Momentum is a funny thing – just ask the next asteroid you meet! One minute you’re hurtling through space, with more of it than you know what to do with, the next you’re splattered all over the Yucatan Peninsular, taking the entire dinosaur genus out with you. Ouch!

And “Ouch!” probably sums up how the Oval Invincibles are feeling right about now. Having won their opening two games, thanks to match-winning knocks from Dane van Niekerk and Alice Capsey, the momentum was with them. But since then they’ve fallen short twice, chasing low totals – falling 4 runs short needing 110 versus the Superchargers, and 12 runs short chasing 113 against the Fire on Monday.

The result blows the race for third place wide open, with Fire, Invincibles and Rockets all level on 4 points.

Although Sarah Taylor was today’s Player of the Match, catching the eye with a couple of those reverse cuts we first saw when she was playing for the Diamonds earlier this year in the regional T20s, there were other contributions that were equally important.

Georgia Redmayne and Hayley Matthews helping themselves to 24 runs off a 10-ball spell from Grace Gibbs, between balls 30-40, was hugely significant in a low-scoring game. With an “average” 10-ball spell going for just 11 runs on Monday, that extra 13 was critical, and of course later proved to be almost the exact margin of victory.

Nonetheless, 112 felt significantly below par – a calm, sensible batting performance from the Invincibles was all it was going to take to chase them down at little more than a run a ball.

Instead, they got off to a disastrous start – losing Georgia Adams for a duck thanks to some brilliant glove-work from Sarah Taylor, who turned a fumble and a slightly wayward return from Nicole Harvey into a run-out from nowhere as Adams ambled back to her ground. (Adams, who played with Taylor at Sussex for over a decade, really should have known better!)

Nonetheless, Alice Capsey and Grace Gibbs looked to be getting things back on track, until Capsey was bowled by Harvey for 14 off 12. Capsey was the last Invincibles batter (until Jo Gardner came in at the end with the game already gone) to hit at a Strike Rate of more than 100, and while it is true that the Invincibles didn’t need to go at 100mph, they did at least need to go at something close to a run-a ball in order to give themselves a chance at the death.

Fran Wilson’s role probably isn’t to do that, so she can be forgiven for going at a Strike Rate of 87 and trying to anchor the innings; but it is hard to say the same about van Niekerk, who made 8 off 16 balls before she was put out of her misery. Harvey, who finished with two wickets but more importantly conceded just 11 runs from 15 balls, was another vital spoke in the wheel of victory.

And of course Katie George also did her bit. Unable to bowl due to injury, she has been relegated to the role of specialist boundary rider so far during this tournament, but she made it count against Invincibles with 3 catches to dismiss van Niekerk, the dangerous Mady Villiers and Tash Farrant.

She also did it against the backdrop of a wickedly partisan 10,000-strong crowd, many of whom were actively willing her to fail – not something we’re used to seeing in women’s cricket in England, even at international level during the Women’s Ashes.

Talking about it after the game, George said: “I was getting a little bit of stick, but personally, I relish it – I feel I play my best cricket when there are people watching, and it definitely spurs me on to do well. I take it all in good spirit – I know if I was in the crowd watching, which I often am, I’d be giving it the same.”

It’s the right attitude to have, and obviously it is par for the course in something like the men’s T20 Blast for example, but it does feel like a slightly odd sort of progress towards equality compared to the KSL, where even on Finals Day, crowds would cheer but never jeer.

Next up for the Fire is the Trent Rockets on Friday. With both sides currently separated only by Net Run Rate in the race for 3rd, it’s a proper “Four Pointer” which could well end up being the difference between a spot in the 2nd v 3rd “Eliminator” or a taxi home. They remain the underdogs, but if the Fire can pull off another win then that 3rd place will be theirs to lose.

Southern Brave shot down Birmingham Phoenix in full flight at the Ageas Bowl in The Hundred, chasing 141 in just 82 balls, at a Run Rate of 1.71. That’s more than 10 an over in “old money” – by far the best Run Rate posted in the women’s competition to date.

The result puts the Southern Brave top of the table – an increasingly familiar feeling around these parts, with the Southern Vipers currently top of both the 50-over Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy and the T20 Charlotte Edwards Cup.

There’s still a long way to go in The Hundred of course, and topping the league counts for nothing if you don’t go on to win the final, but the Brave have really set down a marker with this performance, after the Phoenix posted 140, which looked like a pretty good score, with Amy Jones in particular looking in lovely touch – hitting 42 off 26 balls.

When Amy Jones took a brilliant catch to dismiss Sophia Dunkley for 36, racing from behind the stumps to take the ball on the dive at short fine leg, it felt like a pivotal moment – Wyatt had made a start on 17 but she was running a lot of singles, and it was Dunkley that was really driving the chase for the Brave, having just hit two consecutive 4s off Em Arlott.

Except… it wasn’t quite to be! The delivery from which Dunkley had been caught was deemed a marginal no ball on height, and she was reprieved. The pivot itself had pivoted, and although the gods made sure to set the record straight – having Dunkley run-out off a deflection from Abtaha Maqsood at the non-striker’s end a few balls later – the Brave looked good for the win from that moment.

Perhaps having taken confidence from Dunkley that there were some serious runs in this pitch, Wyatt began to relax, just as she did for England at Chelmsford a couple of weeks ago. The straight boundaries at the Ageas were short, but square they were huge, which seems to be the policy for this competition. Nonetheless, Wyatt began to find them with ease – hitting five 4s and four 6s, including a huge maximum to finish the game. Crucially, Wyatt also continued to “run” runs – finishing with 25 “run” runs – 36% of her final score. The Hundred may be all about the big hits, but the singles can be just as important and without those 25 runs the Brave would have had a much harder time overhauling their target.

There are still those who have their doubts about Danni Wyatt – having grown up in the pre-professional era, her technique is not what you’d call classical, and she’s very dependent on the inside-out drive over cover, which feels like such a high-risk shot. She hasn’t got the 360 degree arc of Tammy Beaumont… or the power of Nat Sciver… or the precision of team-mate Smriti Mandhana.

But at the end of the day, there comes a point where you can’t argue with the numbers any more – not just in domestic cricket, but against the very best sides in the world, Danni Wyatt continues to prove again and again that on her day, anything you can do, she can do better.

Two years ago, I wrote a piece entitled One Ball from Lauren Bell. The thesis of that piece, which if anything has been reinforced over the past couple of years, is that although there are a lot of fast bowlers around, Bell is the most exciting because she has the ability to ball that “One Ball” which absolutely no one else can. Combining the pace of Lea Tahuhu, the inch-perfect line of Megan Schutt, and the swing of Anya Shrubsole, it is totally unplayable, as Rachel Priest discovered on that day in 2019.

Two years later, as they say in the movies, Trent Rockets are chasing 133 to beat Southern Brave. They are 75-2 – needing 59 from 37 balls. It sounds like a bit of an ask in traditional women’s domestic T20, but in this shorter format, with Nat Sciver at the crease, the game is starting to feel like the Rockets to lose. The Brave need a wicket, which is why captain Anya Shrubsole has brought back not herself, but Lauren Bell, into the attack – looking for a strike from the strike bowler.

Sciver, meanwhile, is looking to go on the attack, coming down the pitch and using the pace off the ball to hit out. After getting a single off the first ball of the over, and two off the third, Sciver targets the fourth. Looking to thump it over mid on, she opens up her front leg and swings through the ball…

Or rather, she swings through where the ball would have been if it had been a “normal” 70mph delivery from Bell. But this is another ball entirely – rolled off the fingers, it dies off the pitch, leaving Sciver swinging at thin air as the zing bails explode over her stumps.

It was such a different ball to that one from 2019, but it had exactly the same result – one of the best batters in the world was left looking like a chump.

The slower ball is becoming something of an art-form among fast bowlers – it isn’t just about bowling it slower, but keeping everything else about the action the same, so it comes out of nowhere. As the Monty Python boys might have said: Nobody expects the slower ball!

Bell does this by rolling the ball off her fingers – a bit like an orthodox spin delivery – but there’s another way too: out of the back of the hand, like a leg-spinner. You may have seen Katherine Brunt do this, but the master of this art is Freya Davies, as Shafali Verma discovered this weekend. Davies delivers a googly out of the back of the hand, which as well as dying on the batter can also turn into the right-hander off the pitch.

The ball from Davies floats through the air like it has hitched a ride on a hot air balloon, but it is a sucker punch for Shafali, who like Nat Sciver is left swinging in the breeze as her stumps fall apart behind her.

You’ll hear a lot during The Hundred about who the fastest bowlers are – the ones who are pushing 80mph, and targeting numbers beyond that even.

But perhaps… just perhaps… speed isn’t everything.

The first “London Derby” of The Hundred ended with a big win for the Oval Invincibles versus the London Spirit at Lords.

The scorecard will tell you the Invincibles won by 15 runs; but this flatters the Spirit, after Dani Gibson and Charlie Dean had some fun slogging 27 off the last 10 balls, with the game essentially already lost.

There were two factors in the Invincibles’ win. The first, of course, was “Match Hero” Alice Capsey, who hit 59 off 41 balls in an 80-run partnership with Dane van Niekerk. Having won the opening game for her side with a half-century of her own, DvN was happy to play second-fiddle this time around, not even scoring at a run-a-ball, but giving Capsey the support she needed to play the key innings for the Invincibles.

The ramp may be the shot from Capsey that catches the eye… and occasionally the wicket-keeper’s eye, as it did on Thursday when she ramped straight into Ellie Threkeld’s gloves behind the stumps… but she actually scored the bulk of her runs straight today, in the arc between midwicket and mid off, picking the “holes” in the field to go safely over the top of the ring. It’s exciting cricket to watch, though it is certainly not risk-free, and she was eventually caught with 12 balls still on the clock.

So it really helped that Mady Villiers (again) and Jo Gardner both chipped in at the end for the Invincibles too – they might have only hit 8 and 9 respectively, but crucially it was off 3 and 4 balls – Strike Rates of over 200 – exactly what’s needed at the death in this quickfire format.

Nonetheless, it felt like the Invincibles were perhaps slightly short on 132-7, and they were going to have to bowl well to get the win. Which brings us around to the second factor, which was some quality work with the ball. Shabnim Ismail and Tash Farrant both opened the bowling with 10 balls straight apiece, and they nullified the Spirit’s opening batters in the powerplay. Naomi Dattani, who can be such a destructive player when she finds the middle of the bat, just couldn’t make it happen today, and finished with 8 off 14 balls. Even Deandra Dottin couldn’t make the impact she’d have wanted, also hitting at under 100… albeit only just with 14 off 15. And it was downhill from there really for the Spirit.

Heather Knight is usually the player to rely on in a chase, and she did her job today with 40 off 29, but she didn’t get the support she needed, as the Invincibles bowlers kept turning up the pressure. Chloe Tryon, having bowled very well earlier in the day, couldn’t get bat on ball today – when she was eventually dismissed for 9 off 16, it felt like a mercy-killing. Even more so than in T20, you can’t afford to take your time in this format – you really need to be going at a Strike Rate of 100 from the off and accelerating from there – there is little leeway to go at a Strike Rate of 50-something and hope you can make it up later if you stay in because even if you do accelerate later, you’ve already lost too many balls.

So it is the Invincibles that make the early running in the tournament, with 2 wins from 2. It is very early days of course, but it is also a very short tournament – games are coming at a million miles an hour, and momentum will be key. Right now, the momentum is with the Invincibles.

8 years ago, here at the Essex County Ground in Chelmsford in the 1st T20 of the 2013 Women’s Ashes, Sarah Taylor made her highest ever international T20 score – hitting 77 off 58 balls as England set Australia 146, going on to win the match by 15 runs. Taylor’s supporting act that evening was Danni “Waggy” Wyatt, who made 28 off 36 balls.

Today it was Wyatt herself topping the bill, walking off with the Player of the Match champagne for 89* off 56 balls. It is an indication of how much the game has changed that Wyatt faced two fewer balls than Taylor had faced in 2013, but scored 12 more runs. Moreover, this was “only” Wyatt’s 3rd best international T20 score, having previously made 100s against both India and Australia.

Prior to this evening, some were starting to question Wyatt’s place in the England side. Having not played in the Test, she was not recalled for the ODIs either, only coming back into the team for the T20s, scoring 31 and 3 in the first two games.

Meanwhile Emma Lamb has been owning it in domestic cricket, opening the batting for the Thunder, with a string of strong scores including two 100s and a 50.

True, Wyatt also posted some decent numbers in domestic cricket this year, including 3 consecutive half-centuries in the RHF, but she hadn’t looked quite herself this season… until today.

This was Danni Wyatt back at her absolute best – the glorious slog-sweeps and effortless inside-outs over the covers. When she’s not playing at the top of her game, those shots tend to end up in the hands of a fielder on the ring; but today they soared to the boundary. And there would have been more to come – surely a third international T20 hundred – if she’d been able to bat for the full 20 overs.

Wyatt’s T20 place now is surely secure for the immediate future – probably up until at least the Commonwealth Games next summer. England Captain Heather Knight has made no secret of the fact that she is 100% focussed on the big tournaments coming up in 2022 – the teams she is selecting this year are the ones she thinks will play in the World Cup in New Zealand and in the CWG in Birmingham.

The selection of Wyatt for this series was a clear indication that she remained part of the plans for the Commonwealths; but there was perhaps a small question mark by her name.

There isn’t any more.

India kept the multi-format series alive (ish – they can’t win it, but they can still stop England from doing so) with a dramatic win under increasingly gloomy skies at Hove.

Those darkening skies doubtless reflected Heather Knight’s mood, after she was run out in what she evidently considered controversial circumstances by her once (at Western Storm) and future (at London Spirit) team-mate Deepti Sharma. Deepti clearly did impede Knight as she ran her out, but it wasn’t obviously deliberate, so it was down to Harmanpreet to withdraw the appeal, which she declined to do, leaving Knight to walk back to the dugout shaking her head in disbelief.

Harmanpreet was of course well within her rights under the laws; but for what it’s worth, as someone who has been watching Heather Knight captain cricket teams for 10 years, I think she probably would have withdrawn the appeal if she’d been in Harman’s boots. In a high profile game like this, with the series on the line, though… who knows for sure?

It certainly turned what had been looking like another England promenade into a proper game of cricket. At the start of that 14th over from Deepti, England needed just over 6-an-over, having been motoring along at 8. Tammy Beaumont had played really well again – making a run-a-ball half century – her 7th in an England shirt this year. She was a little unlucky to be given out LBW on “umpire’s call” – she was so far down the pitch that I don’t think the umpire would have “called” initially if DRS hadn’t been available; but, again, them’s the rules and England have to live with them.

With the Knight run out the next ball, England went from 2-down to 4-down in the blink of an eye, and although they kept up with the run-rate, wickets continued to fall, testing the policy of eschewing a 7th batter to give themselves more bowling options, ultimately to destruction. Ecclestone, Brunt, Villiers and Glenn can all bat – but when you need 7-8 an over, with a roaring crowd of Indian fans in the stands, and Poonam bowling her loopy turning deliveries a foot outside off stump, it’s suddenly not quite so easy, as one by one they discovered.

Overall, playing 5 bowlers probably is the right call, because of the flexibility it offers; and one extra batter probably wouldn’t have saved England’s bacon today anyway, but I do think England could have used their bowling options better. Katherine Brunt was given a second over in the powerplay, despite the first having gone for 11, and it went for 21, which in the context of a game which went pretty close to the wire, is not ideal!

(I guess the theory is that if you offer Shafali enough short balls, she’ll eventually sky one to a fielder… as she did! But in a T20 game it’s a dangerous tactic, because if that “eventually” takes 38 balls, she’s going to score a lot of runs in that time… as she did!)

All this should take nothing away from the Indians though – they closed out the game, against the odds, with Sneh Rana holding her nerve in the final over, in a situation where England, needing 14, could still have won. And it sets things up nicely for a finale at Chelmsford on Wednesday, in which the pressure will actually be more on England for once.

It will be interesting to see how they respond.

This week we’re at sunny Hove! We discuss:

• Ellyse Perry’s absence from The Hundred – does it matter?
• Should Emma Lamb be playing for England?
• The 2nd T20 v India at Hove – what could & should England do differently?

A DLS result always feels like a bit of an anti-climax – the margin of victory for ever qualified as:

England win by 18 runs… (brackets) DLS.

But England should be pretty happy with their night’s work in Northampton.

The night took us back to England’s previous visit to this ground, for two matches versus the West Indies in June 2019 – in one of those games, England struck 180-6; the other was rained off without a ball being bowled.

Tonight was England’s highest T20 score batting first at home since that match against the Windies in 2019. Then, it was Danni Wyatt in the runs; tonight it was Nat Sciver’s turn to dominate, hitting 55 off 27 balls – the fourth time she has completed an international T20 innings of 20 or more with a Strike Rate over 200. Everyone will have their own highlights, but a back-foot pull off Poonam in the 9th over was the shot of the day for me – she’d only just come in, but it was a shot of effortless confidence, as if she’d been at the crease all day.

Later on she went full metal jacket on Arundhati Reddy, nearly taking her head off with the first of three consecutive 4s back past the luckless bowler, whose main crime seemed to be turning up to a gun-fight armed with only a cricket ball.

Her rampage was only ended by a brilliant catch from Harmanpreet, who may be averaging just 8 runs in the cross-format series so far, but still has a flare for the champagne moment… or would have done if Harleen Deol hadn’t then taken one of the greatest catches off all time to do for Amy Jones.

There were some doubts on social media as to the legality of Harleen’s catch, but this ruling is essentially as official as it gets:

(For those who don’t know Jonny, his official title is “Laws of Cricket Advisor” at the MCC, but we prefer to think of him as basically Judge Dredd – when it comes to cricket… HE IS THE LAW!)

Returning briefly to Amy Jones, this was the best we’ve seen her play for England for a while – she is such a confidence player, and there were a few nervous moments early on today, but once she got in she made it count with some glorious stroke-play, including two sixes over long on that were little more than lofted drives off the bat, but timed so self-assuredly that they sailed over the rope… albeit one with a little help from Sneh Rana, who couldn’t hang on as it slipped through her upstretched hand.

England now have an unassailable lead in the multi-format series – India can’t win it now, though they could still earn a draw if they win the two remaining T20s in Hove and Chelmsford. They still have the players to do that – Smriti Mandhana always looks like a player and a half, and although Shafali had a bit of a “moment” today, she’s ever a danger too. Ironically, although they have won just one game in the series so far – the final ODI – in Shafali and Smriti, India have probably both the first two players you’d pick in a “Combined” XI; but they can’t carry 9 others alone. What we are seeing again and again at the moment is that England are a real “team” – whether it is Beaumont or Dunkley or Ecclestone or Jones… or Sciver today – someone will stand up more often than not, and ultimately that’s what gets you results in this game.