At 70-0, chasing a low-ish 122, England were going along nicely at 70-0, two balls shy of the 10 over mark. Danni Wyatt, who had been happily playing second-fiddle to Sophia Dunkley, didn’t quite get everything on a pull down the ground and was caught in the deep. With the batters having crossed, Dunkley retained the strike with a single off the final ball of the 10th over to face Radha Yadav at the other end, with just a single required to add another international half-century to her trophy cabinet.

It should have been the moment to put the cherry on top of the cake, but instead Dunkley lost it completely – playing and missing at 6 dots from Radha, like a woman who’d totally forgotten how to bat. Alice Capsey jogged a single off her first ball to give Dunkley yet another chance to pass 50, but instead of just nurdling a straight delivery from Pooja Vastrakar into the off side, she tried to heave it over midwicket, missed it completely, and was about as comprehensively bowled as it is possible to be.

Dunkley was later named Player of the Series, having topped the run charts, but it was a series of performances that showcased her vulnerabilities as well as her talents – one minute she’ll be scoring all round the ground, the next she’ll look like someone who has accidentally wandered onto the field having taken a wrong turn on her way to the pub.

Amy Jones soon followed, playing down the District Line to a ball that took the Hammersmith & City, and England were suddenly in a bit of a hole – literally, a hole on the “Trend”.

Thank goodness then for Alice Capsey, who dug England out the hole and showed… yet again… why she is the most exciting young player we’ve seen since Sarah Taylor first emerged onto the scene 15 years ago at a similar age. Capsey ended with 38 not out off 24 balls – finishing the job for England for the second time in the series, after her 32 not out in the 1st T20 in Durham.

The assumption when Capsey was picked to debut in the T20 series against South Africa just two short months ago would surely have been that she would play the T20s, but give way for the ODI series; but how can England drop her now? Especially without Nat Sciver and Heather Knight (who sat quietly and surprisingly anonymously in the crowd this evening).

It would have been a much more straightforward chase for England if it hadn’t been for Pooja Vastrakar (19 off 11) and Richa Ghosh (32 off 22) battling away at the end. India had looked to be heading for a total south of 100 but Pooja and Richa put up some fight in the last 3 overs to get India past the 120 which is the bare minimum these days in this format.

First Ghosh turned Issy Wong’s pace against her in the 18th, hitting the speedster for 3 consecutive boundaries, before Sophie Ecclestone stepped in and presumably suggested that she try taking pace off, which Wong did for the last two deliveries of the over, conceding only two more singles in the process.

Then in the final over, it was Vastrakar’s turn to do some damage – hacking 15 off Freya Davies, who didn’t do a lot wrong, but still had to watch the ball disappear twice to the boundary.

With 122 on the board, India had a chance, and although it got quite cool by the end of the evening, it didn’t dew-up in the way it had done in Derby, so the gods weren’t totally on England’s side. But then… as we’ll probably find ourselves saying a few times in the next ten or fifteen years… who needs gods when you’ve got Alice Capsey.

“You can’t bowl there to Smriti Mandhana!”

“Or there.”

“Or there.”

Let’s face it – you can’t bowl anywhere to Smriti Mandhana – not when she’s in the form she was in tonight, hitting 79 off 53 balls – carving England to shreds in the 2nd T20 at Derby.

India overall looked a different team tonight. After their complaints about the conditions up in Durham on Saturday, the weather was much more clement – 4-5℃ warmer in Derby than it had been in Durham – and starting an hour and a half earlier at 6pm makes a big difference too at this time of year – walking out in sunlight rather than darkness.

England chose to bat first – as they’ve done so successfully in T20s at this ground recently, averaging 162 (discounting the West Indies game reduced to 5 overs per side in 2020) and winning six from six.

But they were soon in trouble here – Dunkley again looked at sixes-and-sevens early on against Renuka – leaving one she should have played, and playing one she should have left. She then tried to make up for it by charging Deepti’s first delivery – totally missing it, and handing Richa Ghosh a straightforward stumping.

The following over, Renuka bowled a Jaffa to Wyatt who edged to slip; Capsey ran herself out getting overenthusiastic about a third, having already run two; and suddenly England were 3 down in the powerplay for not-very-many. (16, to be precise!)

Amy Jones and Bryony Smith were left trying to rebuild, and basically wrote-off the rest of the powerplay, getting to the six-over mark both on 7 at strike rates of under 100. They then did start to play a few shots, Smith hitting a couple of boundaries to get her strike rate (just) over 100 but both were dismissed by the half-way mark, with England 60-5 and Freya Kemp at the crease for only the second time in her brief England career – the first having ended 1 not out in the death throes of England’s ill-fated bronze medal match at the Commonwealth Games.

Those of us who have seen Kemp play in domestic cricket know she can hit a cricket ball a long way, so she has the ability, but the test here was one of temperament… and it was a test she passed with straight As. There was no point in her trying to do anything other than play her natural game – even if she’d been able to nurdle her way to 20 off 30 balls, that wouldn’t have helped anyway. England needed to put runs on the board, and Kemp did exactly that – finishing 51* off 37.

Interestingly, the role being played by Kemp was the one originally written for Sarah Glenn – who England almost opened with once in a T20 against the West Indies here at Derby, until plans changed when the weather reduced the game to a 5 over thrash. Glenn was earmarked by then-coach Mark Robinson as a “pinch hitter” who could come in and smack quick, hard runs, while also offering a few overs with the ball, but somehow she never got her opportunity with the bat, and now she plays as a pure bowler, coming in at 9 with no one expecting very much when she does.

But Kemp got the opportunity today that Glenn never really had; and with Maia Bouchier chipping in another 34 off 26 to add to Kemp’s heroics, England got to 142 – a bit below par, but it was something to bowl at.

Or… it would have been something to bowl at, if not for Smriti Mandhana.

We’ve seen some remarkable performances from some remarkable players over the years – Alyssa Healy’s swashbuckling masterpiece in the T20 World Cup Final at the MCG; Meg Lanning’s “Terminator” in the Women’s Ashes at Chelmsford; Harmanpreet’s “Harman Monster” at this ground in the 2017 World Cup semi-final. But none of those players – great as they are – make cricket look quite as easy as Smriti does when she’s in full flow, and the groove she found tonight was classic Smriti.

There was one shot – an effortlessly graceful cut for 4 off Kemp – that summed it all up: it wasn’t just that she didn’t bother running, it was that she didn’t even really bother looking – she knew it was gone from the moment it struck the bat. When she’s on that kind of a roll, there’s no delivery you can bowl to her; no field you can set – she’s the master chef, and you’re the fish… and you’re getting fried!

All of which sets things up nicely for a series decider at Bristol later this week. After South Africa’s capitulation to England earlier in the summer, it’s enjoyable to have a genuinely competitive bilateral series on our hands.

I’d expect England to be unchanged – this is the shape of the team they are planning to take to South Africa for the T20 World Cup, and they’ll want them to have every possible minute in the middle over the next few months.

The one player who looks like she needs a rest is Sophie Ecclestone; but I’m guessing neither she nor England would agree, or she wouldn’t have got an NOC to sign up for WBBL, which was announced earlier today. Nevertheless, she looks exhausted, having played literally everything this year – Ashes, World Cup, Regionals, Fairbreak, T20 Challenge, South Africa, Comm Games, Hundred, and now India, with WBBL and the West Indies tour to come. Something is going to have to give at some point, as it has with Nat Sciver – it’s just a question of whether you manage it, or try to ignore it until it all comes crashing down – either way, it’s a choice, which I hope England don’t make by default… but let’s face it, they probably will.

Sophia Dunkley recovered from a rocky start to lead England to an overwhelming victory in the first T20 on a cold, damp night at The Riverside – the most northerly cricket stadium in England.

Dunkley played just one scoring shot off her first 11 balls, which included a reprieve when she was caught behind off a no ball in the first over. She was dropped in the powerplay by Shafali, who slipped on the skiddy surface on the ring, and then dropped again shortly afterwards – a much tougher chance to Harmanpreet on the boundary.

That final drop, on the first ball of the 9th over, however proved to be something of a turning point – it ended up going for 6, and in the 11 balls that followed England plundered a further 26 runs, including two more 6s struck by Alice Capsey to turn the required rate from 5 to exactly 3 in the space of two overs. With 9 wickets still in hand, it was then only a matter of when not if, and helped by some terrible fielding from India – who must have felt like they had accidentally landed in a different country to the hot, dry one they’d left at the end of the Commonwealth Games in early August – Capsey and Dunkley carried home the win with 7 overs to spare.

Capsey was really superb again, finishing with 32 off 20 balls – a Strike Rate of 160. It wasn’t quite 100% flawless – there was a moment early on when she hammered one straight back down the ground at a very grabbable hight, and probably should have been caught and bowled by Pooja Vastrakar. It was more than slightly reminiscent of the way she was dismissed by Nonkululeko Mlaba against South Africa in the Commonwealths, and on that occasion she expressed a degree of disbelief in the press conference afterwards on the grounds that she had “absolutely middled it”, but at this level you do expect the bowlers to take those chances.

Overall though Capsey’s ability to hit big boundaries – and these were properly big boundaries compared to the ones we’ve seen over the past month in The Hundred, with the rope all the way back at The Riverside – combined with her enthusiasm for running 1s and 2s, continues to underline her status as the most exciting young cricketer in the world, to which we can only say… we told you so!

England’s win was particularly impressive because India had actually put on a fairly decent total – 132 is slightly short of the typical first innings score in a T20 between the top 5 sides these days (146 is the average), but given the pretty horrendous conditions it looked competitive; and with England missing both their “backbones” in Heather Knight and Nat Sciver, India must have felt they were in with a decent shot at the innings break.

England handed a T20 debut to Lauren Bell and a recall to Freya Davies – outraging the Sky commentary team, who obviously wanted to see Issy Wong in place of Davies – but I think it was the right call. The mainstream cricket media has placed Wong on a pedestal but it is one she is struggling to balance on, and after her poor return in The Hundred (just 2 wickets in the competition and rarely trusted to bowl her full allocation) she needs to actually start delivering on the pitch if she wants to become a regular pick for England going forwards.

That’s what Sarah Glenn has continued to do, in her quiet unassuming way, and she reaped the rewards in Durham with her best T20 international figures of 4-23. Aged 23, Glenn already has more than 50 wickets for England, in under 50 matches, at 1.3 wickets per match. 44 of those wickets have come in the T20 format, putting her well on the way to one day passing the magic mark of 100 T20 wickets, which so far only Anya Shrubsole and Katherine Brunt have done for England.

Leg-spinners are cricket’s artists: Amelia Kerr is Bridget Riley bending your eyes in both directions at once; Alana King is Frida Kahlo blowing doors open by sheer force of moxie. Sarah Glenn is none of that, perhaps because she isn’t much of a spinner at all – there’s a grain of truth in the joke that her stock delivery is the one that doesn’t turn, while her googly is the one that doesn’t turn the other way. But she’s obviously got something going for her, and that something is that she understands her own game and through her consistency she forces the batters to play her game along with her. And it’s difficult to argue with the results.

From an Indian perspective, the key is going to be ensuring that this result isn’t the start of a mental disintegration which turns this tour into South Africa 2022 Mark 2. It shouldn’t be – while there was no standout performance, and they missed the rock steadiness of Jemimah Rodrigues in the middle overs, the total was still a decent team effort. But with this England batting line-up, a bit like the current men’s Test side, when it goes right, it goes very, very right, and India were just on the wrong end of that tonight.

Lauren Bell has been called up to the England squad for the T20 series versus India, replacing Katherine Brunt, who will sit out of both the T20 and ODI series to (in the words of head coach Lisa Keightley) “maximise her mental and physical recovery off the back of what has been an intense year so far”.

Bell made her Test and ODI debuts against South Africa earlier in the summer, but was overlooked for the Commonwealth Games. However, she has now won selection off the back of an excellent Hundred, having placed third in the our bowling rankings and finished with 11 wickets, including 4-10 for Brave v Rockets – the best return in the competition.

With Heather Knight not expected to return to action until later in the year following her hip op, Nat Sciver will again captain the side, which is otherwise unchanged from the Commonwealth Games squad, with the 3 “Young Guns” – Alice Capsey, Freya Kemp and Issy Wong – all retaining their spots; and no return for either Lauren Winfield-Hill, who was one of the leading batters in The Hundred, or Tammy Beaumont.

There’s also no call-up for Em Arlott, despite outshining fellow Phoenix Issy Wong in The Hundred; and no backup wicket keeper in the squad.

Although obviously a reserve keeper could be drafted-in for the India series, this won’t be the case at the up-coming T20 World Cup, so England would appear to be taking a bit of a gamble on Amy Jones not getting injured, given that the plan presumably is that the World Cup squad will be this squad, plus Knight and Brunt, with one of the other fast bowlers missing out.

Full Squad

Nat Sciver (Northern Diamonds, Captain)
Lauren Bell (Southern Vipers)
Maia Bouchier (Southern Vipers)
Alice Capsey (South East Stars)
Kate Cross (Thunder)
Freya Davies (South East Stars)
Sophia Dunkley (South East Stars)
Sophie Ecclestone (Thunder)
Sarah Glenn (Central Sparks)
Amy Jones (Central Sparks)
Freya Kemp (Southern Vipers)
Bryony Smith (South East Stars)
Issy Wong (Central Sparks)
Danni Wyatt (Southern Vipers)

It’s the 2021 RHF Trophy final – the defending champions are chasing a modest total, but wickets have been falling and Emily Windsor walks to the crease knowing two things: 1) there isn’t much batting to come; but 2) if she can just stay there, she’ll win the game.

And she does.

A year later… a different team, and a different competition… it’s the 2022 Hundred final – the defending champions are chasing a modest total, but wickets have been falling and Emily Windsor walks to the crease knowing two things: 1) there isn’t much batting to come; but 2) if she can just stay there, she’ll win the game.

And she does.

Marizanne Kapp will of course rightly get the plaudits for winning this game – her second successive Player of the Match performance in the final – but she couldn’t have done it without Windsor keeping her company at the end.

Though Windsor had played 3 group-stage matches in the lead-up to the final, such has been the strength of Invincibles’ batting that this was her first visit to the crease in this year’s tournament. In front of 20,000 people at Lords and hundreds of thousands watching on tv around the world, she could have been overawed by the occasion; and honestly, if she’d got out playing a rash shot… or even no shot at all… no one would have blamed her. But when it really mattered, as she’d done for Vipers in that RHF Trophy final a year before, she stood up tall (well… tall-ish – it is Emily Windsor we’re talking about!) and proud.

Brave found themselves on the losing side once more, but unlike last year there was no dramatic collapse with the bat – they just never really got going. The top 4 – Smriti Mandhana, Danni Wyatt, Sophia Dunkley and Tahlia McGrath – all got starts; all made it to double-figures, but none could push on. Dunkley’s 26 off 23 was as good as it got, as Brave struggled to get out of second gear, maintaining a strike rate of around 100, but never getting to the position where they could start to motor before they lost another wicket.

On 83-3 at the three-quarter mark, they were in a position to strike out towards 125/130, but instead they slumped – losing 4 wickets and hitting just 18 runs at the death.

It didn’t feel like a batting performance that deserved to win the competition; but a good show with the ball could still have got them back into contention. However, Lauren Bell and Anya Shrubsole struggled to make the new ball swing; and though Lauren Winfield-Hill was stumped playing for swing-that-wasn’t, Invincibles made it through the rest of the powerplay otherwise unscathed, with Capsey looking box-office again on 22 off 13 balls.

The wickets of Capsey and Bates falling in quick succession started to make it look interesting again but Kapp asserted herself on the situation, and it was soon clear that if somebody… anybody… stayed with her, Invincibles were going to win the game. Emily Windsor was that somebody; and 40 minutes later, Invincbles were making their way onto the podium once again – champions, and deservedly so.

Perhaps the most unique tweak to the laws of cricket introduced in The Hundred is the change which allows a bowler to deliver two consecutive overs – or “sets” as we are being encouraged to call them, though the playing conditions still say “overs”.

We’ve now had (nearly) two full seasons of The Hundred, so how’s that been working out? We analysed 56 matches across both seasons (all the games for which Ball By Ball data is available thanks to cricsheet.org) to take a look.

How often are consecutive sets used?

Consecutive sets have been bowled 114 times – 69 times in 2021 (including 4 times in the very first innings of the very first game) and 45 times in 2022; so the first point of interest is that it is a tactic which teams have used a fair bit less in the second season – and overall about once per innings in 2022.

Who is bowling them?

Two teams in particular have used consecutive sets dramatically less this year – Invincibles used it 17 times in 2021, and 9 times in 2022; while Brave used it 10 times in 2021, and just once in 2022*.

Trent Rockets were the only team to use them more in 2022, having used the tactic 10 times in 2021 and 11 times in 2022.

In terms of individual bowlers, it has been fairly evenly distributed – 54 different bowlers have bowled consecutive sets, with Amanda Jade Wellington and Dane van Niekerk topping the list, each having bowled 6, with Mady Villiers just behind with 5.

When are they bowling them?

In terms of phases of the game, 34% of consecutive sets are bowled at least partly in the powerplay (30% wholly within it) while just 15% are bowled in the death (last 5) overs.

82% of consecutive sets are bowled at the same end, perhaps unsurprisingly as it is seen as disruptive to a bowler’s concentration to change ends.

Why do consecutive sets get used?

While we can obviously never know exactly what was going through the captain’s mind, we can infer something about why the tactic was used from the data.

83% of second sets follow either a wicket or a strike rate of less than 75 in the first set – 58% following a wicket, and 65% following a strike rate of less than 75. (In 40% it is both!)

How successful are consecutive sets?

Of the 66 occasions when consecutive sets were used following a wicket, only 12 (18%) were followed by another wicket, so it is pretty clear-cut that consecutive sets don’t buy additional wickets.

What about runs? Of the 74 occasions when consecutive sets followed a strike rate of less than 75 in the first set, the strike rate almost always (91%) went up in the second set; while overall across all second sets, the average strike rate of 62 for a first set almost doubled to 116 for the second.

Perhaps even more significantly, in over half of cases (57%) the strike rate in the second set exceeded that of the innings as a whole. So consecutive sets don’t really appear to buy runs (or rather, lack of runs) either.

Does this mean they “don’t work” though? Not necessarily – an over with a wicket is always likely to be followed by one without, regardless of who bowls it; and the same applies to an over with a low strike rate – we can never know what another bowler might have achieved in the same situation.

As to whether they have been a successful innovation for the game as a whole, the jury is still out. Perhaps the most significant objection is that they are simply “not cricket” – flying in the face of the game’s long-standing traditions; but on the other hand, bowling restrictions are pretty arbitrary anyway (who decided a bowler should only be able to bowl 20% of the balls in a one-day match, while a single batter could technically face all of them?) so why not change things up occasionally?

The likelihood remains though that ultimately this tweak to the laws will fall by the wayside, like “supersubs” in ODIs. (Remember them? They weren’t “just” subs, they were supersubs!!) After all, at the end of the day… if bowlers bowling consecutive overs from the same end is what really floats your boat… perhaps you are just watching the wrong bat’n’ball game!

———–

* The data analysed does not include the 2022 eliminator, where Brave nearly came to grief after a dramatic final over second set was hit for 21 by Nat Sciver.

For the second year in succession, Southern Brave leg-spinner Amanda Jade Wellington tops our bowling rankings in The Hundred, with 14 wickets at 1.22 runs per ball – one of four leggies in the top 10, with Alana King coming in at 4, Amelia Kerr at 6 and Katie Levick at 10.

In contrast to our Batting Rankings, where 80% of the top 10 were overseas stars, the top 10 bowlers are 70% England-qualified, with only 5 overseas in the top 20, just two of whom are not leg-spinners – Sophie Molineux at 13, and Megan Schutt at 20.

Amanda Jade Wellington has been outstanding as a wicket-taking option once again, though she has been a tad more expensive in terms of economy than she was last year – last season she ranked 4th in the top 20 for economy; this year she’s 13th. As a key part of Brave’s success, the really interesting question is whether they can afford to keep her next season on a third-tier salary, or whether someone else will tempt her away with more money elsewhere? (The players earning first and second-tier salaries above her at Brave are all ones you’d want to keep too – Wyatt, Smriti, Dunkley and Shrubsole.)

Em Arlott is one of three uncapped England prospects in the top 10, and sneaks into second place above Lauren Bell thanks to her superior economy rate. Having been included in England’s Test squad v India in 2021 but not made the XI, Arlott was even more unfortunate this year when the after-effects of Covid ruled her out of contention for the Test against South Africa. At 24 she’s coming to her peak, taking wickets and maintaining a good economy rate – she might not have the hype of certain other players, or the reputation of others, but she’s performing on the pitch where it matters, and on form she really should be in the T20 squad for the India series and the World Cup.

The other two England prospects are both Invincibles players, and a key part of why Invincibles were able to maintain their bowling levels this season, despite Marizanne Kapp having to sit out of half their group-stage matches. Eva Gray is perhaps the most interesting. Though only 22 the seamer has been around the Surrey setup for a long time, but has been viewed as a useful domestic player and nothing more – she doesn’t have a contract at South East Stars –  but by keeping it simple, sticking to her strengths and not trying to bowl at 80mph, she has been pretty handy this season, and is perhaps a prospect for another region to swoop in for her if Stars can’t find a contract for her next year.

The other England prospect in the top 10 is the year’s surprise package – 17-year-old left-arm orthodox spinner Sophia Smale, who only came into the Invincibles squad as a last minute injury replacement for Emma Jones. Smale has excelled with the ball, opening the bowling on several occasions, and in the field where her speed across the ground from a standing start allows her to take catches others wouldn’t get near. Handing out a medal to Smale at a junior tournament a few years ago, Sophie Ecclestone once joked that she could be coming for her England spot one day, and while Ecclestone is probably safe for the moment… being the world’s top-ranked bowler in both white-ball formats… if Smale continues to work hard on her game, a regional contract and eventually an England one, are surely in the offing.

Bowling Ranking = Wickets / Economy