This week:

• Why England v Pakistan is a poor test ahead of the World Cup
• Are England picking on potential instead of results?
• The ECB’s “record-breaking financial results”
• NSW and Victoria win big in Australia’s new 20-over state competition

Pakistan slumped to a series defeat at Northampton, losing their last 5 wickets for just 8 runs as England turned in a thoroughly professional fielding performance, holding on to 7 outfield catches, leaving Amy Jones for once with little to do behind the stumps but twiddle her gloves, following her “4fer” in Birmingham.

After the early departure of Danni Wyatt, Maia Bouchier and Alice Capsey combined to give England what looks on the scorecard to be a decent enough start – 48-1 at the end of the powerplay; but 42% of those runs had come in just one 20-run over, which was probably the least convincing 20-run over I’ve ever seen.

Capsey was on 2 off 9 balls at the start of the 4th over, and looking… it has to be said… somewhat at sea, much as she had at Edgbaston. The over then began with Capsey dancing down the pitch and getting a big edge which passed just out of reach of the diving keeper – 4 runs, which could have easily been another early bath. Then two more thoroughly unconvincing, baseball-style clubs into the leg side, but nonetheless bringing a brace more 4s. A defensive push straight back to the bowler somehow also found its way through to the boundary, and then after a dot off the 5th, finally a much more convincing shot off the final ball for another 4.

At that point it felt like the switch might have flicked, and we were relishing the prospect of Capsey finally producing that really big innings for England that her talent has always promised; but it wasn’t quite to be – she disappeared back into her shell again, scoring just 9 runs from the next 18 balls she faced, before being caught behind, and then… just to really rub it in… stumped for good measure, to end things.

Capsey did joint-top-score, and also go on to take 2 wickets as Pakistan committed hara-kiri, winning her player of the match. But she’s into her 3rd summer of international cricket now, and after playing 28 games for England, she averages little more than Charlie Dean, with Dean averaging 19 at a Strike Rate of 108, and Capsey 22 at a Strike Rate of 123. It’s better. But not as better as it ought to be. And yes, to bend George W Bush’s quote, she is suffering from what you might call “the hard bigotry of high expectations”, but if she wants to be the best, she has to do better.

Nat Sciver-Brunt’s 31 looked a lot more authoritative, but it took another very decent cameo from Dani Gibson – 18 from 9 balls – for England to get up to the kind of score that would have given them something to bowl at against most other opponents.

Of course, they didn’t need those runs today, with Pakistan folding as they did, but one day they will, and if Gibson can nail-down that “finisher” role for England, it would be a huge win for JonBall. The other side of that coin however is that when Nat Sciver-Brunt is unable to bowl, which is becoming an increasingly regular feast in the liturgical calendar of English cricket, Gibson probably isn’t the right player to take on a full bowling role in her stead.

It is a headache that even Lewis’s famous AI might be ill-equipped to cure, and you get the feeling from the way the bowling changes proceeded today that Heather Knight knows it too – it felt like she was trying to hide Gibson’s overs where no one would notice, which isn’t an ideal starting-point for your 5th bowler. And maybe that too is the hard bigotry of high expectations, but we aren’t playing softball any more. This team has been given resources that previous generations could not even have dreamed about – our expectations are high, but theirs should be higher.

It’s been an up and down few months for Pakistan in T20 cricket. The ups: clean-sweeping South Africa 3-0 at home; and beating New Zealand 2-1 away. The downs: a 2-1 away defeat to Bangladesh; and most recently a 4-1 loss to West Indies at home – the latter essentially a 4-1 defeat to Hayley Matthews, who won 3 Player of the Match awards in the 5-game series.

Their failure to take anything much from a one-woman Windies team at home didn’t bode well for their chances against England, who for all their flaws remain indisputably one of the top 3 sides in the world, albeit that their 2nd-placed ICC ranking (ahead of India in 3rd) probably flatters them a little.

The one advantage the Pakistanis did have over some of the England XI coming into this game, was that they had played some recent cricket, with the West Indies series having wrapped up less than a fortnight ago. Contrastingly, two of England’s brightest young stars – Alice Capsey and Lauren Bell – have played a combined total of zero games between them since England returned from New Zealand over a month ago. There was rust on both of them, and it showed.

Capsey got off the mark with an edge off the back of her bat, which somehow missed the stumps and went past the befuddled keeper for 4, and… it didn’t get any better from there. With England having lost a 2nd wicket in the meantime, Capsey needed to knuckle down; instead, she played the kind of shot that looked like she’d just closed her eyes and swung, with all-too-predictable consequences.

Bell also started poorly, her first over going for 12 as Gull Feroza went on the attack up-top for Pakistan. Bowlers do of course get second chances that batters don’t, and Bell got her revenge on Feroza with a decent ball in her second over, with the help of a brilliant catch from Amy Jones. Bell also added another couple of wickets as Pakistan collapsed, giving her final figures of 3-22, which don’t read too badly; but she definitely didn’t have the control today that she showed on the New Zealand tour, and which England will need from her if they are going to challenge for the T20 World Cup.

Ultimately, none of it mattered in terms of the outcome of this match. England had enough depth and experience to recover from 11-4 to post 163. Amy Jones and Heather Knight were dealt a difficult hand with the situation they found themselves in, but they played their cards with all the nous of a pair who have over 450 caps between them.

In this, they were ably assisted by some terrible fielding from Pakistan – Nida Dar just couldn’t get her placements right – everything England hit seemed to find a gap, and when it didn’t, it found a misfield.

Having dug in in the early-middle phase, England were then able to accelerate and maintain a pace of 10+ over for the remainder of the match. Knight and Jones’ stand meant that Dani Gibson could come in and add a very useful 41 not out at the death, to take the game out of Pakistan’s reach. (It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that Gibson is one of the ones who has been playing regional cricket, batting herself back into form with a half-century for Storm at Bristol last week.)

Pakistan made a decent start to their chase, and by the half-way mark were on-track to win the match, according to our new toy – a win-predictor called “Win-her”, which is based exclusively on data taken from women’s cricket.

Of course, Win-her turned out to be very-much not correct in terms of the outcome of this game, but that doesn’t mean it is “wrong”. What it is saying is that a team that has made a decent dent in the chase and only lost 3 wickets at the 10-over mark in the chase, will mostly go on to win the match.

And Pakistan should have! But where England used the late-middle phase to explode, Pakistan imploded, losing 5 wickets for 10 runs and handing the game to England, leaving 12,000 fans to go home happy on the opening day of England’s international summer.

This week:

• RHF Trophy: Diamonds pull off a thriller v Sparks!
• England squad v Pakistan: was it selected by AI or Jon Lewis?
• Bess Heath becomes Amy Jones’s formal understudy
• Will England take an A team to Ireland?
• Cricket Australia shorten WBBL – Syd isn’t happy

Ella “Mac” McCaughan has been a constant fixture for Southern Vipers in the short history of the RHF Trophy; and she has been a consistent but not spectacular performer through the past four seasons, averaging 23 across 36 games for the team she made her 50-over debut for as a 17-year-old, back in 2020.

The one caveat about her career so far was that she had never made a really BIG score in senior cricket before today, and… if we’re being brutally honest… she still hasn’t; but her 83 off 97 balls, opening the batting for the Vipers against a perennially strong Diamonds side, was the difference between the two teams on a day that ended in a rain-adjusted win for the Vipers at the newly-renamed “Utilita Bowl” in Southampton.

Lizzie Scott was the victim of an early assault by McCaughan, who struck five 4s off Scott’s first two overs. On an outfield which was lightning-fast, despite overnight rain, Vipers hit 49 off the first 6 overs of the powerplay, with McCaughan 31 off 24 balls, eclipsing Maia Bouchier at the other end, who had made a mere 14 off 12 at that stage.

Runs were a little harder to come by after that, with the two balls in use at either end not quite pinging off the bat the way they had when they were new. Nonetheless, Vipers reached 72 before Bouchier was dismissed – caught by Lauren Winfield-Hill having skied an attempted pull.

A second big partnership, this one for 93, ensued between McCaughan and Aussie import Charli Knott, who has made herself very-much at home in English domestic cricket. Today’s 40 off 40 balls was actually her lowest score of the season so far, and thanks to a not-out against Sparks in the week, she currently averages 69. Given that Knott is (realistically) nowhere near the Australian national side, that might be indicative of a continuing gap in standards between English and Australian domestic cricket; or it might be a sign of greater things to come. Time will tell, but it is worth noting in passing that one of the day’s other better performances was another Australian who has never added to the handful of caps she won in 2019 – Erin Burns.

McCaughan and Knott were ultimately dismissed in successive overs by Turners – not balls that span, but deliveries from medium-pacers (and not sisters, despite both ending up playing cricket for the same team) Sophia and Phoebe Turner. But by that time Vipers had a platform of 168 with 7 wickets in hand to push on towards something really big. They didn’t quite achieve that, finishing on 287 after losing wickets towards the end; but it was still a big total, well in excess of the 250 which is an average 1st innings score in the RHF.

With spots of rain already in the air, and a deluge forecast from about 4pm, Diamonds walked out to bat facing not only the Vipers’ bowling lineup, but also Professors Duckworth, Lewis and Stern, with “stern” being the operative word for the test they were about to undergo. As Winston Churchill might have said of DLS, it remains the worst form of deciding a rain-affected cricket match, apart from all the other ways which have from time to time been tried. My view is that it is fair, but it certainly feels harsh when you see the par score go from 19 to 40 in one ball due to the loss of an early wicket.

Having lost 3 wickets early, and with the weather palpably closing-in, Diamonds found themselves frantically chasing DLS for the rest of their innings. They did actually get the gap down to single-figures at one point, as Winfield-Hill and Burns put on 82 for the 4th wicket, but their dismissals suddenly added another 40-odd runs to the target, and there was clearly going to be no way back for the Diamonds, with the umpires calling time after 30 overs as the rain took hold.

The result was a big one for Vipers, against the only other side to have won the RHF Trophy. It lifts them to second in the table, just ahead of Sunrisers on Net Run Rate, but still behind Stars, who continued their unbeaten start to the season with a DLS win of their own versus Sparks. With two semi-finals, rather than a single “eliminator” this season, there’s a bit more to play for than there has been mid-table than in previous years, and the Diamonds I saw today should certainly make that top four, but Vipers have shown once again why they remain the team to beat.

This week:

• Stars upset Vipers in the RHF Trophy
• Winners & losers in the race to host a Tier 1 county
• Meg Lanning opens up about her international retirement
• 3 women winners for Wisden