Danni Wyatt and Mady Villiers have been recalled to the England squad for the three T20s versus India, which begins on Friday evening at the The County Ground in Northampton.

Meanwhile Kate Cross and Lauren Winfield-Hill have been stood-down, and will be available to play for Thunder and Diamonds respectively in the Charlotte Edwards Cup this weekend.

The recalls of Wyatt and Villiers were both expected, after Heather Knight name-checked them in her press conference at the end of the ODI series when discussing possible changes for the T20s.

Wyatt will almost certainly open the batting in the 3-match series; while Villiers selection may depend on whether conditions look to favour a third spinner in the line-up, although her status as one of the world’s best outfielders may also help her case.

Full Squad

• Heather Knight (Western Storm, captain)
• Tammy Beaumont (Lightning)
• Katherine Brunt (Northern Diamonds)
• Freya Davies (South East Stars)
• Sophia Dunkley (South East Stars)
• Sophie Ecclestone (Thunder)
• Tash Farrant (South East Stars)
• Sarah Glenn (Central Sparks)
• Amy Jones (Central Sparks)
• Nat Sciver (Northern Diamonds)
• Anya Shrubsole (Western Storm)
• Mady Villiers (Sunrisers)
• Fran Wilson (Sunrisers)
• Danni Wyatt (Southern Vipers)

This week:

• We look back at the England v India ODI series & ahead to the T20s
• Were we all wrong about Mithali Raj?
• High-profile Australian withdrawals from The Hundred in spite of ECB’s offer of £10,000 bonuses
• Equal pay in The Hundred

India got a win on the board at last, to keep this multi-format series alive, and it was all thanks to… no, not Mithali’s 75 off 86 balls; but Sneh Rana’s 22 off 24.

Of course Mithali will get the plaudits on so many levels – passing 50 for the 3rd time in the series, this time with a significantly improved Strike Rate – 87, compared with  67 and 64 in the 1st and 2nd ODIs – and in doing so, overtaking Charlotte Edwards as the leading international run-scorer of all time. Mithali was (rightly) named Player of the Match.

But let’s rewind to the dismissal of Deepti Sharma in the 40th over. India still needed 56 in 7 overs, at a run-rate of exactly 8, having gone at just over 4 across the innings. It didn’t look hopeful. Mithali herself was still on a Strike Rate of 69 at that point – not enough to win the game from there.

But Rana came to the crease and immediately injected a an extra yard of urgency into proceedings. Rana played fearless cricket, attacking the best England had to throw at her, and Mithali responded too, upping her Strike Rate to match Rana. By the time Rana was dismissed, for 22 off 24 balls, the edge had turned in India’s favour, with 6 required off the final over.

The decision to throw Katherine Brunt the ball for that final over was an “interesting” one – she can be expensive at the death – for example conceding 18 runs in her final over in the 2nd ODI at Taunton – and only Ecclestone was “bowled out”, so other options were available. But the truth is probably that it was over by that point anyway. With the experience of Mithali and Jhulan at the crease, India were firm favourites to make 6 off the last 6 balls, and in fact they only needed 3 balls to get over the line.

It was all a far cry from the equivalent fixture here 5 years ago, when England thrashed Pakistan by 212 runs, thanks to centuries from Lauren Winfield-Hill and Tammy Beaumont. England hit 50 boundaries that day, with the rope pulled in as tight as was permitted under the regulations. Today, on a larger outfield, they managed just 20, and at one point went 16 overs without finding the rope. But they ran hard between the wickets, as they always do, and denied the Indians a single maiden. It got them to 219 – almost enough… but not quite, thanks to La Princesa Rana.

Way back in July 2014, I was at Wokingham Cricket Club to watch my beloved Berkshire in the county T20 Cup. The game against Middlesex ought to have been a shoe-in – Heather Knight hit 72 off 60 balls, supported by Corrine Hall (who would go on to captain Hobart Hurricanes in the WBBL) who made 42 off 34, as Berkshire (chasing) made 142-3, which was a lot in them days!

But it wasn’t quite enough – Middlesex had earlier posted 145-6, thanks to a 16-year-old in her first full season of county cricket, who had hit 61 off 52 balls.

Her name: Sophia Dunkley.

Dunkley announced herself as a county cricketer that day; and over the following 6 seasons, she would go on to score over 1,600 runs for Middlesex; but some doubts persisted. She never really settled in the Kia Super League, spending a couple of seasons at Surrey Stars before moving to Lancashire Thunder; and although she made an England debut at the T20 World Cup in 2018, she didn’t get much opportunity to shine, and until this summer she remained on the periphery of England’s radar – one for the future perhaps, but not quite for now.

Until now.

In the space of a few weeks, Dunkley has officially been awarded a central contract (though in practice she’d effectively had one for several months), made her Test debut, scoring 74* in her only innings, and made her ODI debut, in which she did not bat.

Her performance in the Test was obviously impressive, but the moment she really became an “England player”… as opposed to a “player who’s played for England” occurred on the 4th ball of the 27th over of England’s innings in the 2nd ODI today.

England were actually in a wee bit of trouble – with Tammy Beaumont gone cheaply, they had collapsed slightly and were 125-4. Dunkley and Amy Jones – the last two recognised batters – had their work cut out, with almost 100 still required. Dunkley herself was on 10 off 11 balls, when Deepti Sharma gave her a bit of width outside off stump. Dunkley pounced, like a cat on a mouse, cutting confidently through extra cover for 4 runs.

This was the shot of a player who knew, at last, that she really belonged at this level.

A few overs later she splattered Shikha Pandey for 6 over long too… but that was just the confirmation.

Supported by Katherine Brunt, who more than made amends for what had looked like a potentially disastrous final over with the ball costing 18 runs, she closed out the game, finishing on 73* off 81 balls.

It created a real dilemma for Player of the Match too. Though Dunkley ultimately missed out to Kate Cross, who had earlier taken 5-34, for me Dunkley’s was the key performance – taking as much courage as skill, to stare down the barrel of an Indian attack who were looking in fearsome mood after their early breakthroughs. Jhulan in particular threw everything she had at her, but she battled through – proving herself against one of the greatest bowlers the game has ever known.

Dunks may have been handed her ODI cap last weekend, but she won it today – she’s an England player now… and will be for many years to come.

Tammy Beaumont’s brilliant run of form in ODIs continued, as England put India to the sword in Bristol. In four ODIs this year (three in New Zealand plus this one versus India) she has scored 318 runs at an average of… wait for it… 318! (She hasn’t been dismissed in an ODI since the 1st match in New Zealand.)

She was in imperious form today – she made 87 off 87 balls, and was only denied what looked like a certain century by Nat Sciver coming in and clattering 74 off 74 balls. As well as employing her trade-mark sweeps and ramps, Beaumont also rolled-back the years by bringing out the punched drive down the ground, that was her key productive shot earlier in her career.

There was some talk during the innings break about “low scoring games” but this never really looked like one of those. As Beaumont and Sciver showed, there were plenty of runs out there today – it was just that India didn’t really look like they wanted them until it was far too late.

As the Manhattans show, India can actually boast the most productive “phase” of the game, when they finally woke up in the last 10 overs and pulled 67 runs out of the hat – 6 more than England made in their initial powerplay. But the damage was already done. In the first 30 overs, they had scored at a Run Rate of just 3.0, and that’s simply not enough in any form of cricket these days.

Looking at the raw scorecard, you might think Mithali played the captain’s innings, but the truth is that she was actually the problem. Having come in during the 10th over, she reached the 30-over mark languishing on 23 off a whopping 63 balls – a Strike Rate of 37. Yes she caught up, to finish on 72 off 108 balls (a Strike Rate of 67) but she’d left her teammates (and herself) with far too much to do at the back-end of the innings. India’s final total of 201 was a good 50 under par; and though they probably still wouldn’t have won the game with 250, given Beaumont’s (and Sciver’s) form, they could at least have made England work for it!

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mithali has been left behind by the modern era. While players like Tammy have adapted their games, she has stood still. She has two more ODIs in this series to turn things around, but if not… if India want a real shot at the World Cup in New Zealand next year, she needs to make way – she has been treading water for far too long; and the worry has to be that she is now no longer waving, but drowning.

This week:

• The 1st round of the Charlotte Edwards Cup
• Two young stars – Scrivens & Capsey
• Kari Carswell’s appointment by Middlesex/MCC
• No Wyatt in England’s ODI squad v India
• England’s XI – who makes the cut?

On July 3rd 2016, 17-year-old Sophie Ecclestone made her England debut in the 1st T20 versus Pakistan, taking 1-21 in her four overs. After being selected for the 2nd game (taking 2-26) she was then rested for the final T20 in favour of Alex Hartley. An ODI debut followed, in October of that year in the West Indies, with Ecclestone winning two caps in the 5 match series, taking 2-28 and 1-20.

It was a respectable enough start to an international career, but not earth-moving, and in the summer of 2017 Ecclestone was told by England management to concentrate on her A-Levels, while her team-mates were focussed on the small matter of winning the World Cup.

Her international career might have been put on hold in 2017, but her cricket career certainly wasn’t – Ecclestone went back to Lancashire that summer and took an incredible 35 wickets in the season as the Red Roses marched to the County Championship and T20 Cup double; so when it came time to select a squad to tour Australia for the 2017 Ashes, Ecclestone’s name could not be ignored, and she went on to make her Test debut that winter in Sydney.

Ecclestone took 3 wickets in that Sydney Test, and another 3 in Taunton in 2019; but it was in the T20 arena that she was beginning to really make her name for her consistency and economy, rising through the rankings until this March she found herself at the summit – officially the Number One T20 bowler in the world.

Carlsberg don’t do women’s Test rankings – apparently they make something called “beer” instead – but if they did, there’s a pretty good chance that Sophie Ecclestone would now be atop them too, after her performance in the one-off Test versus India this week.

Having taken 4 wickets for 88, at an Economy Rate of 3.4, in the 1st Innings, and then 4-118 at 3.1 in the second, her combined figures of 8-206 were the best achieved in a women’s Test since Ellyse Perry’s 9-70 at Canterbury in 2015.

She couldn’t win the game for England on her own though, and the toothlessness of England’s three specialist seamers on this pitch, with this ball, was cruelly exposed, as Brunt, Shrubsole and Cross between them took just 4 wickets, at a cost of 230-odd runs.

Would playing Emily Arlott or Tash Farrant – who were both in the squad – have changed the outcome? Both, but particularly Farrant, would have offered something different, which England did desperately seem to be searching for at times.

Should England have kept Sarah Glenn in the squad and played her? In hindsight, probably yes; and although I’ll never forget Mark Robinson once reminding me reproachfully during a press conference that “cricket isn’t played in hindsight”, in this case England really did close down their options by sending her back to Sparks last weekend.

(There was Mady Villiers, too, of course – but you get the distinct impression that her role here was to field if someone got injured – it never felt likely she’d make the XI.)

Perhaps the real story here though is not England’s bowling but India’s batting. They put a disappointing 1st innings behind them, and battled back to snatch a draw from the jaws of defeat, with just dues in particular to Sneh Rana, coming in at 8 and finishing 80* off 154 balls, and Taniya Bhatia at 9, with 44* off 88 balls.

With the form of Player of the Match Shafali Verma, who hit 159 runs in the match, India will go into the next phase of this multi-format series with every hope of turning over their hosts with the white ball and achieving a famous series victory. If so, the fight we saw today will have been the moment the tide turned in their favour.

At lunch today, with Smriti Mandhana back in the shed and India still a way behind the follow-on, let alone making England bat again, I tweeted that I expected England to have this Test match wrapped-up by tea time.

That wasn’t how it played-out of course – partly because Shafali Verma and Deepti Sharma came out after lunch and batted pretty comfortably; and partly because the weather, which had been hanging around all day looking menacing, finally moved in and took over.

Ultimately, we lost half a day’s play and around 50 overs out of a 400-over game. However, I’m actually not convinced it really changed anything in terms of a getting result.

The weather looks good for tomorrow, with 108 overs scheduled, so that means India have to make it through 100 overs with 9 wickets in hand, to save the match.

There is still a “sweet spot” for a manufactured result. If India were to bat fairly positively, at around 4.5+ per over, for around 60 overs tomorrow, they’d be able to set England a 5-an-over target of 200 in 40-odd overs, which you’d hope England would have a go at, and the result could then go either way.

But 4.5+ per over feels like a big ask for India’s batters, and while they were going at something like that rate this afternoon, over the course of an entire day they’d find that kind of rate hard to sustain, especially if they started to lose wickets.

Much more likely, India will go at around 2.5+ an over, but continue to lose wickets and get bowled out for around 200. This would leave England chasing about 50 – the kind of chase which the commentators will label “tricky” to make it sound exciting, but which ought (!!) really to be a formality for this highly experienced England batting line-up.

Either that, or the pitch really is dead, and India can bat out the day in peace. If you are an India fan, you wouldn’t want to entirely rule it out; but nonetheless the smart money has to be on England this evening.

After a round of matches featuring some outstanding individual performances, Jake Perry looks ahead to Round Five of the Cricket Scotland Women’s Premier League.

The 2021 Cricket Scotland Women’s Premier League has its first centurion in Emma Walsingham, who reached three figures in Stewart’s Melville’s commanding win over George Watson’s College last Sunday. It continued what has been an excellent run of form for the young opener, who now tops the batting rankings with 189 runs at an average of 63.

“I was really excited because it was my first hundred,” she enthused. “It was a bit sticky at the start, but I got going and [reached three figures] off seventy balls in the end. Molly Paton then came in and got 46 off twenty-odd, so it was a really good day for us all round.”

With Paton also taking a hat-trick in her remarkable 5 for 1 with the ball and skipper Catherine Holland carrying her bat for 82, it was an impressive performance from Stew-Mel’s teenaged stars as the Edinburgh side bounced back from its defeat the previous weekend in the best way possible.

“We had a great start to the season against Carlton, but then we were all a bit down after we lost to Watsonians/Grange,” said Emma. “We weren’t on our best form that day, but we were very happy to come back and win on Sunday. We bowled brilliantly and had three good scores with the bat, so we were very pleased.”

“We’re looking forward to the next game,” she added. “The whole team is always up for a match, and we can’t wait to go into this one and see what we can do.”

Emma’s reputation as one of Scotland’s brightest young talents continues to grow. In addition to her experience in the national age-group set-up and in regional cricket with the Eagles, the fifteen-year-old made her debut for Scotland ‘A’ at the start of the summer, scoring 19 not out then 15 in the Vitality Women’s County T20 double-header against the North Representative Women’s XI at Leyland. Now a part of the senior Wildcats training group, she is relishing the opportunity it has provided to develop her skills even further.

“It all stemmed from the Scotland Under-17s and some Academy games we had as well,” she said. “I was asked to go to a training weekend, and then on the trip to La Manga [as a COVID reserve for the Ireland series, later postponed], which I was really excited about. I’ve been in training with the Wildcats recently, and I think I’ve grown a lot in myself as well as in my cricket because of it.”

The reigning champions will look for more of the same against Dumfries & Galloway, who will be hopeful of mounting a recovery of their own after going down by seven wickets to table-topping Carlton last weekend. The Grange Loan club was in fine form again as D&G was bowled out for just 84, Hannah Rainey and Ashley Robertson taking two wickets and Maisie Maciera 5 for 14 – her first five-fer for the side – at Gatehouse of Fleet. With two games left to play, Carlton has an eight-point advantage over second-placed Royal High Corstorphine – neither of the remaining matches will be straightforward, but capital side will be content to have its fate in its own hands.

The first of those games comes against West of Scotland, who won a thrilling encounter with RHC at New Williamfield. Nayma Shaikh proved to be the match-winner as WoS chased down their opponents’ total of 162-4 with four balls to spare to claim victory in what was the team’s first match of the season.

Ikra Farooq had put RHC in pole position with a stylish knock of 61 not out, but West’s reply hit the ground running, a fine innings of 42 from Abtaha Maqsood making up for the early loss of Ellen Watson (19). The real star of the show was Shaikh, however, who anchored the chase through a half-century of terrific poise and maturity, ably assisted by some quick-fire hitting from Neha Mahatma (24) towards the end. By the time Shaikh departed to a fine catch by Farooq, the victory was assured: the battle between West’s batters and Carlton’s always-impressive bowling attack will be a fascinating one indeed.

The third match of the weekend sees Watsonians/Grange take on winless George Watson’s College at Myreside, with the former hoping to build on their victory over Stew-Mel last time out. The young GWC side has been unfortunate to come up against some strong opposition this year, but their central core of talent including Emily Tucker, Gaby Fontenla, Nina Whitaker and Emily Tait has still provided plenty of cause for future optimism.

But as the final run-in begins, it is events in those matches at the top of the table which will be most revealing. While RHC sit out this weekend, their thoughts will already be turning to the next, when Carlton visit Barnton for what will be their last game of the campaign. What happens on Sunday at Grange Loan will be crucial in determining the significance of that one, but those in Inverleith, too, will be watching proceedings with considerable interest.

Women’s Premier League – 20 June 2021

Carlton v McCrea West of Scotland (at Grange Loan)

Watsonians/Grange v George Watson’s College (at Myreside)

Stewart’s Melville v Dumfries & Galloway (at Inverleith)

——

Jake Perry is the author of The Secret Game

Twitter: @jperry_cricket / Facebook: Jake Perry Cricket

The Cricket Scotland Podcast will include a round-up of the men’s and women’s league action from across the country every Tuesday, with player interviews from our featured games. Follow @ScotlandPod on Twitter for all the latest information.