We were 11 overs into the afternoon session, and England were in deep trouble. With England having lost Heather Knight, run out off the first ball after lunch, Sophia Dunkley had looked like she was digging in for the long haul, but when she was dismissed playing an over-expansive drive to Anneke Bosch, quickly followed by Amy Jones for a 6-ball duck, England found themselves at 121-5 – a deficit of 163, with South Africa just one wicket away from getting into England’s long tail.

All the pressure was on Alice Davidson-Richards, walking out on Test debut carrying the full weight of England’s hopes of pulling off a historic Test victory: remember… no team has ever lost a women’s Test having put as many runs on the board in the first innings as South Africa did yesterday.

This was quite literally the moment ADR had been selected for though – to shore-up the batting, in case things went wrong – and gone wrong they most certainly had!

ADR’s first task was simply to stick in there, playing the role that South Africa’s tail had yesterday, supporting the senior batter. The first 25 balls she faced produced just one scoring “shot” – a thick outside edge which went for 4 – but slowly she began to realise that she was equal to this pitch and this situation, and the runs began to come, especially once she passed 50, moving from 50 to 75 in just 22 balls.

As the afternoon wore on for South Africa, they really started to look like they were missing the key players that didn’t make it out onto the field here in Taunton – Dane van Niekerk and Shabnim Ismail could have been the difference they needed to finish England off when they were down in that afternoon session. Having done it all by herself yesterday with the bat, Marizanne Kapp couldn’t repeat those heroics today with the ball, bowling 8 maidens but finishing wicketless for her 16 overs, as England did to her pretty-much what the South Africans had done to Ecclestone on Day 1 – defend and defend until they’d seen her off.

Nat Sciver was the first to pass 100, picking up where she left off in the World Cup Final, dismissing the South African bowling with some imperious swatted pulls through midwicket.  ADR followed shortly afterwards, focussing her fire on the other side of the ‘V’ as she drove through the covers. The fairy-tale ending wasn’t quite to be, with ADR tipping an easy catch to Lizelle Lee off the penultimate ball of the day, but it left England with the match back in their hands as they take a small but significant lead into Day 3 with 328 runs on the board.

With rain likely to make an appearance at some point on Days 3 and 4, England may well find themselves having to weigh up the pros and cons of a positive declaration. (They did of course declare here a couple of years ago, but they did so 150-odd runs behind Australia, who went on to bat out the draw.) Might it be interesting to send Issy Wong out to join Nat Sciver in the morning, and see if she can smash a few boundaries? In cricketing terms (if not political ones) Heather Knight has generally been a very-small-c-conservative England captain, but there have been signs more recently that she’s prepared to be bold, as England were in trying to chase the win in the Ashes Test this winter; and she’ll be desperate to finally win a Test as England captain at the 5th attempt.

A killer contribution from Marizanne Kapp made it South Africa’s day in the Test at Taunton, despite England ultimately bowling the visitors out having taken the brave decision to insert them after winning the toss.

Having reduced South Africa to 45-4 within the first 20 overs, with both Laura Wolvaardt and Lizelle Lee back in the pavilion, England would have been eyeing up dismissing South Africa cheaply and batting themselves by mid afternoon.

But South Africa, who haven’t played a test for almost a million years, nonetheless clearly understood that in the format they were playing they had time aplenty, as they focussed on rebuilding, and did not panic as the 10-over run-rate fell to just a single run per over in the 10 overs leading up to lunch.

This period gave Kapp time to get the measure of a pitch which clearly remained very battable through the day, and her and Luus came out after lunch looking to play positively, maintaining a run-rate of just over 3-per over for the rest of the day.

They picked their bowlers though – in particular, neutralising the threat of Ecclestone by making little effort to score off her, with a clear strategy through the team of getting a long way forward to her, getting to the pitch of the ball, and playing it with soft hands. Ecclestone went for very few runs but finished with only 1 wicket to show for her 18 overs – it was smart, Test cricket, which meant that England were the ones having to really work for their wickets.

The wickets did come, of course, giving England something to cheer about, but not before 284 runs had been scored – the majority of them by Kapp. 284 might not sound like that many, and the long, mostly-amateur history of women’s Tests is no doubt a poor guide to the professional present – but no one has ever lost a women’s Test having scored this many runs in the 1st innings.

While it was Kapp’s day, a lot of credit has to go to the other South African batters who gave her the support the needed to move past 100 and press on to 150. Sune Luus played nicely and Anneke Bosch added a useful 30; but it was Nadine de Klerk, Sinalo Jafta and Tumi Sekhukhune who were really key in just staying there, whilst Kapp scored the runs at the other end. de Klerk, Jafta and Sekhukhune collectively scored 22 runs but they stayed put for 87 balls, during which time Kapp moved from 59 to 150 and… so history suggests… put the game beyond England.

England won’t feel that way, naturally – they will reckon they can pile on the runs on an innocuous pitch tomorrow, and reseize the initiative. And you certainly wouldn’t put it past them – they have the batting to go at 4-an-over, and perhaps finish the day with a lead of 80; but they will then still need to bowl very well in the second innings to have a chance of winning the game.

Luckily from that perspective, they picked an attacking bowling unit, giving debuts to Lauren Bell and Issy Wong, both of whom picked up their maiden international wickets on the first morning. Bell in particular looked very threatening early on, getting the Dukes ball to swing wickedly with a bit of assistance from the nasty, chilly breeze that was blowing across the ground during the first session. Bell was unlucky not to pick up a wicket in that opening spell, and generally looked the more controlled of the debutantes; though typically it will be Wong that makes the show-reels with a lovely delivery to snatch the key wicket of Laura Wolvaardt, and then a nice grab at cover to get rid of Jafta.

But it was Bell that really impressed. 2,611 days ago, I saw Heather Knight hand the 14-year-old her first county cap; and I said that day that she would go on to play for England. Looking back now though, I can see that it wasn’t inevitable – it took a hell of a lot of hard work in the nets and the gym – listening to her coaches, learning and building her game. The raw pace that she had as a tearaway teenage quick, has become intelligent and controlled. An England career is a journey, and the evidence of today suggests that Bell’s will be a long one.

Fast bowlers Lauren Bell and Emily Arlott have been named alongside Emma Lamb in the squad for the one-off Test against South Africa next week in Taunton.

With neither Danni Wyatt nor Lauren Winfield-Hill in the squad, Lamb looks almost certain to make her Test debut opening the batting; while other potential debutants include Freya Davies, Alice Davidson-Richards, Lauren Bell and Emily Arlott.

With Katherine Brunt having announced her retirement from Tests, and Anya Shrubsole hers from all forms of international cricket, debuts for two of Davies, Bell and Arlott look likely, with a possible lineup of:

1. Lamb
2. Beaumont
3. Knight (c)
4. Sciver (vc)
5. Dunkley
6. Jones (wk)
7. Dean
8. Cross
9. Ecclestone
10. Davies
11. Bell

Issy Wong will also accompany the squad, officially as a “travelling reserve”, possibly due to her value as a net bowler due to her similarity to key South African threat Shabnim Ismail.

Full Squad

Heather Knight (Western Storm, cap)
Emily Arlott (Central Sparks)
Tammy Beaumont (Lightning)
Lauren Bell (Southern Vipers)
Kate Cross (Thunder)
Alice Davidson-Richards (South East Stars)
Freya Davies (South East Stars)
Charlie Dean (Southern Vipers)
Sophia Dunkley (South East Stars)
Sophie Ecclestone (Thunder)
Amy Jones (Central Sparks)
Emma Lamb (Thunder)
Nat Sciver (Northern Diamonds, vice captain)

Travelling Reserve

Issy Wong (Central Sparks)

Southern Vipers win in the Charlotte Edwards Cup Final was not unexpected – they’ve looked the strongest side in the competition, and were the only team to go unbeaten in the group stages.

But the ease of victory perhaps was a surprise: they won with a massive 25 balls to spare, despite Charlie Dean (absolutely rightly) playing total “percentage cricket” at the end, scoring 7 off 17 balls (a strike rate of just 41) because the only risk by the time she came in was losing wickets – the runs (and consequently the strike rate) no longer mattered – if they stayed in, they’d win!

This was partly because of the flying start Danni Wyatt had given Vipers in the chase, with her 20 off 10 balls (a strike rate of… gets calculator out… fires up Excel… yes… 200!) but also because Sparks had set them a distinctly sub-par total of just 109.

How do we know this was “sub-par”? Well Vipers were on their way to a total of around 140, despite the slow-down at the end, so that’s suggestive that there were a lot more runs out there than 109.

But hadn’t the semi-final shown that it was hard to score runs on this pitch? No! From a Stars perspective, all the semi-final had shown was that you’re always going to struggle if you lose your top order for next-to nothing and finish the powerplay 25-5!

And from a Sparks point of view, the semi-final had shown a hint of what was to come – a lot of dots!

The numbers suggest that Sparks have been the strongest batting side in the competition.

In particular, Sparks batters let a dot go by just once every 2.9 balls – that’s a dot-ball percentage of 34%.

In contrast, in the semi-final, they played out 61 dots off 115 balls – a dot ball percentage of 53%.

In the final, batting first, they should have been piling on the runs, but possibly spooked by their middle-order collapse in the first game, their numbers 4, 5 and 6 chewed up balls like they were Wrigley’s Spearmint, and despite a death-rally they ended up with a dot ball percentage of (again) 53%.

In other words, Sparks ended up 20 runs short of where we’d expect them to be on this season’s form; and they were 20 crucial runs which would have made the game much more interesting.

Of course, cricket matches are won and lost in a hundred different ways – it’s one of the things that makes it such a fascinating game – and others have pointed to the number of wides conceded by the Sparks bowlers.

In the group stages, Sparks actually had the best numbers across the 8 teams on wides – conceding a wide every 34 balls – a wide percentage of 3%. In contrast, in the final, they bowled 11 wides (conceding 16 runs) at a percentage of 12%; so that certainly didn’t help!

But then again, if they’d been defending a bigger total, perhaps they wouldn’t have felt like their only route to victory was blasting Vipers out, and the bowling would have been more controlled?

And that comes back to those dots.

With strike rates climbing to unprecedented heights, who’d be a bowler in 2022? Only 3 players bowled 10+ overs and finished the season with an economy rate of under 5 (Georgia Adams, Kalea Moore and Emma Marlow) and some top players had their numbers hammered, as the likes of Bess Heath and Marie Kelly went on the kind of powerplay onslaughts which members of the Bowlers’ Union might think should be illegal under the Geneva Convention!

Back in top spot this time is the one and only Katie Levick. Commentators tend to throw the term “legend” around like plates at a Greek wedding, but if any domestic player ever deserved it, it’s Levick, who finished the tournament with 15 wickets, including a 5fer against Vipers.

Levick isn’t ever going to play for England though – no matter how much fans call for it – and a big part of the reason for that is the emergence of Charlie Dean, who comes in at No. 2 with 10 wickets and exactly 5.0 – the (joint) 4th best economy rate in the competition. In less than a year, Dean has gone from amateur to England star, and it will be a huge surprise if she isn’t selected for the Test against South Africa in a couple of weeks time.

One of two brand-new names to break into the Top 10 is Emma Marlow – the 18-year-old offie from Yorkshire, who made her debut this season. Her first game against Lightning included the wickets of both Tammy Beaumont, bowled middle stump by a quicker delivery that almost swung in the air, and then dipped sharply as the England opener tried to sweep; and Kathryn Bryce, also bowled but by a completely different ball that was given enough air to tempt the batter into a big swing, and then died off the pitch to take out off stump.

Meanwhile down at the opposite end of the country, another teenager – 17-year-old quick Freya Kemp – has been tearing it up for Vipers, opening the bowling for the south coast side. Given the hidings handed out to bowlers during the powerplays in this tournament, her numbers are particularly impressive – 8 wickets at an economy rate of 6.3. Kemp hasn’t yet got the pace of Lauren Bell, or that lethal “killer ball” which Bell has, but she has been very consistent for a young quick, and is definitely one to keep an eye on.

The key statistical facet of the 2022 CE Cup was a substantial step up in run rates from 2021, with first-innings run rates climbing by more than half a run per over from 6.41 to 7.13.

This was partly due to the increased availability of England players – Amy Jones didn’t play at all in 2021, and Danni Wyatt only played two games – but definitely not exclusively. Aylish Cranstone’s Strike Rate improved from 109 to 118; Marie Kelly’s from 128 to 152; and Grace Scrivens’ from 77 to 119, to pull out a few examples.

Amy Jones sits at the top of the tree in 2022 – the leading run-scorer, with 245 runs at a strike rate of over 140. What can we say about Amy Jones that we haven’t said before? Very little! It feels like we’ve read a hundred articles over the years, saying this is the season she finally consistently brings her sparkling domestic form to the international arena… and maybe this time, it is? A Commonwealth Games in her home city* would certainly be the time to do it! (*Yes – I know – Solihull isn’t technically “Birmingham”!)

Aylish Cranstone has been the outstanding domestic player this season – if you want to understand some of the reasons why, it’s worth checking out this brilliant interview with her on the Noughtie Child Podcast, where she talks about her nightmare winter, and how that actually freed her from the shackles of expectation. And the numbers add up – she was the 2nd highest run scorer in the group stages (with finals day still to come) with three 50s, all not out, finishing with an average of 78. She’s one of a number of domestic pros who are starting to close the gap with the internationally contracted players, as the system starts to reap the benefits of professionalisation at the next level down.

Looking at future England prospects, keeper-batter Bess Heath has had a good season with the willow, making a couple of 50s, including one against the comp’s strongest bowling attack, Vipers at Chester-le-Street; but she was, I believe the polite term is “inconsistent” with the gloves. I think England’s next keeper will (rightly) be a batter who can keep competently, rather than the best out-and-out keeper; so Heath remains in pole position for me, but she needs to make sure that she maintains a balance in her development going forwards. I’d really like to see her get a proper opportunity in The Hundred too, but with Alyssa Healy on the Superchargers roster, that’s unlikely I guess, which is… a massive pity from England’s player development point of view.

Another player who really needs to play every match in The Hundred is Grace Scrivens. The teenager has utterly carried Sunrisers with bat and ball this term. The ECB massively dropped the ball by not sending someone down to Sunrisers HQ to tell them to make her captain this season. (I’ve nothing against the player who was given the job… but she isn’t going to captain England one day – Scrivens is!) But the ECB have got the chance to make up for their mistake by sending a strongly worded “suggestion” to Spirit that she plays every game batting at 3 or 4. (And don’t tell me they “can’t” do this – it’s their competition at the end of the day – they absolutely can, and they absolutely should!)