 5 debutantes in their lineup, including 3 making their first appearances for England – Baker, MacDonald-Gay and Paige Scholfield – there was definitely potential for England to collapse in a bundle of nerves, especially if they lost a couple of early wickets. With Emma Lamb having departed early, England could have done with Tammy Beaumont sticking around but she got an unplayable delivery from Prendergast – very likely the Ball of the Series, it nipped in at pace between bat and pad to take the very top off the off bail – a delivery that would have dismissed Meg Lanning in her prime.

It was left to two of those debutantes – Scholfield and Hollie Armitage – to get England back on track, under a fair bit of pressure with  only 32 on the board, but whilst both might be debutantes, neither are dilettantes, and at 28 and 27 respectively both have years of professional cricket behind them. That experience showed, as they worked the field in a 62 run partnership that tested the captaincy of Gaby Lewis, who found herself chasing the gaps – plugging one, only for Scholfield and Armitage to find another.

Neither Scholfield (31) nor Armitage (44) were able to push on quite as far as they no doubt would have liked, but their partnership of 62 ensured that England had the platform they needed to go on and win the game.

England definitely had the edge at the half-way point in their innings, but it wasn’t a done deal, with WinHer giving Ireland still a 24% chance at that stage.

#IREvENG Ireland 210 v England 146-5

— CRICKETher (@crickether.bsky.social) 2024-09-07T14:57:37.846Z

It took the most experienced player in the side – the captain Kate Cross, selected for this role very much because England wanted someone who could be a calm head in a crisis, to come in at 8 and get England over the line. If Hollie Armo was Bob The Builder, and Scholfield, Freya Kamp and Bess Heath were Scoop, Muck and Dizzy; then Cross was Wendy – turning up in the final act to do what needed to be done and finish the job!

Cross was understandably delighted at the end, basking in the glow of a Player of the Match award in her first game as captain (something which Heather Knight also achieved, back in 2016 against Pakistan), but Ireland will retain some hope that they can take something from this series against an England team that were definitely a step below the usual 1st XI. Ireland have some decent players in the likes of Prendergast and Hunter, who look capable of winning a match on their day; but it will definitely take “their day”, with Ireland’s fielding in particular looking amateurish compared to England’s, leaking runs they could ill-afford to as England closed in on their total. If Ireland can keep heart, it looks set to be an interesting next 10 days on the Emerald Isle.

This week:

• NZ & England’s contrasting approaches to captaincy succession planning
• World Cup squads: Australia go pace-heavy, England put their trust in spin
• Why did Grace Scrivens & Kirstie Gordon miss out on Ireland selection?
• Chaos in the RHF as regions become counties
• What should Jay Shah do in his first 6 months in office?

This week:

• Selection dilemmas for England ahead of the World Cup
• Will England look to the next gen against Ireland?
• As Zimbabwe join the ICC Championship, is the schedule becoming too congested?
• Scotland, Thailand & Netherlands left out in the cold again by the ICC

This week:

• Spirit beat Fire in a thrilling Hundred final at Lord’s
• Where will the World Cup be moved to & what does that mean for England’s plans?
• Scotland due to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games, but will it involve women’s cricket?
• Our thoughts on Yorkshire’s new coach

As with Invincibles in the Eliminator yesterday, so with Fire today – failure to put quite enough runs on the board in the 1st innings, and in particular a post-powerplay lull in the Early Middle phase, made it too easy for a London Spirit side that have looked workmanlike at best, but nonetheless claimed the prize because that’s all they needed to be.

Georgia Redmayne won player of the match; Deepti Sharma struck the winning six; but it was Dani Gibson that was perhaps the key player for Spirit. We gave her both barrels for her bowling yesterday, as she conceded 38 runs (one of the worst bowling returns in the history of the competition) and she didn’t have the best outing with the ball today either (0-16 from 10 balls) but she made up for it with the bat.

With the Heather Knight / Georgia Redmayne partnership having gone undefeated on the way to victory yesterday yesterday, it looked for all the world like we were heading the same way again, with Spirit on 50-2 at the half-way point in the chase.

Intriguingly though, WinHer had the Fire edging it 56%-44%, and if Fire could break the Knight/ Redmayne partnership, you felt they had a real chance to win the game; so when Shabnim Ismail returned to castle Heather Knight, that meant Gibson walking out to the middle with the match on a knife-edge. But the only edge was a slightly streaky single for Gibson’s first run.

Gibson then timed her next delivery from Ismail perfectly through backward point for 4, using the South African’s pace against her, before hitting the next for another boundary to midwicket. The change of ends meant Redmayne held the strike until the final two deliveries of the following set, which Gibson again struck for a brace of fours off Hayley Matthews. The first ball of the next set, bowled by Freya Davies? Another 4 – 5 consecutive boundaries in all.

Gibson became Ismail’s 3rd and final victim shortly after, but the 22 off 9 balls she’d added had turned a tricky chase into a canter for the batters who came in after her, with Deepti playing exactly the same smart cricket that Redmayne and Knight had in the Eliminator, knowing exactly what she needed to do, and waiting for the right time to strike the big shot which carried Spirit over the finish line. And who else would it be out there with Deepti when she hit the winning runs at Lord’s but Charlie Dean?

Like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, where (spoiler alert!) the villain from the first film returns as the hero for the second, Deepti turned her story around, winning over a Lord’s crowd of over 22,000 with the biggest cheer of the afternoon as she hoisted the trophy high on the podium after the match.

It has been a fascinating Hundred in the Women’s Competition, with the feeling that any one of 5 sides could have won it. London Spirit lost 3 games and scraped through to the Eliminator in 3rd place; but both Oval Invincibles and Welsh Fire lost 2 games apiece, so neither had dominated the way Brave did last season. In the end, it became a test of nerve and a test of smarts, and that’s where Spirit had the edge – beating teams that they had lost to in the group stages because they held their nerve and remembered their smarts when it really mattered.

A second unbeaten half-century of this 2024 Women’s Hundred from Georgia Redmayne took London Spirit to victory with 9 balls to spare – a pretty comfortable margin in this shortest of all short forms of the game – in The Annihilator Terminator Eliminator at The Oval.

Redmayne wasn’t supposed to be the “Big Name” in the London Spirit XI – that was Meg Lanning, with over 200 caps and more than 8,000 international runs. In contrast, Redmayne has zero caps, and zero international runs, having spent her 20s combining cricket with completing her medical training to qualify as a doctor. But for once, the Megastar has been eclipsed, with Redmayne outscoring her by 195 runs to 166 in the tournament so far.

The Doc played a patient innings (yes… I went there… for more puns of this quality follow my TikTok*!) and had to wait until the final moment to secure her half-century after Heather Knight almost snatched the opportunity from her, hitting out at the death. With 2 needed off 10 balls for the win, and 1 short of the fifty, Redmayne finally got the strike back from Knight, who had faced most of the previous couple of sets, and drove Alice Capsey through the covers for the runs she and Spirit needed. 53 off 47 balls isn’t a huge Strike Rate, but it didn’t matter – it was enough to win the game, and that’s all that counts – Spirit are heading back north of the river for tomorrow’s final with a spring in their step.

Oval Invincibles ultimately paid the price for a sluglish Early Middle phase, scoring just 19 runs between balls 25 and 50. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Dani Gibson giving them 3 gifts it would have been far worse.

The gift of gold came in the 2nd set, bowled by Gibson, which went for 16 runs – the most expensive set of the match; but it was followed by frankincense (9 off balls 70-75) and myrrh (13 off 85-90) as Heather Knight inexplicably persisted with Gibson, even though Tara Norris had bowled only 5 balls (conceding 5) leaving her with 15 still unused at the end. Heather Knight backing “her” players can be admirable; but sometimes it veers into obstinacy, and that’s how it looked today – Gibson was almost twice as expensive as Spirit’s next bowler, Charlie Dean – conceding 2.53 runs per ball, to Dean’s 1.2.

With precious few runs to play with, Invincibles played their trump card – Marizanne Kapp – early and often, hoping for the wickets they needed to get back into the match. Kapp was bowled out with half the match remaining, and I think Rosa hits the nail on the head identifying the problem with this:

Once Kapp was through, Heather Knight and Georgia Redmayne knew that all they needed to do was keep rotating the strike, hitting the odd bad ball to the boundary, and the win would come without them having to take too many risks.

Sure, there were some dropped catches as they made their way towards their target – Invincibles made it easier for them than it might have been – but basically the game was won by the halfway point in the Spirit innings, as long as they played it smart, and there are few people smarter in cricket than Heather Knight and Dr Georgia Redmayne.

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* I don’t have a TikTok – sorry.