It was “Maia way or the highway” for England in Nelson… and they chose the highway, undoing all the good work of what should have been a match-winning 71 off 47 balls from Maia Bouchier. England collapsed from 126-2 at the end of the 15th over, with just a run-a-ball 30 required, to 152-8, falling 4 short of victory.

Bouchier was in early, after Sophia Dunkley was run out for a duck in the second over. (It was a sharp single, but the kind England take all the time and Dunkley was beaten by an inch – if she’d only have dived, she’d have made it.) Bouchier was quickly up and at the New Zealand bowling, hitting her first and third balls for 4s off Hannah Rowe; with Rowe having come in to the New Zealand XI for Jess Kerr, who didn’t seem to have done a lot wrong, but we assume was dropped to slightly strengthen the batting?

If you were penning a match report just from the scorecards, you’d probably write now that “Bouchier built on the 43* she’d made in the 1st T20” but that would be a total mischaracterisation. Having looked slightly timid and afraid in the earlier match, Bouchier’s mindset appeared completely different today, and she played the situation to perfection. She was very positive, without being reckless, as her and Tammy Beaumont motored towards the highest powerplay score of the series so far, taking them to 60-1 off the first 6 overs.

The final tally for Bouhier and Beaumont was a partnership of 92 off 61 balls, putting England in control – 25 runs ahead on where New Zealand had been at the end of the 12th over in which Beamont was dismissed.

Having starred in the first two matches, Heather Knight was happy to sit back and watch from the other end as Bouchier pushed on. Knight ran single after single to get Bouchier back on strike, and the reward was another 24 runs from 15 balls, which should have put the match beyond doubt.

TV commentators aren’t supposed to admit the match is done until the very last ball is bowled. (“So it’s 19 required from the final ball, but if they can just hit 3 consecutive no-balls for six, they could still take this to a super over…”) But Alex Hartley was right when she basically said we could start the car. England, however, had other ideas, instigating one of the most calamitous collapses I’ve ever seen from a supposedly “top” international side, losing 5 wickets for 21 runs in the death phase as the ship went down.

It’s unfair to pick on one player… but I’m going to do it anyway.

[Bess Heath… if you are reading this… please look away now – it definitely wasn’t really your fault.]

Bess Heath… what were you thinking? You were the last recognised batter, aside from accidental debutante Hollie Armitage. You needed 9 off 9 balls. You had time – not much of it, but enough. Now was not the time to roll out the glory mow. And yet… roll it out you did, with entirely predictable consequences.

England’s up and coming generation, of which Bess Heath is part, are an exciting prospect; but they are like a radio with the volume stuck on 11 – every ball is theirs to slog-sweep!

Heath’s recklessness left poor Hollie Armo holding a live grenade on a day which must have seen her run a whole marathon of emotions. She will have been bitterly disappointed not to be named in the starting XI – she will have known that this was almost certainly her final chance to be an international cricketer, and to have come so close yet so far, must have been dismaying. Then the head-injury to Sarah Glenn thrust her in, initially as a substitute fielder and then as a concussion sub, meaning she gets a full England cap that no one can ever take away from her. Then to be thrown in at the deep end in the midst of a storm, and have to walk off having been bowled by Suzie Bates’ first ball of the day. It was a day she’ll want to remember for ever… and a day she’ll forever want to forget.

A day to forget for England was of course a day to remember for New Zealand – a famous victory from the jaws of defeat. And what they have shown today is that when things go their way, they have the resources to beat the top sides, even if they are (if we are brutally honest) no longer one of them. Sophie Devine’s 60 runs to gift her side that huge death phase, giving them (just) enough to bowl at; the support from Amelia Kerr; Suzie Bates stepping up in that final over. You only need to win two big games to win a T20 World Cup. This match was notice – they could yet do that later this year.

England recovered from the precarious position of 77 for 6 to post 149 for 7, enough to overcome New Zealand by 15 runs at Nelson.

Heather Knight posted a second consecutive half-century, and shared crucial partnerships of 45 off 30 with Charlie Dean, and 27 off 12 with Sarah Glenn. England’s most productive game-phase was the last 4 overs, by far:

Linsey Smith, selected in place of Lauren Filer, then proceeded to take a wicket with her first ball in international cricket in almost 5 years – Suzie Bates top-edging an attempted slog sweep to short fine leg – as New Zealand hared off after the target a bit more aggressively than they actually needed to, and ended up tripping over their own shoelaces.

This has been a very important start to the tour by Knight, who (including her 52 v India in December) has now hit three fifties in as many T20 innings. Believe it or not, prior to that she hadn’t hit a T20 half-century since BC (Before Covid) – February 2020 to be precise – and there were starting to be rumbles, including here at CRICKETher Towers, about whether she should actually still be part of England’s T20 team at all, let alone skippering it. Whatever happens in the next 6 months, she’s now put that question to bed, at least until after the World Cup.

It’s interesting, as well, that Knight has bowled in both these opening matches. England have used her very sparingly with the ball of late, partly due to injury – the last time she sent down overs in back-to-back T20s was actually also in February 2020 – but could it be that they see her as an extra bowling option on those spin-friendly pitches in Bangladesh later this year?

England’s innings showed the value of a long batting line-up: Dean still seems absolutely wasted at No.8, while Glenn – lest we forget – was once touted as a possible T20 opener for England. (Not that they actually need another one of those at the moment!) But England should also count themselves lucky, because a side with even slightly more batting depth than New Zealand would surely have made them pay for some sloppy decisions by the top order.

Syd’s blood pressure gradually RAMPED up (gettit?) as Maia Bouchier, Dean and finally Melie Kerr all perished to a particular shot (ahem).

Melie Kerr’s was perhaps the least forgivable of all – New Zealand needed 50 off 33 balls at the point at which she got out, which was perfectly feasible, and didn’t call for a gung-ho approach.

A continent away, Australia have recently pulled a rabbit out of a hat in their first ODI against Bangladesh – posting 213 after being 112 for 6 – proving that the best teams never say die. New Zealand, by contrast, seem quite happy to wave a white flag at the earliest opportunity. With Kerr back in the dugout, the hosts proceeded to lose a further 4 wickets for 8 runs and the game was done and dusted.

Syd’s Matterhorn tells the story – look at how New Zealand’s line dips under England’s, pretty much straightaway after Kerr’s wicket in the 15th over:

Realistically, New Zealand probably have one more crack at winning a match this series, before England’s four best players return to the XI after their WPL-enforced absence. It doesn’t feel massively likely, does it?

Between 2010 and 2016, the average first innings score in a women’s T20 international was 119*. Had they been chasing 119, New Zealand would have won today’s game in the 19th over, rather than losing by 27 runs, after England had set them a target of 160 at the University Oval in Dunedin.

It is a new era now, and there is no better illustration of how the Women’s Premier League has changed everything than that even England’s innings felt slightly pedestrian, lacking the swagger and joie de vivre that we’ve become accustomed to watching the WPL these past few weeks. There was only one six in the entire match – struck by Heather Knight shortly before she was dismissed – and a general air of caution throughout, with just 9 wickets falling across both innings.

Tammy Beaumont opened the batting as expected, and tried to be positive, but looked a little bit like a player who hasn’t picked up a cricket bat in anger for 4 months, possibly because… she was a cricket player who hadn’t picked up a cricket bat in anger for 4 months – not counting last week’s warm-ups, her last match was at WBBL in November.

Maia Bouchier and Sophia Dunkley, both under a certain amount of selection pressure with Danni Wyatt and Alice Capsey returning from WPL for the final two games of this series, gave the impression that their main priority was not getting out cheaply. In that, both succeeded, and hopefully it will give them confidence to open up and express themselves a bit more in the next couple of matches.

(Note to Maia and Dunks: that doesn’t mean you need to go “Full Metal Capsey” and try to ramp your first ball for six – there’s a balance!)

Even Heather Knight, the backbone of England’s performance with the bat today, took her time to get going, struggling to generate power early in her innings, and needing 11 balls to find the boundary for the first time. Having done so though, she picked up the pace nicely and continued to run hard between the wickets to give her strike rate that extra bump which England rightly believe might be the difference in those big matches to come.

Having seen England make 160, New Zealand needed to go fairly hard, and initially they achieved that, bettering England’s total of 41-1 from the powerplay to reach 44-1 after 6 overs and give themselves a glimpse of hope.

But the detail reveals a more complicated picture than the headline suggests. Georgia Plimmer was 16 off 14 balls at the end of the powerplay, but she had hit just one boundary for that 16, relying instead on getting through the ring and running. As soon as the field went out her options closed down, and the next 10 deliveries she faced produced just 5 runs, with Sarah Glenn producing a masterclass in control to lock her out of the scorebook and eventually claim her wicket.

Glenn’s destiny is probably to spend her entire career fighting for her place in the side with Charlie Dean, given that Sophie Ecclestone is the best in the world, and England are mostly unlikely to play three spinners. But a World Cup in Bangladesh might be the one time they do take that option, which is going to make things easier for the selectors, given how brilliantly both Dean and Glenn bowled today.

Glenn and Dean’s case to both play as part of a Spin Trident was helped by the fact that the second seamer options looked particularly unappetising today. Dani Gibson opened the bowling ahead of Lauren Filer, despite Filer basically being picked on pace alone, which you’d have thought warranted giving her the new ball. Gibson was… fine; but she’s a long way from the definite article as a bowler at this stage of her career.

And then when Filer did get the ball, she demonstrated exactly why Heather Knight didn’t have the confidence in her up-top, as Suzie Bates casually introduced her to the boundary rope 3 times. Filer ended up conceding 22 from 2 overs, and wasn’t called on again.

Meanwhile Lauren Bell denied anyone the excuse that “it wasn’t a quick’s wicket” by having – and I appreciate that I’m sticking my neck out a bit here – perhaps the best game of her England career. That might sound somewhat strange, given that we saw no fireworks and she failed to find the swing that Jess Kerr had earlier in the day; but what we did see was a player who looked completely comfortable and in control of her own game – there were plans, and she executed them.

As for New Zealand, maybe it is unfair to judge them, without their two best players, Amelia Kerr and Sophie Devine? But they just look like a team stuck in a bygone era, when getting 133 would win you the game. The fact that Hollie Armitage, who has never been capped by England and who didn’t get a game today despite the absence of Wyatt, Capsey and Sciver, tore up the Super Smash, perhaps says something rather uncomfortable about where the domestic game is at in New Zealand? It just isn’t preparing the younger players for the way that cricket is played now. I love history. I majored in history. But I wouldn’t want to go there.

—————

* Based on 143 matches between what are now the ICC Championship teams in the cricsheet.org catalog.

Prior to this Test match there was a lot of discussion on social media about whether BBC’s Test Match Special would broadcast live coverage of the game, and subsequent disappointment when it transpired that they would not, after TalkSport won the rights for the men’s Tests next year, with which the rights to the women’s Test were bundled.

The universal assumption, given that the match was hours from starting, was that it would pass without full radio coverage in the UK – the first England Test to do so for a decade. So massive credit to TalkSport for upending that assumption, and pulling together a team to commentate remotely on the final two days [insert hindsight here] of the match from their headquarters beneath The Shard on London’s South Bank.

Raf got a message from the producer whilst she was teaching her Sports Journalism students at Bournemouth University and got on a train; Phoebe Graham got a call when she was training with Thunder in Manchester and got into her car. Less than 24 hours later we found ourselves walking together at 3:30am (coffees and Google Maps in hand) with revellers still spilling out of clubs and pubs from the night before, trekking 10 minutes from our hotel at London Bridge over to TalkSport to… talk sport – and of course one sport in particular!

The setup is not really too different to watching from home – you are sat in a small conference room, in front of a huge screen, showing the “raw” TV feed from the ground – so you are seeing the same pictures that everyone watching on TNT is seeing in their living rooms, but without the comms or any ads. You can hear the effects mic, so you get a sense of the atmosphere, but you are at the mercy of the TV producer as to what you actually see.

It is virtually impossible to follow who is fielding where, and you won’t know a sub fielder has entered the fray until suddenly Harleen Deol or Richa Gosh pop up; but you obviously get a prime view of every delivery – much more so than if you were at the ground, where the most you’ll have is a small screen to catch a replay on.

With it being an early start, we’d brought a round of croissants with us to have for breakfast during the “lunch” break. Not just any croissants either – M&S croissants! And they did get eaten, but not during the lunch break, because there was, dear reader, no lunch break, as England were bowled out for 130-something for the second time in two days.

Of course, this isn’t the first time England have lost a Test match this year; but against Australia in the Women’s Ashes, it felt like they were competing. They fought. They took it to a fifth day. They came within 100 runs of victory. None of those caveats were applicable here. The cavernous DY Patil stadium in Navi Mumbai is 4,500 miles from Trent Bridge; but it might as well have been 4,500 light years.

Having opted not to enforce the follow-on yesterday, everyone expected India to continue batting this morning, at least whilst Harmanpreet was still at the crease; but the Indians surprised everyone by declaring on their overnight lead of 478.

Given that no one has ever chased even 200 to win a women’s Test, let alone nearly 500, the odds were very much stacked against England. But it is the commentator’s job to be optimistic about the state of the game, even at 4am on a chilly winter’s morning in south London, so we gave England the benefit of the doubt – if they could battle their way through today, and take into the final day, they’d have a chance to at least redeem their embarrassment at being bowled out for 136 yesterday.

As the kids say… LOL!

There will be some debate once again about whether England were bad or India were good; and perhaps we won’t really know the answer to that question until the end of next week’s Test between India and Australia, but right now I’m leaning towards “India were good”. They batted positively on Day 1; and they bowled brilliantly on Days 2 and 3. In Renuka and Pooja, they’ve perhaps found themselves a genuine “Shrubsole and Brunt”, with Reunka swinging it in like Anya and Pooja bringing the KSB fight and aggression. Between them they did for England’s top order – Dunkley was again the architect of her own demise, guiding a half-tracker into the hands of point; but Beaumont, Knight and Sciver-Brunt all got more or less unplayable deliveries.

The spinners then took over to run through the tail, with Deepti adding another 4 wickets to the 5fer she took in England’s first dig. It is interesting to consider what Deepti’s role is in this team. Is she a batter who bowls a bit? A bowler who contributes with the bat? She’s not a classic “genuine allrounder”, in the sense of someone who would get into the team on the strength of either role. She once made a big ODI century against Ireland, and took a 6fer against Sri Lanka back in 2016; but (ignoring “The Thing”) she is generally more of a player about whom the phrase “chipped in” might be written.

This then was probably the game of her life. After making a crucial half century in India’s first innings, which took them from “this is a decent score” to “only India can win from here”, she then exploited the red cherry, and a pitch she’ll want to carry round for the rest of her life, to make the ball dance around like a prima ballerina, getting the kind of turn that I’ve only ever seen before from the very best leg-spinners in the women’s game – Amelia Kerr and Sune Luus, before she lost her mojo.

England knew they had problems against spin – hence Jon Lewis’s “Spin Camp” earlier this year. But only one of the players on that camp actually played in this match – the disastrously-out-of-nick-anyway Sophia Dunkley – so much good it did!

To be fair to England though, this was a bit of a one-off – Deepti will probably never bowl like that again, and the batters at the spin camp were being prepped for the Asian World Cups to come in the next 18 months, not this Test match. The great rugby coach Clive Woodward once said: “Judge me on the World Cup”. I’d imagine Jon Lewis will be saying something very similar when he hands his report back to his bosses at the ECB. Clive Woodward went on  to win that World Cup. If Lewis goes on to do the same, all this will be forgotten. If not…

In the break between innings, TNT showcased a couple of the other sports on offer for the princely sum of £29.99 per month. We started with men’s netball (or “basketball” as I believe our American friends call it) before being treated to five minutes of Ultimate Fighting. At least… I think it was Absolute Fighting – it was someone getting the absolute pulp beaten out of them – so come to think of it, it might just have been a repeat of the last 20 overs of England’s first innings.

The day started well enough for England, with Ecclestone wrapping up the Indian tail, taking a catch off Lauren Bell to dismiss Deepti, before bagging the wickets of Renuka and Rajeshwari Gayakwad. The general consensus among the media and commentators seems to be that Ecclestone was poor yesterday, and Lauren Bell appeared to agree with this in the press conference, presumably indicating that Ecclestone herself  wasn’t happy either; and I agree she wasn’t at her best, but still… even if slightly off-song, where would England be without her?

As India had the previous day, England lost two early wickets. The first of these was exactly the one you predicted, but given that India are now a batter down (Satheesh Shubha has a broken finger) I think it evens things up generously that England also have someone in their top 3 who is unable to bat. Heather Knight joined She-Who-It-Is-Genuniely-Starting-To-Feel-Unfair-To-Name back in the dugout, but then Nat Sciver-Brunt and Tammy Beaumont looked to be digging in and things started to feel like they were getting back on track. Not “comfortable” entirely, but not dreadful.

I’m in two minds about the Beaumont run out. The editor of this site spoke for many:

And I sort-of get that, but… England needed to be positive, and there was a single there – TB is one of the sharpest runners in the game, and even though there was a critical moment of hesitation, she would still have made it if it wasn’t for an absolutely exceptional pick-up and throw from Pooja, swooping like an osprey on a juicy pike. It was the fielding equivalent of getting an unplayable delivery, and sometimes you just have to take that on the chin and say well played.

It did mean though the England were just one wicket away from turning a drama into a crisis, and inevitably with Wyatt’s wicket the game was probably up. Amy Jones lasted about as long as you’d expect. (Don’t believe me? Believe Alyssa Healy, who was caught on the stump mic at Trent Bridge saying something to the tune of: “Why does she always do this?”)

And then England’s long, long tail came home to roost, with Sophie Ecclestone coming in at 7. Ecclestone won’t thank me for saying it, but she is a tail-ender. A very handy tail-ender, but a tail-ender nonetheless, and once the ball started spinning, neither she nor anyone else had any answers. It was carnage, with more turns than the Monaco Grand Prix, as England collapsed so hard I had to make on-the-fly changes to my charting code!!

With England on the floor, and a second back-to-back Test match for India to play next week, surely they would enforce the follow-on and finish the job asap? But no! They seem to have decided ahead of time that they weren’t going to use the follow-on, so… they didn’t. Even in these exceptional circumstances, when they could have had the game done and dusted in two days.

Because, as subsequent events suggest, they almost certainly would have had England at least 6 or 7 down, which is where they themselves got to, as England’s spinners turned the tables in the afternoon. The 3 specialist seamers between them bowled just 8 overs, taking no wickets, whilst Ecclestone and Dean did the hard yards – 34 overs for 6 wickets, 4 of them to Dean, whose ability to be able to turn the ball (something (for all her brilliance) Ecclestone doesn’t usually do too much) meant that England could claim to have decisively won that afternoon.

There is, of course, absolutely no chance whatsoever of them winning the game.

But at least they won the afternoon on Day 2.

And Lauren Bell remains undismissed in Test cricket.

I think they call that: taking the positives.

India took control of the Test against England in Navi Mumbai, with 4 batters making scores in the sixties on Day 1 taking them to 410-7 at the close.

England went into the game with a seam-heavy attack, selecting 3 specialist pacers in Kate Cross, Lauren Bell and Lauren Filer, plus Nat Sciver-Brunt; and just 2 spinners in Sophie Ecclestone and Charlie Dean, with Alice Capsey left on the bench, and no other serious spin options. (Knight isn’t going to bowl herself for more than a handful of overs, and Sophia Dunkley isn’t a serious option, though she might send down a couple of overs if England get desperate.)

To justify these selections the seamers needed to take wickets, and they did get two early breakthroughs with the new ball inside the first ten overs, but it was mostly hard labour for them thereafter, though a magic ball from Lauren Bell – probably the best ball she has bowled for England – added the wicket of Jemimah; and a tired shot from Sneh Rana saw her bowled by Nat Sciver. On the other side of the balance-sheet, the 3 specialist seamers conceded 212 runs between them, at a rate of 4.8, as the Indians cashed-in.

To be fair to the Seamers Union, Nat Sciver-Brunt was the exception, finishing the day as England’s most economical bowler, going for just 25 from 11 overs. She didn’t look particularly threatening, but whatever she was doing differently, it was obviously working!

Overall though… and stop me if you’ve heard this before… we seem to have put quite a lot of eggs in the basket marked “Seam” and then discovered that the spinners were far more effective. I guess it is difficult to disentangle the spinners from who the spinners actually are – Sophie Ecclestone is Sophie Ecclestone, and she’s Sophie Ecclestone for a reason; while Charlie Dean was almost as good, extracting genuine bounce and turn. Would Alice Capsey have done the  same? Possibly not, but it feels unlikely she would have done any worse than Filer, who didn’t take any wickets and was a run an over more expensive than anyone else, and she would also have significantly strengthened the batting.

UPDATE: The consensus seems to be (including from Ecclestone herself, if what Lauren Bell said in the press conference is to be believed) that she had an off-day. I agree that it wasn’t her best day, but she wasn’t terrible by any stretch. I guess it is all relative – an Ecclestone off-day is still a better day than 99% of anyone else!!

Anyways… let’s just hope India haven’t picked any spinners and we don’t have to bat last, eh?

To give them their due, the Indians played very, very well – positively, without being reckless – this wasn’t Jonball. Satheesh (69), Jemimah (68) and Yastika (66) were all selections you could argue with, but all justified themselves here. I guess all 3 will be kicking themselves that they didn’t push on past the 60s… there’s more to life than The Beatles and The Stones you know guys! Meanwhile Deepti also made it into the 60s, and remains not out overnight with the chance to push on tomorrow towards the 90s (Boyzone! Steps!) and beyond (Taylor awaits!).

The game really ought to be beyond England already – 400 is a lot of runs, and needless to say no one has ever lost a women’s Test having scored 400 (or for that matter, 300) runs in the 1st innings. But records are there to be broken, and India aren’t Australia, who England weren’t a million miles from overhauling after they scored 473 in their 1st dig at Trent Bridge last summer, so there is something to play for nonetheless. With no multi-format series to worry about, there are no excuses for playing for a draw – England’s batters need to go out there tomorrow, assuming the bowlers can wrap things up, and make hay the way India did today, and we’ll have a game on our hands.