If there’s a better place in the world to watch live cricket than North Sydney Oval, I’ve not been there. With its compact nature and delightful “Olde Worlde” feel, provided by its green-painted tin-roofed stands which were partly imported from the SCG when that was rebuilt in the 80s, it somehow draws you into the action in a way that the bigger first-class grounds never do. If a cricket ground can have “soul”, then North Sydney Oval has it like Otis Redding, sittin’ on the dock of the Sydney bay.
Over 6,200 Sydneysiders turned out to enjoy it on a beautiful summer Sunday, and were rewarded with a home win in the first match of the 2025 Women’s Ashes, with Alyssa Healy making her first “score” of the Aussie season – 70 off 78 balls – to put the hosts 2-0 up in the series.
It hasn’t been the easiest few months for the Australian skipper, and had she not been captain her place in the XI would almost certainly have been at real risk with the recent form of Georgia Voll, who in just 3 appearances this antipodean summer has scored more international 100s than Alice Capsey has in almost 3 years since her debut.
Prior to today, Healy’s 9 matches this summer in the green and gold had seen her pass 30 several times, but no further. With two different injuries nagging at her knee and foot, we wondered who she needed more – her coach or her doctor? But all those worries evaporated today into the hazy blue New South Wales sky, as Healy turned on the class when it really mattered. Having kept wicket energetically, she then batted with an authority that made a mockery of any suggestion that her 34 years were starting to take their toll.
Coming into this match, England insisted they were in brilliant form after their success in South Africa – that tour wasn’t officially a multi-format points series, but if it had been, England would have won it 14-2. Those of us who raised question marks at the beginning of that tour were beginning to feel like killjoys by the end, but the result here suggests that we may actually have had a point.
Australia were not at their brilliant best; but against them England nonetheless looked very, very mediocre at times – those times being mainly between 10:30am and 4:30pm. Outside of those times, there were some positives – England joined arms to belt out the national anthem prior to play; whilst later on Heather Knight and Lauren Bell performed their post-match media duties with customary aplomb.
But in terms of the actual cricket, it didn’t go quite so well. Lauren Bell sending down 9 overs for 25 runs – an Economy Rate of 2.8, by far her best in ODIs – was probably the best of it; but she couldn’t make it count in the wickets column, which is what England really needed having been bowled out for only just north of 200.
A typical first innings score in meetings between the top 5 sides since 2020 is 264; and on a pitch which looked decent (if slightly sweaty, after a night under the covers) 280 felt more like par going in. Australia’s run rate would have put them at around 260/270, even though they took their foot off the gas at times, which obviously they had the luxury of doing, chasing the target they were chasing.
The bottom line: 204 was not nearly enough. England sold their wickets far too cheaply, with Heather Knight and Nat Sciver-Brunt particularly standing out in the “What Were They Thinking” stakes. My advice? If you want to be out on the pull in Sydney, try Kings Cross on a Saturday night, not North Sydney Oval on a Sunday morning.
Both captains made a lot in the press conferences yesterday of getting those first points on the board; of getting momentum in what is a punishingly quick series – tomorrow, we take the first of 6 internal flights to play 7 games (including a 4-day Test) in 22 days. And it is Australia who now have those first points and that momentum. All is not lost for England by any means – there are still 14 points to play for. But they are going to have to bat a lot, lot better if the final scoreline isn’t going to look much more like that South Africa series than the last, tied Women’s Ashes in England in 2023.
How often have you gone back to a restaurant where you had a bad meal? Or watched the second episode of a TV series if you didn’t enjoy the first one? The brutal fact is that you only get one chance to make a first impression and the key to attracting (and thereafter retaining) new customers is to prioritise quality control over everything else.
Hence the biggest threat to the growth of women’s cricket is if the initial experiences of potential fans are underwhelming.
This is not to ignore nor belittle the huge positives of the past 5 years: significant investment; greatly improved media coverage; and rapidly-rising standards. All helped by a tailwind of goodwill and a collective desire to address historic and systemic inequities.
But at some point, all products must be able to stand on their own two feet. No sport has an innate right to exist, or to be supported, or for its participants to be remunerated. Reward ultimately must be linked to popularity and the willingness of followers and advertisers to pay for access.
However, shielded from the commercial realities of having to ensure earned revenue exceeds costs, this simple truth is ignored by those running English women’s cricket whose preference is for catchy headlines and good optics. In the short term, it’s easy to proclaim every new initiative as Success or Progress. But that’s not the same as developing a sustainable, high-quality product.
1. Let’s start at the top – the national team. They’re a good team – but not nearly as good as they should be for all the money and resource spent in the last few years.
Looking first at the batting, the only new talent to have emerged in the past 5 years who has consistently delivered is Bouchier. Dunkley is reminiscent of Hick in the men’s game – too good for county cricket but possessed of a flawed technique and whose fielding and (abandoned) bowling aren’t good enough at international level. Capsey appears to have been similarly exposed. In the keeping department, next-off-the-rank Heath has been given virtually no chances to demonstrate that she could step up to the role and hence we remain one broken finger away from having to deploy a ‘stopper’ who can bat or a keeper who can’t bat. With respect to bowling talent England have good first-choice reserves but there’s still something wrong with the set-up when the selectors deem four 18-year-olds (Kemp, Gaur, Baker and MacDonald-Gay) to be better than anyone produced by the regional system in the past 6 years.
There is however a much bigger problem than how good the England team is – and that’s how bad most of the international opposition is. With the exception of Australia and India, the rest are no better than a typical regional/Tier 1 team and consequently many international games are terrible mismatches. That England additionally so often choose to bowl first against weak opponents (thereby denying fans the chance of at least seeing a good batting display before our bowling attack invariably works its way through the opposition) shows a complete disregard for the spectator experience. Which brings us back to ‘quality control’.
If we want better opposition (and hence a better showpiece product), it’s clear that England (and Australia) need to think far more holistically. The ECB should run (and pay for) a scheme under which 10-15 players from each of the West Indies, South Africa, New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka play a full season of cricket in England. The top talent should be assigned to Tier 1 counties with the rest spread across Tier 2 and 3 counties and also matched with a local club which is suitably incentivised to provide them with regular mid-week and weekend matches in (“men’s”) leagues and ideally women’s premier league games too.
The cost? With vision and creativity, this shouldn’t cost more than £20,000 per player – or £1.5m (or, put another way, roughly the ECB’s payment for one Tier 1 team). Ideally, the benefitting countries would be required to provide a reciprocal scheme for the best English players (providing a far better skills and life experience than a cosy few months in New Zealand which seems to be the preferred route for so many).
2. England squad size. (N.B. I’d be the first to agree that there’s an excess of England men central contracts – but (i) that doesn’t make it right, and (ii) they might argue that they generate the funds thus wasted.)
Central contracts are partly designed to ensure that players don’t play too much cricket. And in the men’s game, they are also essential to bind top players to England which is integral to maintaining the value of tv broadcasting rights and high ticket prices.
But female contracted players play far fewer days of international cricket* and also far fewer non-international matches. Nor is an alternative career playing in various T20 and T10 leagues around the world viable.
[*Between Nov 1 2023 and Oct 31 2024 (the period covering the last women’s central contracts), the England men’s and women’s team played roughly the same number of T20s (17 men, 20 women) and ODIs (10, 9), but the men played 14 Tests compared to 1 for the women.]
Consider the total number of games played by 3 representative non-Test players from each squad during this period:
ODI
T20i
FC/List A
T20/100
Bouchier
9
17
3
22
Capsey
7
16
0
29
Glenn
3
16
2
14
Salt
9
17
0
35
Livingstone
10
17
0
31
Ali
3
14
0
50
(As another comparator, James Vince played 13 county matches and 52 T20 matches in this period.)
So, neither the argument that you need to protect (most) female players from playing too much cricket nor that it’s essential that they are contractually bound to England holds for the women’s game.
This is not – before anyone gets too agitated – an argument for a smaller total pay pot for the women. My proposal is that there should be very few central contracts and that the money saved should be re-allocated to pay higher match fees.
3. Women cricketers need to play far more games.
This may sound curmudgeonly, but we shouldn’t be celebrating when an 18-year-old gets an international cap. The fact that someone who’s probably played less than 100 games in her life can seamlessly segue onto the international stage is ridiculous (genuine teenage sensations excepted). Not only does it reiterate the argument at point (1), but it’s a terrible indictment on the domestic set-up that after 5 years of professionalism there’s such a dearth of competition from players in their mid-20s.
There seems to be a belief that natural talent + youthful exuberance is enough. But even a brief study of the stats tables (particularly the batting tables) shows the domination of older players. Why? Because skill and training can only take you so far. To dominate you also need match experience i.e. exposure to, and dealing with, numerous game situations.
Adam Gilchrist, the Australian men’s keeper, came to England as a teenager and played 90 games in a season, returning home having vastly accelerated his development. Instead of every appearance being controlled by coaches and their game time limited (caps on overs for fast bowlers excepted), all female players, especially young players, need to play far more cricket.
And if you really want to get better you need to play against tough opponents. Most of the greats (Bates, Devine, Edwards, Greenway, Lanning) learnt their cricket playing “men’s” cricket. Fast bowlers bowl quicker, batters hit the ball harder, fielders stop more balls and throw faster. Modern Pathway players have far too little exposure to “men’s” cricket compared to their predecessors. This trend needs to be urgently reversed and participation encouraged.
4. Number of Tier 1 counties. As posited in a previous article most regional teams comprised too many ‘journeymen’ (the pool of pre-professional-era cricketers who were ‘known entities’) and academy graduates whose principal role was to make up the numbers. (Addressing one comment on that article – this is not to say those young players lack talent but TFCs are the inevitable consequence of playing in a team where paid professionals will expect to get the best opportunities.)
And if there wasn’t enough talent to justify 80 professional contracts, then expanding the number of contracted players to 120 (or 130+ given Yorkshire’s advance recruitment) was obviously going to exasperate the gap between the teams with the best recruiting strategies and those with the worst. The trickle-feed squad announcements from the Tier 1 counties has confirmed this fear – from what we know (and, equally importantly, from the lack of announcements from some counties) it’s fairly clear that at least 3 of the Tier 1 teams are going to struggle to win many games. Quality control, anyone?
An honest assessment of the talent pool should have seen the ECB launch this new era with just 6 Tier 1 counties to ensure a more even spread of available talent which could still have been sold as a ‘positive’ (90 full-time professionals).
But it’s obviously too late to reverse this decision, so the main lesson should be to not expand until it’s proven there’s enough talent to sustain more Tier 1 teams. “You can’t do that!” Why not? The ECB has repeatedly demonstrated that it doesn’t consider itself bound by the original Darwin tender document and hence should therefore be bold enough to reverse the pre-determined accession of Yorkshire and Glamorgan.
The ECB should then specify the conditions which would need to exist to warrant expanding the number of Tier 1 teams (in terms of spectator and tv numbers, sponsorship, advertising revenue, etc.) without predetermining the timescale. The number of Tier 1 teams should be dictated by demand, not by diktat.
Will real-life match the enthusiastic projections about the growth of women’s sport? Will the women’s game nurture its own fans? Will most of the audience (as now) comprise fans of the men’s game (and, if so, what will happen when there are far more women’s games which thus compete for the limited time of these fans?) Can fans be converted to switch their primary allegiance to the woman’s game by different marketing, scheduling or pricing strategies?
It is surely far more sensible to expand in line with growing demand than grow too fast and risk having to cut the number of teams in the future if the predicted support doesn’t materialise?
And, regarding any future expansion of Tier 1, access must be on the basis of performance on the field, not a desire for geographic spread. If e.g. the south-east produces the next 2 teams to be elevated, the issue should be to understand how this success was achieved and seek to replicate it elsewhere, not to penalise best practice.
All Tier 1 teams should also run A teams comprising any professionals not playing Tier 1 cricket plus the best academy players. These teams should play against each other during the week but – see point 3 – also play in a “men’s” league at weekends. If they did, I’d predict most of the A team players would usurp the 1st XI incumbents within 2 years.
5. Sub-Tier 1. Credit where it’s due. Here the ECB has basically got it right. There obviously has to be a pathway providing a smooth journey (both ‘up’ and ‘down’) from teenage county talent to professional. And the structure, together with the money going into – and the commensurate expectations of – the Tier 2 and Tier 3 counties appears well thought out.
Having only 6 Tier 1 counties would have permitted more money to go into this level where every pound spent benefits more players (Which is more likely to grow the talent pool and unearth the next England star? Betting on one full time professional or several semi-professionals?). Tier 1 expansion should not involve any decrease in Tier 2 or Tier 3 funding.
6. Finally, it’s not enough to create a pathway to professionalism. As more talent fights for a finite number of contracts there will be a commensurate increase in the number of players who either seek, but don’t reach, Tier 1 or whose tenure is short. Currently most of that talent, enthusiasm and investment is squandered (Challenge: Could any of the former Regional teams say what happened to all the players who passed through their academy but who didn’t win a regional contract in the past 5 years?)
Alongside a professional contract, all players should be encouraged to gain coaching or umpiring qualifications or offered further education opportunities which could take them into management, administration or data analysis. Better representation in these roles means that decisions about women’s cricket would increasingly be made by people who best understand it.
England wrapped up the Test in Bloemfontein with a day to spare as South Africa disintegrated – Lauren Bell finishing with 8-76 across the match as South Africa were bowled out for just 64 – their lowest ever total in a completed innings in a Women’s Test. (Though South Africa still have some way to go to match the 35 that England were bowled out for in Melbourne in 1958, on a day when Australia were also bowled out for 38 – remarkably, the game still ended in a draw, partly because one of the three allocated days was lost to rain, so it was effectively a two-day match.)
England (395-9 & 236) bt. South Africa (281 & 64-9) #ENGvSA 🏏
From what felt like (at worst) a half-decent position on Day 2 at 237-3, South Africa lost 16-108 across their two innings to go down to their heaviest ever defeat by 286 runs.
Heather Knight will be cracking-out the champagne to celebrate her first ever Test win in 8 years as captain; but if we are honestly weighing up the scales of England Good <-> South Africa Bad then they mostly fall down on the latter side, which has been the story of the entire tour. Lauren Bell did bowl well today, and England did take 20 wickets. (Well… 19 actually – Ayanda Hlubi apparently could have batted if she’d really had to, but the coaches correctly surmised that the chances of her batting out 4 sessions for the draw were not high.)
But in-between, England were themselves effectively bowled out twice. (Though technically they declared their first innings at 9-down.) Their performance with the bat in the 2nd innings certainly won’t be giving the Australians any sleepless nights ahead of the Ashes Test at the MCG next month.
Maia Bouchier added a 19-ball duck to her century from the first day; Nat Sciver-Brunt was forced to remind people that she can’t do it every time; whilst Danni Wyatt-Hodge and Amy Jones showed again that they aren’t really able to adjust to the different pace required for Test cricket. Only an obstinate 90 from Heather Knight made the difference between a respectable 2nd innings score and something that could have put a very different complexion on the game. That, plus the lead from the first innings, meant that South Africa were always batting to save the game.
Subsequently, the bowlers did their job – putting the ball in the right place and letting momentum do its work as the South African Jenga-tower began to topple one last time in a series where we’ve seen a few castles crumble. We weren’t supposed to be counting overall series points, but if we were it was 14-2.
It’s a big win, but perhaps the biggest winners today were not England but Sony – yes, that Sony – the company that made your PlayStation, who also own Hawk-Eye – better known to cricket fans these days as DRS.
DRS is a fantastic technology and the game of cricket is the better for it, but it is also very expensive, so Cricket South Africa opted to leave it on the bench for this Test, which was clearly being run on a shoestring. South Africa were soon ruing its absence however, after Laura Wolvaardt was given out LBW yesterday having clearly inside-edged the ball onto her pad. Wolvaardt’s reaction earned her a reprimand (somewhat unfairly, I think – she was obviously fuming, but she didn’t actually argue with the umpire) but worse was to come.
Annerie Dercksen also got an edge onto her pad, but this one ballooned-up into the air and was caught by Tammy Beaumont at short leg. England appealed vociferously, and the umpire behind the stumps appeared initially to say no, before conferring with her colleague at square leg, and then sending it upstairs to the 3rd umpire. To everyone watching, the question appeared to be whether or not Dercksen had edged it – there was no doubt that Tammy had caught it cleanly – so when the verdict came back “Out”, it left everyone wondering on what basis it had been referred.
This is important, because the 3rd umpire can check if the batter hit it; but first the decision has to be referred, and that can only happen if there is doubt over whether or not the catch was fair, which there didn’t appear to be any doubt about; suggesting the umpires had got it wrong.
However, there was one more twist in the tale to come. Heather Knight revealed in the post-match press conference that the referral had been not for a clean catch, but for a bump ball. Once that has been referred (as with the catch) the 3rd Umpire can check whether or not the ball was actually hit.
So ultimately the correct decision appears to have been made, although there is still perhaps an argument that without a “Snickometer” the 3rd umpire didn’t have enough evidence to relitigate the on-field decision. Regardless, the decision came at the expense of huge confusion over whether or not the right procedure had been followed and whether Dercksen should have been given out, which leaves a bitter taste on the tongue.
It certainly left the new South African coach, Mandla Mashimbyi, with questions. In his post-match press conference, he was diplomatic – explicitly saying that he was concerned that the assembled journalists were trying to get him to say something which would get him into trouble – but he made it pretty clear he wasn’t happy, and that the board might wish to reconsider their decision not to use DRS in future.
The bottom line is that it now feels like a Rubicon has been crossed – we’ve already been here in other formats and series, and every time we’ve ended-up saying “Enough!” We can’t play matches of this profile, without DRS in future – it always ends in controversy and the boards backing down anyway. The concern is, as Raf expressed on the CRICKETher Weekly last Sunday, that the cost of hosting a Test will then become prohibitive for the less prosperous boards; but perhaps imaginative solutions can be found? For example, could this game have been played back-to-back with a men’s Test, using the same cameras and saving on setup and tear-down costs? Could Sony be leaned-on to offer the system pro-bono as a gesture of equality? Whatever the answer, it needs finding – the SOS has gone up – someone needs to answer it.
A half-century from Sune Luus kept South Africa just-about in the game, though England lead by 145 runs at the end of Day 2 in the Test at Bloemfontein.
England (395-9 & 31-1) v South Africa (281) #ENGvSA 🏏
Luus’ innings was one of marvellous mental fortitude – it is enlightening to compare her innings with Maia Bouchier’s yesterday: Bouchier faced 154 balls and scored 126 runs; Luus 148 balls for 56 runs. In other words, Bouchier scored more than twice as many runs in (roughly) the same number of balls. For players brought up on white-ball cricket, scoring runs is the easy bit – occupying the crease, as Luus did, is a much tougher ask. Hitting the balls that are there to be hit is what the modern white ball player does by instinct; leaving the balls that are there to be left goes against every grain.
Over the past few years, since Luus stopped bowling her leg-spin, I’ve sometimes wondered why South Africa continued to pick her; but she showed today what a crucial cog in the South African machine she can be, and I thought Global Cricket on Bluesky made a really interesting observation about her:
She scored an epic century against India when SA almost saved the game. It's intriguing to think how modern women's players would be viewed if they played more long format and less short format stuff, because some of them who aren't elite T20 players might be seen much more positively.
But despite 3 half-centuries (Wolvaardt, Luss and Kapp) and a 40 from Annerie Dercksen, South Africa really didn’t get what they wanted out of the day; and once Luus was dismissed, they subsided from 259-5 to 281 all out – losing their last 5 wickets for 22 runs. Lauren Bell was the key beneficiary, taking 3 of those 5 wickets to finish with 4-49; but arguably Lauren Filer (2-53) and Ryana MacDonald-Gay (2-50) both bowled better.
Filer’s role today was her most effective one – basically “The Heavy” in a Mafia movie: go in; break stuff; leave before the police get there! It is noticeable that she really is only capable of bowling very short spells – she looks knackered after 3 overs; and although England justify this as an explicit tactic of “short, sharp bursts”, I suspect this is post-rationalisation and they’d really like her to be able to go on for slightly longer. If she can lift her fitness over the next couple of years, that really would take her to another level.
Ryana MacDonald-Gay is in some senses the anti-Filer – she hasn’t got much pace at all, so she has to be totally on-the-money, which means trying to bowl consistently hitting the top off off stump and waiting for the reward – a tactic which bought her both her wickets today – Marizanne Kapp bowled and Nadine de Klerk caught behind. Kate Cross, who she replaced in the XI, needs to be her role model; but my feeling is that she isn’t quite ready to fill Cross’s shoes yet, and the Australians will probably find her easy pickings if she plays at the MCG in the Ashes.
Marizanne Kapp admitted in the post-match that England were “a little bit” ahead in the match. I think it is more like “a lot bit”, but there is still a path to South Africa overturning the odds and winning this match, if they can bowl England out in the first session tomorrow. If they don’t, then they are going to find themselves batting to save the game on the last day, on a pitch that is visibly starting to misbehave. Incredibly, Heather Knight has never won a Test in 8 years as England captain – she may never get a better chance to change that than in the next two days.
No one has ever lost a women’s Test having scored more than 300 in the 1st innings, so although there is a first time for everything it feels like England are in complete control having chalked-up 395-9 on Day 1 versus South Africa.
Maia Bouchier and (who else?) Nat Sciver-Brunt both hit hundreds as England made the most of what looked like a decent track on a windy day in Bloemfontein, which is slap bang in the middle of South Africa on the Highveld – elevated at over 1,400m above sea-level.
Opening the batting on Test debut, Bouchier needed to find a balance between her natural instinct to play carefree, attacking cricket and the fact that this was, after all, a Test match; and she did that pretty effectively for 45 overs to reach her hundred. She did then slightly switch modes – throwing the bat a bit and going for a few more shots, and was inevitably out caught shortly afterwards. (Very, very well caught at slip by Sune Luus – memo to Sophie Ecclestone: if you want to field at slip in Test cricket, this is the sort of catch you should be taking!)
I’d have liked to see Bouchier knuckle-down and push on towards a second hundred – it felt like Tammy Beaumont’s England record score of 208 was there for the taking – but that’s not to take anything away from what she achieved today.
If Bouchier wasn’t going to take Beaumont’s record, then I was sure that Nat Sciver-Brunt would, providing she didn’t run short of partners. She looked in remorseless touch, and was only undone by a freak dismissal – run out at the non-striker’s end after a deflection from the fingertips of Nonkululeko Mlaba. NSB rarely shows emotion on the field, but she was obviously absolutely steaming as a consequence – Amy Jones walked over to try to apologise and… well… let’s just say NSB clearly wasn’t much up for an apology at that particular moment!
England then suffered a little bit of a collapse. Charlie Dean’s role with the bat for England is generally to play sensibly and stick around after the top order have messed up – in other words, to play what we might think of as a “Test match innings”; but when it came to an actual Test match innings, she went a tad too much into defensive mode and ended up in a right pickle to Mlaba – backing off the shot until there was nowhere left to go back to, and then somehow bunting it under her own legs and into the stumps.
England should probably have declared at this point, and given themselves a proper go at South Africa’s batters after a tiring day in the field. When Amy Jones was dismissed shortly afterwards, they definitely should have – they’d have had 13 overs, which could have meant 4 each for the Laurens, and then a handful for Ecclestone and Dean too. There is going to be some real turn on this pitch for Dean, and if Mlaba can walk away with 4 wickets, I’d back Dean to take 5 or 6.
As it was, Heather Knight waited too long for the declaration, and then only had the 6 overs at the South African openers, allowing them to set up camp to block everything, taking them to 17-0 at the close.
We mentioned that no one has ever lost a Test having made 300 in the first innings, but whether England can go on and win this game is another matter entirely. Teams have made more than England’s 395 on 11 occasions in the past, and over half of those matches have ended in a draw – all 3 matches where England have previously scored 395+ ended in draws. Taking 20 wickets in 4 days is always the problem in women’s Tests – England probably need to take at least 10 tomorrow to have a chance of getting the win.
Tammy Beaumont recently passed a milestone that she never wanted: the 2nd ODI was her 100th consecutive match in the format. She is the first England player to have achieved this, and it is something that only two other players (Mignon du Preez and Mithali Raj) have done before. And yet it only happened because of something she didn’t want – her omission from the squad for the recent T20 World Cup in the UAE. If she had been selected, she would have missed the ODI series in Ireland in September, and been marooned on 95 consecutive appearances.
Beaumont has been out of favour in the T20 format for a while – she hasn’t played a T20 for England as part of their “first-choice” XI since 2022, though she did play the T20s in Ireland, plus 3 matches in New Zealand earlier this year when England were missing players at the WPL. Back in 2022 she was told to go away and improve her Strike Rate; and she did that, but to her disappointment she still couldn’t find a way back into the team.
So it is ironic that her latest match-winning ODI performance came in the shape of what was effectively a T20 innings – a knock of 65* off 46 balls, as England chased a DLS-adjusted target of 152 in 23 overs to win the ODI series v South Africa.
South Africa 233-8 v England 153-4 (T: 152) #SAvENG 🏏
In a series in which both sides had traded shockers – England in the 1st ODI and South Africa in the 2nd – the South African innings earlier in the afternoon saw improved performances from both teams, but that is deliberately to damn with faint praise: South Africa batted “okay” to reach 233; England bowled “okay” to take 8 wickets. The South Africans would have been hoping for 50-odd more at a ground which is renowned for being batter-friendly; whilst England will be wondering why the couldn’t finish-off the South African tail having had them 7-down with 10 overs remaining.
Losing Kate Cross to injury in the first over of the day was obviously a blow for England, but the last 9 overs were all bowled by their front-line options, with Capsey having completed her complement in the 41st over, so they might have done better in that final phase. To be fair though, they did keep South Africa below par, which became even more significant with the rain delay which followed, which saw DLS ratchet-up the required run rate from 4.7 to 6.6 – almost 2 runs per over more. It was a fair adjustment – a required rate of 6.6 for 23 overs is the equivalent of chasing 132 in a T20, which feels about right – an “okay” score if this had been a T20.
And thanks to T20 unspecialist Tammy Beaumont, England had it well within them, despite losing 3 wickets in the 5-over powerplay to the ever-deadly Marizanne Kapp.
South Africa 233-8 v England 153-4 (T: 152) #SAvENG 🏏
With the powerplay done, Beaumont pressed on, playing positively but not recklessly. Hitting more into the ‘V’ than usual, she led a charge which pushed the run rate up beyond 8 an over in the post-powerplay phase, giving England the platform they needed to go on and win the game. A decent knock of 49* from Amy Jones at the other end took England over the line with a massive (in the context of a 23 over chase) 4 overs to spare.
England winning what was effectively a T20 chase, thanks to a player who isn’t even in their T20 squad, is perhaps not much to write home about, but it was nice to see someone actually step up on a tour which has seen more than its share of steps down, and give England fans something genuinely to cheer about.
Nonetheless, if you watched the show, recorded before yesterday’s 2nd ODI, and got the impression that we haven’t been overly convinced by her performances so far on this tour, that’s probably because… we haven’t been; and we try to call it as we see it.
So how silly do we look now, after Filer sent South African stumps flying during the powerplay in Durban? Maybe… a tad? There are certainly few more dramatic sights in cricket than poles cartwheeling out of the ground – it is one of those things that lives in the memory and can come to define a player.
Her pace is a big part of Filer’s impact, with her top bowling speeds hitting up above 78mph*. In some ways this isn’t massively quicker than (say) Ellyse Perry, bowling at more like 70-75mph, but actually the small margins can be a big deal in this case. When you are batting against quick bowling, 80mph is the point at which you can’t really “see” the ball any more – not in the way that most people “see” things – you have to anticipate and rely on your reflexes and instincts. So if you are pushing toward that 80mph mark, as Filer is, that is going to be a big point of difference, especially when there are only a couple of other bowlers doing that regularly.
Neither Tazmin Brits nor Sune Luus had any answers yesterday as Filer found the target during the powerplay, before also adding the wicket of Nonkululeko Mlaba – also bowled – in a later spell. South Africa did start to rebuild, and looked on track for making a respectable 230-250 at 68-2 at the end of the 15th over; before they suffered a collapse of 5 wickets for 4 runs with Charlie Dean completing a hat-trick across two overs to rip out South Africa’s middle order and leave Chloe Tryon playing the role of batting for pride that Dean herself had danced in the previous ODI.
Chasing a low total, England played pretty sensible cricket – it definitely wasn’t Jon-Ball. After 15 overs, England were 78-1, where South Africa had been 68-2. Maia Bouchier, whose career Strike Rate in ODI cricket is well over 100 (110, in fact) batted at well under 100, and Tammy Beaumont was content to plod along at 65, taking England to the point where they could put the foot down for a bit of a sprint finish, with Amy Jones hitting two 4s to get them home with just the 156 balls to spare.
So a topsy-turvy One Day series will go to the decider in Potchefstroom with both sides hoping to improve upon aspects of their performances so far – if we can get through a game without a horrendous batting collapse, it would be nice to see something a little more competitive to conclude the white-ball phase of this tour.
*Huge props to Hypocaust for gathering all the data on bowling speeds noted here.
The Canadians have a word that perfectly describes Laura Wolvaardt: persnickety. It means fussy and ordered and very focussed on the little details which others might think unimportant. It is what would have made her a brilliant doctor, had she chosen to go down that career path six years ago; and it is a big part of what makes her a brilliant cricketer on a day like today, when her 59 not out – the highest score in a low-scoring game – dragged South Africa to victory in the 1st ODI in Kimberley.
Wolvaardt’s innings was about as unflashy as you can get – hewn-out of 114 balls at a Strike Rate of 52. Heather Knight batted faster (SR 63); so did Amy Jones (81); so did Sophie Ecclestone (63). Even Charlie Dean, not exactly known for her power hitting, went faster (82). But none of them won the game for their country – only Wolvaardt did.
She gave up a couple of chances – Amy Jones put down what would have been a sharp one-handed catch behind the stumps early-on; and Sophia Dunkley made a horrible mess of what looked like a pretty straightforward opportunity at deep square in the 16th over when Wolvaardt was on 27.
It could have made all the difference – Wolvaardt is the thread that holds South Africa together, allowing others to play more expansively around her, as both Marizanne Kapp and especially Nadine de Klerk did, coming in at the end and swashbuckling a rapid 48. Brisbane Heat fans may find themselves asking, where was this Nadine de Klerk during WBBL where she was averaging 8.4 across 8 games? Perhaps though Wolvaardt is the answer there too – her ship needs a sail and an anchor?
Coming into this match, the question on everyone’s lips was: could South Africa wrestle themselves out of the hole they’d dug for themselves in the T20 series? But perhaps it wasn’t South Africa that were in the hole at all? They’d rested and rotated players in the T20s, against England’s best XI. Yes England won; but so they should have. This was a bit different, with Kapp and Ayabonga Khaka back to take the new ball under a scorching sun in the Northern Cape. Khaka might not have ended up with anything in the wickets column, but how valuable was the maiden in her second over, in terms of keeping the pressure on, after Kapp had already removed Dunkley? England started to take risks, coming down the track to try to upset Kapp’s lengths; and in the 7th over this did for Beaumont, who came down slightly the wrong line and was clean bowled. Nat Sciver-Brunt followed her back 3 balls later for a rare duck – her first in an ODI since 2019 – and England were looking very wobbly all of a sudden.
Danni Wyatt-Hodge and Amy Jones both came out trying to play positively, no doubt as instructed by England coach Mr Jon Ball, and lasted just about as long as you’d expect, which wasn’t long. Jones did finish off with a lovely slog-sweep into the Hollies Stand, but unfortunately the Hollies Stand wasn’t actually there – Annerie Dercksen was, and Jones was caught on the rope.
It took Charlie Dean to rescue England from total ignominy – playing an innings much more like the one Wolvaardt went on to win the match with – unflashy and accumulative. Dean’s methodology with the bat is the polar opposite of your Wyatt-Hodges and your Jones. She won’t ever hit 50 off 25 balls; but she is averaging 22.9 for England in ODIs, with a highest score (twice) of 47 – that’s only a smidgen behind Wyatt-Hodge’s ODI average of 23.1, though admittedly Dean has a way to go before she catches Wyatt-Hodge’s 1918 ODI runs, with Dean a little behind on 343!
Dean’s efforts got England to something vaguely defendable, but they were going to have to bowl well, and… they didn’t. England picked two proper quicks to open the bowling, but they went with the more explosive options of Bell and Filer, rather than the reliability and control of Kate Cross – a decision which largely backfired. Although Bell did take the wicket of Tazmin Brits, given out LBW on a decision which would almost certainly have been overturned if DRS hadn’t been unavailable at the moment South Africa needed it, neither were able to do the kind of early damage England were going to need to win the game.
England needed wickets, and couldn’t find them, which made it all the more frustrating that Alice Capsey remained on the naughty step… er… I mean… the cover boundary… for pretty-much the entire innings, despite having actually taken a decent number of wickets at WBBL. However Capsey had only been brought into the team at the last minute, after Maia Bouchier had tweaked her neck in the warm-up, so she wasn’t part of Plan A, and Heather Knight apparently doesn’t do Plan B, so on the boundary she stayed. It was mystifying, but unsurprising.
With South Africa continuing to accumulate at 4 or 5 an over, and a required rate that never went above 4, it meant all they needed to do was stay alive to win the game, which they did – crossing the line only 4 down with more than 10 overs to spare to go 1-0 up in the series.
My guess is that it will take a lot more than this to shock England out of their complacency. As The Editor put it:
I’m waiting for Heather Knight to tell us in the post-match that playing badly for 6 hours doesn’t make England a bad team… #SAvENG 🏏
CRICKETher 