At 4:06pm this afternoon, the Surrey Cricket twitter account posted what was I’m guessing was a scheduled tweet that said:

Happy Birthday to South East Stars and England opener Sophia Dunkley 🥳 Have a great day 🎉🎂

Reader, I have to tell you now that she did not have a great day.

She wasn’t the only one to be fair – she wasn’t responsible for England losing this match; but given the fine margins – Australia winning by just 3 runs – it’s hard not to look back on an innings of 13 off 30 balls and think: “If only…”

Whilst Dunkley was at the crease, Tammy Beaumont at the other end scored 47 off 39. It was a fifty opening partnership that was a partnership in name only, and meant that England didn’t get off to the big start that had allowed them to pre-empt Australia’s big finish in the way they had in winning the 1st ODI at Bristol.

Australia nearly didn’t do enough themselves – their innings suffering a little bit of a dip in the middle, like a bad sponge on Bake Off. They started at a good pace; but having lost a couple of early wickets, it was left to Ellyse Perry and Beth Mooney to rebuild, which they did by plodding along at little more than 4 runs-an-over. England fielded with admirable commitment, diving around aggressively like little spaniels; but there were more dropped catches, and again the fine margins came into play.

Perry top-scored with 91, but despite how close she came to the big 1-0-0 it somehow didn’t feel like a “match-winning” innings. That was left to Georgia Wareham, whose 37 off 14 balls turned the par score Australia were headed for into a decent one – one that England couldn’t quite overhaul.

In the process, Wareham handed Lauren Bell back a record she had briefly held last summer against India, until Freya Kemp eclipsed it in the same match – the most expensive bowling figures for England in ODIs – 3-85 – 26 of them in that fateful final over. Bell didn’t do a lot wrong, to be fair – Wareham was in the mood to nail anyone, going one better (well… technically… 18 better) than her 19 off 11 balls at the Oval in the T20 last week.

In reply, England were actually ahead of Australia for much of the middle-overs, as Nat Sciver-Brunt built towards another ODI century in vain – she is now the only woman to have scored a century in a losing cause 3 times – all against Australia.

But there was always the nagging feeling that England’s tail-enders, handy as they are on their days, weren’t going to have the firepower to match Australia’s up-tick at the end. Perhaps one of the issues is that England were punished by their own camaraderie – they believe in each other. Hence Nat Sciver-Brunt had a little bit too much faith in Sarah Glenn, taking singles early in a couple of overs which left Glenn playing out dots which cost England in the end, as their death phase proved their death.

So England’s Ashes dream is over. Thanks to the format being loaded in favour of the holders, effectively giving the holders a one-point lead coming into the series because of something their predecessors achieved 18 months ago, Australia “retain” the Ashes, even if England win the final ODI on Tuesday.

There is of course a distinction between “retain” and “win” for the cricket geeks, but let’s be honest – in the wider narrative, there is no such subtlety. England set out to “win” the Ashes, and they didn’t achieve that. Squaring the points on Tuesday, and winning both white-ball series in the process, will be an achievement, but there won’t be any chapters written about it in the history books.

As for Australia, they are back where… if we are honest… we all know in our heart of hearts they belong – on top of the world. It has been almost 10 years since they last lost 4 matches in a row, in a run spanning the 2013 and 2013-14 Ashes. One day someone will knock them over a 4th time; but it wasn’t to be England today. Congratulations Australia – enjoy the plaudits – you deserve them.

Won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won. That was Australia’s recent form in 15 ODIs leading up to this match. They hadn’t lost an ODI since India successfully chased-down 264 in September 2021 – almost two years ago.

The writing was on the wall though, as early as the toss – that match against India was the last time Australia won the toss in an ODI and elected to bat. Six tosses won since, and six times Australia chose to bowl – winning every time; and yet today Alyssa Healy cited “the data” to justify batting. I don’t know what data she’s looking at, but I suspect it isn’t the data on Women’s ODIs.

England opted to be fairly conservative in their selections – there were no new caps for Lauren Filer or Dani Gibson, and veteran Kate Cross was preferred over young-gun Issy Wong.

Having made that choice to bat, Healy came out looking to make a statement against Cross, and in a similar vein to so many of her recent performances, looked fantastic – bashing two 4s either side of the wicket from Cross’s first three deliveries. But it was Cross who had the last laugh, reviewing an LBW appeal off the following ball to send Healy back to the sheds.

Phoebe Litchfield, brought back in to open the batting after missing out to the big hitters in the T20s, played nicely for her 37, including an absolutely gorgeous whipped drive through midwicket which was probably the shot of the series. It took doubtless the catch of the series to dismiss her – Sophie Ecclestone leaping back gymnastically to take a one-handed screamer.

Litchfield aside, Australia’s batters didn’t look quite themselves though. Perry and Mooney both outscored the teenager, but England’s bowlers made them work awfully hard for their runs. Alice Capsey, bowling in an ODI for the first time, sent down 9 overs straight for only 37 – an Economy Rate of 4.1 – whilst Lauren Bell produced one of those magic balls that she can occasionally conjure-up to bowl Annabel Sutherland. Both are encouraging signs, for now and for the future. England’s fielding coaches will definitely have something to say about the dropped catches, but England’s commitment in the field at least didn’t waver, unlike… well… more on that below!

Australia produced a bit of an up-tick at the end of their innings to take them to 263-8 – pretty-much a par 1st-innings score in ODIs between the top sides in recent years.

Without a massive total to bowl at, Australia needed to be frugal with the ball; but their openers served up a Premier Inn All You Can’t Eat Breakfast Buffet of bad bowling to allow England to get off to a flyer, getting 100 on the board in the 12th over.

Darcie Brown’s bowling is in some ways Australia’s equivalent of Alice Capsey’s batting – you know she is going to give away a few extras bowling a few wides and no-balls, just like you know Capsey is going to get caught on the boundary. But in both cases the hope is that they’ll smash some stumps/ sixes to make up for it. Brown didn’t today, delivering just 4 overs before Healy decided to swipe-left. Capsey on the other hand had a good day, following up her heroics at Lord’s with another rocket-propelled 40. With Tammy Beaumont also making 47 at a strike rate of over 100, England were in the box seat when Heather Knight and Nat Sciver-Brunt came together at 121-3. Needing just 4 an over from there, the only thing they had to do was keep wickets in hand and the result would come.

By the 30th over, Australia seemed to have given up, despite having taken the prize wicket of Sciver-Brunt in the meantime. Beth Mooney and Tahlia McGrath both declined to dive on the boundary for balls that could have been saved.

In the middle, Heather Knight was slowly but surely batting her way back into form, after a little-bit of a lean patch in white-ball cricket. (Though of course she did score a 50 in the Test.) Knight scored just a single boundary from her first 50 balls faced, but began to accelerate later to finish with a strike rate of 87 for her 75 runs.

Wickets continued to fall at the other end, with Knight visibly rolling her eyes to the sky after Ecclestone got out playing a completely unnecessary slog-sweep. This is why Ecclestone remains a tail-ender – a very good tail-ender, but a tail-ender nonetheless – she only really has one gear, and when she needed to keep a lid on it, she couldn’t help herself. (Perhaps a Speed Awareness Course is in order?)

It was left to Kate Cross to save England from what really would have been snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, sweeping and ramping her way to 19 to take England level, before Knight hit the winning runs with 11 balls to spare.

So that’s 3 defeats in a row now for Australia – unprecedented territory for this team, and they really do seem genuinely rattled. The old superstars can still deliver a professional show, but they aren’t hitting the high notes quite the way they once did, whilst the young guns are not yet churning out the hits. Perhaps… dare I say it, Issy Wong was right? England have done what nobody thought they could do – brought the series back to level-pegging. A river has been crossed, and though they still need to win both of the remaining matches to win back the Ashes, they might just be looking like favourites for the first time in a long time against the self-proclaimed (and… to be fair… quite a lot of other people proclaimed) greatest team in history.

Alice Capsey loves Lord’s. And Lord’s loves Alice Capsey. Back at the ground where she announced herself on the big stage with a half-century in the first edition of The Hundred, she smashed 46 off 23 balls – a Strike Rate of exactly 200 – to keep England’s Ashes hopes alive going into the ODIs next week. Are you not entertained, she asked the crowd of over 21,000 at the Home of Cricket? Oh yes, they roared back! When she’s at her best, she’s absolute box-office – there’s no one in cricket like her. And getting dropped twice? All part of the plan – every hero has to have their moment of jeopardy, after all.

In theory all DLS-adjusted chases should be equal – that’s the point of the system – balancing the number of runs required, and the time you have to get them, with the wickets in hand. But a 14 over chase doesn’t feel like an easy one – England needed to go at 0.75 runs/ over more than Australia had done, for still quite a lot of overs – you can’t treat it like a 5 over thrash, but you still need to go at pace.

Capsey herself hasn’t had the best run of form coming into this match. Her recent run of scores for England, since hitting 51 as England thrashed Ireland at the T20 World Cup in South Africa: 3, 6, 0, 3 & 5. Was her place under threat for the ODIs? Very possibly, with Tammy Beaumont coming back and Emma Lamb also challenging for a spot. Is it now? Well… possibly, yes – it could well be a decision England have already made – but as she showed tonight, when she launches she’s headed for the stars!

England had made a decent start, going at all-but 10/ over in their 4-over powerplay, but they then lost both openers in the space of 2 balls either side of the end of the powerplay, meaning Capsey and Sciver-Brunt had to start again, both on 0. They both got off the mark with singles, but in the knowledge that they needed 8s they knew they couldn’t hang around. One more single was all Capsey needed to feel she’d got the pace of the pitch, before taking on Jess Jonassen and hammering her over cow corner for six. The party was just starting, and by the time she hit her second six off Schutt, almost 10 yards further and 4 rows back into the stand, it was in full swing – Lord’s was rocking. The crowd wanted only one thing more – for her to finish it off. She couldn’t quite give them that, but they’ll go home with only one performance in their minds, and every single one of them will be back for more.

This being England, there was a little scare at the end. Nat Sciver-Brunt was bowled by Georgia Wareham; Amy Jones swung and missed at the one ball she faced; then Heather Knight was given out LBW, brining Dani Gibson to the crease with 2 needed from 5 balls. Gibson held her nerve, reversing for 4 to make sure of the win with 4 balls to spare.

Australia had earlier made a par 155-7. (The average score over the past couple of years in T20s between the top international side is 151.) It was one of those innings where no one really stood out – Mooney, Gardner and Perry all made 30+, but none went on – Perry’s 34 was the top score of the innings. Grace Harris, also coming in off a run of poor scores, added a handy (and rapid) 25.

England’s bowlers similarly had to work hard. Sarah Glenn got smashed for 16 off one over, with Beth Mooney hitting fours off 3 consecutive legal deliveries (with a wide in-between the first and second); whist Nat Sciver-Brunt, who is definitely not 100%, conceded 17 (all off Ellyse Perry) off her final over.

Dani Gibson was probably the big positive in terms of the bowling – not because she was brilliant, but because she delivered a solid 3 overs, suggesting England really have something to build on with her as a seam-bowling allrounder going forwards. She isn’t the finished article just yet – Freya Davies is a much, much better bowler right now; but as a long-term replacement for Sciver-Brunt, who is pushing 31 and obviously creaking, Gibson looks promising, and England probably need to look at her for the ODIs in terms of investment potential as well as “now” potential.

So England live to fight another day. Can they go on to win all three ODIs, and thus regain the Ashes? The odds remain massively against them – they are on a wing and a (Lord’s) prayer – but Australia will be just a little bit rattled by what has happened this week in London, and with full houses guaranteed (albeit at smaller grounds) for the ODI series, with the crowd on their side, you can’t count them out just yet.

Australia lost a white ball match “in normal time*” for the first time in almost two years – since India beat them in an ODI in September 2021 – in a madcap game watched by more than 20,000 fans at The Oval. (*India did also beat them in a Super Over in 2022.)

England – and in particular Sophia Dunkley – rode their luck early on, after having been inserted by Australia for the second time running. Australia’s strategy to Dunkley was unchanged from Edgbaston on Saturday – bowl short and get her caught – but once again it didn’t really pay off. She did take on the short balls, and she didn’t do it with too much control, so there were chances, but Australia didn’t make them count, allowing her and Wyatt to hit a pretty decent 54-0 off the powerplay.

Dunks’ luck finally ran out in the 7th over, but England had a platform to reach 100-1 in the 12th over, with something close to 200 looking like a real possibility.

What happened next was the seesaw to end all seesaws. England lost 5 wickets in the space of 4 overs; their run-rate collapsed; and it appeared to be game over, as the Australian’s brought Megan Schutt back on to turn the screw.

8 ball overs were of course traditional in Australia until comparatively recently, so perhaps an 8 ball over shouldn’t have been entirely surprising; but this was one for the history books for all the wrong reasons – the extra two deliveries comprising a no-ball (smacked for 4) and a wide down the leg side that hurtled to the (very short) straight boundary. With Wyatt hitting 3 other 4s plus a single, and Ecclestone helping out with a couple, the over went for 25. In the space of 8 balls, the game had turned back in England’s favour, and Australia found themselves up Schutt’s creek.

That one over meant that England were able to drive on to a very decent total – 151 is a typical 1st innings score in T20s between the top sides, and 186 is well above par on almost any day. Wyatt finished with 76 from 46 balls; but Sophie Ecclestone’s contribution at the end was also vital. We said the other day that Ecclestone is not going to be someone that England can rely on to make runs every time, but very-much like Katherine Sciver-Brunt used to, she’ll make a handy 20 or 30 every so often, and she’ll rarely make a more important 22 than she did today, especially because it was off just 12 balls. Given the margin of victory in the end, that strike rate was key.

Australia weren’t going to go down without a fight. (Do they ever?) They got off to an even better start than England, with Healy looking in great nick, in contrast to Dunkley’s madcap antics earlier in the evening, and there were echoes in her strokeplay of 2020 at the MCG. Australia were ahead after the powerplay, but suffered something of a collapse of their own in the early middle phase, as England’s spinners collectively turned on the pressure.

Glenn and Dean were both superb in the middle phases, keeping the ball tight and giving the Australian batters no freedom to play their shots. (Dean’s final figures look a tad expensive, but she got hit by Healy early on, and then slogged out of the ground by Georgia Wareham at the end – she was better than 1-41 today.) Australia needed 15 runs per over in the death phase – surely an impossible ask?

This being Australia however they still believed they could win, and they got close with Ellyse Perry passing 50 by hitting the last two balls for 6 and getting them within 4 runs of victory. (Though to be fair, Ecclestone doubtless knew that all she needed to do with those last two balls was land them on the pitch, so she was likely focussed on that – it didn’t matter if Perry hit them for maximums, as long as the weren’t wides or no balls.)

Of course, 14/ over isn’t 15, but it is still a B.I.G. death phase, and completed Australia’s highest ever chase in T20 internationals. But it wasn’t quite sufficient. England went with the same strategy of holding back Ecclestone for the final over, and although Bell’s 19th went for 11 again, this time Ecclestone found herself defending 20 rather than 5, and England clung on.

Given that the series nonetheless stands 6-2, and England still need to win all the remaining white ball games to regain the Ashes, it is probably fair to say that it is actually still England who are up Schutt’s Creek… but with a win under their belt at last, at least now they have a paddle.

After an unprecedented 20,000 spectators turned out for England’s Ashes T20 at Edgbaston on Saturday night, normality was restored a short drive down the road on Sunday at Worcester, as the proverbial man and his dog watched Sparks defend 233 to beat Thunder.

Under heavy skies, Thunder’s bowlers had the better of the early exchanges, with Sparks openers Eve Jones and Bethan Ellis bowled by Tara Norris and Mahika Gaur respectively. Erin Burns brought a little impetus to proceedings, but by the end of the powerplay she too was back in the pavilion, spooning a pretty innocuous delivery from Gaur to Deandra Dottin on the ring at backward point, leaving Sparks an anaemic 32-3 at the 10 over mark.

But Ami Campbell (68) and Abbey Freeborn (67) steadied the ship with a game-changing partnership which ultimately reached 139. It was somewhat attritional cricket early on, with Campbell and Freeborn digging out the runs at 4/5 per over, while Thunder’s attack toiled without making the breakthrough as Sparks reached 105-3 at drinks.

It was until after the 30^th over, with Campbell and Freeborn both having passed 50, that the pair started to cut loose, upping the run-rate to more than 8 per over. But both were dismissed in the space of 4 balls – first Campbell, stumped in slightly strange circumstances after failing to connect with a Tara Norris bouncer; then Freeborn bowled by Laura Jackson; whilst in-between, Davina Perrin also came and went LBW to Norris for a golden duck.

This left Sparks’ tail with an uphill task to post a decent total, but a decent 33 off 36 balls from Charis Pavely was the key to them reaching 233-10, bowled out off the final ball of the innings.

In reply, Seren Smale looked to play positively from the start, finding the boundary 3 times in Katie George’s opening over, which went for 15; but at the other end her opening partner Naomi Dattani was having a nightmare which culminated in a 12-ball duck as she was bowled through the gate by Georgia Davis.

Thunder looked well-placed at the 20-over mark with Smale having passed 50 in the previous over, and Deandra Dottin going at a run a ball; but after being dropped off the first ball of the 20^th over, Dottin was adjudged LBW off the second for 21 off 23 balls.

Smale carried Thunder’s hopes through to the 39^th over, but having batted for over two hours and worked her way to 94 off 125 balls, she played a tired club off Katie George, and watched in despair as it fell into the reliable hands of Eve Jones at mid on.

With the required rate having climbed to 6.6 runs per over going into the final 10, Thunder didn’t have time to hang around, but needed to balance that against having only 4 wickets in hand. That soon became 3 when Liberty Heap edged George to Freeborn behind the stumps, exposing the Thunder tail, which lasted until the 49^th over when a smashing diving catch by Dive-ina Perrin ended things with Thunder 30 short on 204 all out.

Australia ground out a win off the penultimate ball in a slightly scrappy game at a packed-out Edgbaston. A crowd just shy of 20,000 (19,527) cheered every boundary, roared for every wicket, sang along to every cheesy song, and even booed the TV umpire when Alice Capsey was adjudged (probably fairly, it should be said) run out.

It was certainly a contest, but whether it was a “good” contest could… well… be contested! If they are really honest, neither side will go back to the hotel tonight feeling they played well.

Only 3 England batters made it into double-figures. Sophia Dunkley had a good game on paper with 56 off 49 balls, but it was a really weird innings – Australia had clearly decided that the way to get her was to bowl bouncers outside off stump and get her caught on the boundary, and it is true that she wasn’t dealing with them convincingly, but she was mostly just pulling them weakly through mid on. That wasn’t where the trap was set, so she survived long enough to get a half-century and finish England’s highest scorer. With Wyatt, Capsey and Sciver-Brunt facing 20 balls at the other end, and hitting just two 4s between them, it felt at times like watching a men’s county T20 cup game from the 00s, before anyone had really figured out how to play the then-new shortest form of the game.

Heather Knight coming in at 5 found some form – playing a couple of nice shots rampy shots on her way to 29 off 22, but couldn’t push on; and at 115-4 going into the death, England looked like they were going to struggle to make a par score, especially when Dunkley was dismissed off the first ball of the 17th over. But Amy Jones played a fantastic hand to smash 40 off 21 balls, including two 6s and get England up to a defendable total. Jones was really the only England batter who looked like she knew where the middle of her bat was, and combined with some good work later behind the wicket, including the kind of stumping to get Tahlia McGrath that no one else currently playing the game can pull off, there was a rare case for selecting someone on the losing side as Player of the Match.

As for Australia, they were poor in the field – probably the worst performance I’ve seen from them in the professional era. It wasn’t so much that they let run outs and catches go begging… though they did… but that they let England nurdle the ball around for large chunks of the game, because a fielder was never quite in the right place. This is where they really miss Meg Lanning – Healy just isn’t as proactive and doesn’t have Lanning’s attention to detail, which meant that Australia gave up maybe 20-30 more runs than they would have if Lanning had been out there.

With 150 on the board, England will have felt that they had a chance at the innings break, but they were going to need to take wickets – a required rate of under 8-an-over wasn’t going to trouble Australia if batters got set, and so it proved. Ironically, Australia also only had 3 batters make double-figures,  but the difference was that those 3 – Mooney, McGrath and Gardner – did it up top, so although Australia went into the death still needing 8-an-over, they had the wickets in hand to handle any calamity.

With 16 still needed off the last two overs, England made the interesting decision to bowl Lauren Bell in the 19th, saving Ecclestone for the last. The theory these days is generally that the 19th is the key over – that’s “make or break” time, when you bowl your best bowler, hoping that they can keep the ask high enough for the 20th over that the pressure of it being the “final over” does the rest. Bell going for 11 off the 19th probably reinforces that case, though she did take the wicket of Perry with a lovely slower ball.

This left Ecclestone with a lot of work to do, defending 5 off 6 balls. Sutherland sent the first of those 6 balls back with interest over Ecclestone to the boundary, leaving Australia needing just one more; but the pressure then got to Sutherland, and after two dots she panicked, edging behind to leave us all wondering if a super-over was on the cards, with that one still required off two remaining deliveries. Could Ecclestone pull off the miracle? She could not… and it was probably too much to expect. Georgia Wareham got just enough on her first ball to dash through for the single, and Australia won with a single ball to spare.

The Ashes still aren’t mathematically gone – if England win all of the remaining games, they can still snatch back the trophy; and today will have given them hope (false hope, perhaps, but still hope) that they can challenge Australia on their day. But they now need “their day” to come 5 times in the next 3 weeks, and that feels like optimism taken too far.