At 4:06pm this afternoon, the Surrey Cricket twitter account posted what was I’m guessing was a scheduled tweet that said:

Happy Birthday to South East Stars and England opener Sophia Dunkley 🥳 Have a great day 🎉🎂

Reader, I have to tell you now that she did not have a great day.

She wasn’t the only one to be fair – she wasn’t responsible for England losing this match; but given the fine margins – Australia winning by just 3 runs – it’s hard not to look back on an innings of 13 off 30 balls and think: “If only…”

Whilst Dunkley was at the crease, Tammy Beaumont at the other end scored 47 off 39. It was a fifty opening partnership that was a partnership in name only, and meant that England didn’t get off to the big start that had allowed them to pre-empt Australia’s big finish in the way they had in winning the 1st ODI at Bristol.

Australia nearly didn’t do enough themselves – their innings suffering a little bit of a dip in the middle, like a bad sponge on Bake Off. They started at a good pace; but having lost a couple of early wickets, it was left to Ellyse Perry and Beth Mooney to rebuild, which they did by plodding along at little more than 4 runs-an-over. England fielded with admirable commitment, diving around aggressively like little spaniels; but there were more dropped catches, and again the fine margins came into play.

Perry top-scored with 91, but despite how close she came to the big 1-0-0 it somehow didn’t feel like a “match-winning” innings. That was left to Georgia Wareham, whose 37 off 14 balls turned the par score Australia were headed for into a decent one – one that England couldn’t quite overhaul.

In the process, Wareham handed Lauren Bell back a record she had briefly held last summer against India, until Freya Kemp eclipsed it in the same match – the most expensive bowling figures for England in ODIs – 3-85 – 26 of them in that fateful final over. Bell didn’t do a lot wrong, to be fair – Wareham was in the mood to nail anyone, going one better (well… technically… 18 better) than her 19 off 11 balls at the Oval in the T20 last week.

In reply, England were actually ahead of Australia for much of the middle-overs, as Nat Sciver-Brunt built towards another ODI century in vain – she is now the only woman to have scored a century in a losing cause 3 times – all against Australia.

But there was always the nagging feeling that England’s tail-enders, handy as they are on their days, weren’t going to have the firepower to match Australia’s up-tick at the end. Perhaps one of the issues is that England were punished by their own camaraderie – they believe in each other. Hence Nat Sciver-Brunt had a little bit too much faith in Sarah Glenn, taking singles early in a couple of overs which left Glenn playing out dots which cost England in the end, as their death phase proved their death.

So England’s Ashes dream is over. Thanks to the format being loaded in favour of the holders, effectively giving the holders a one-point lead coming into the series because of something their predecessors achieved 18 months ago, Australia “retain” the Ashes, even if England win the final ODI on Tuesday.

There is of course a distinction between “retain” and “win” for the cricket geeks, but let’s be honest – in the wider narrative, there is no such subtlety. England set out to “win” the Ashes, and they didn’t achieve that. Squaring the points on Tuesday, and winning both white-ball series in the process, will be an achievement, but there won’t be any chapters written about it in the history books.

As for Australia, they are back where… if we are honest… we all know in our heart of hearts they belong – on top of the world. It has been almost 10 years since they last lost 4 matches in a row, in a run spanning the 2013 and 2013-14 Ashes. One day someone will knock them over a 4th time; but it wasn’t to be England today. Congratulations Australia – enjoy the plaudits – you deserve them.

Won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won, won. That was Australia’s recent form in 15 ODIs leading up to this match. They hadn’t lost an ODI since India successfully chased-down 264 in September 2021 – almost two years ago.

The writing was on the wall though, as early as the toss – that match against India was the last time Australia won the toss in an ODI and elected to bat. Six tosses won since, and six times Australia chose to bowl – winning every time; and yet today Alyssa Healy cited “the data” to justify batting. I don’t know what data she’s looking at, but I suspect it isn’t the data on Women’s ODIs.

England opted to be fairly conservative in their selections – there were no new caps for Lauren Filer or Dani Gibson, and veteran Kate Cross was preferred over young-gun Issy Wong.

Having made that choice to bat, Healy came out looking to make a statement against Cross, and in a similar vein to so many of her recent performances, looked fantastic – bashing two 4s either side of the wicket from Cross’s first three deliveries. But it was Cross who had the last laugh, reviewing an LBW appeal off the following ball to send Healy back to the sheds.

Phoebe Litchfield, brought back in to open the batting after missing out to the big hitters in the T20s, played nicely for her 37, including an absolutely gorgeous whipped drive through midwicket which was probably the shot of the series. It took doubtless the catch of the series to dismiss her – Sophie Ecclestone leaping back gymnastically to take a one-handed screamer.

Litchfield aside, Australia’s batters didn’t look quite themselves though. Perry and Mooney both outscored the teenager, but England’s bowlers made them work awfully hard for their runs. Alice Capsey, bowling in an ODI for the first time, sent down 9 overs straight for only 37 – an Economy Rate of 4.1 – whilst Lauren Bell produced one of those magic balls that she can occasionally conjure-up to bowl Annabel Sutherland. Both are encouraging signs, for now and for the future. England’s fielding coaches will definitely have something to say about the dropped catches, but England’s commitment in the field at least didn’t waver, unlike… well… more on that below!

Australia produced a bit of an up-tick at the end of their innings to take them to 263-8 – pretty-much a par 1st-innings score in ODIs between the top sides in recent years.

Without a massive total to bowl at, Australia needed to be frugal with the ball; but their openers served up a Premier Inn All You Can’t Eat Breakfast Buffet of bad bowling to allow England to get off to a flyer, getting 100 on the board in the 12th over.

Darcie Brown’s bowling is in some ways Australia’s equivalent of Alice Capsey’s batting – you know she is going to give away a few extras bowling a few wides and no-balls, just like you know Capsey is going to get caught on the boundary. But in both cases the hope is that they’ll smash some stumps/ sixes to make up for it. Brown didn’t today, delivering just 4 overs before Healy decided to swipe-left. Capsey on the other hand had a good day, following up her heroics at Lord’s with another rocket-propelled 40. With Tammy Beaumont also making 47 at a strike rate of over 100, England were in the box seat when Heather Knight and Nat Sciver-Brunt came together at 121-3. Needing just 4 an over from there, the only thing they had to do was keep wickets in hand and the result would come.

By the 30th over, Australia seemed to have given up, despite having taken the prize wicket of Sciver-Brunt in the meantime. Beth Mooney and Tahlia McGrath both declined to dive on the boundary for balls that could have been saved.

In the middle, Heather Knight was slowly but surely batting her way back into form, after a little-bit of a lean patch in white-ball cricket. (Though of course she did score a 50 in the Test.) Knight scored just a single boundary from her first 50 balls faced, but began to accelerate later to finish with a strike rate of 87 for her 75 runs.

Wickets continued to fall at the other end, with Knight visibly rolling her eyes to the sky after Ecclestone got out playing a completely unnecessary slog-sweep. This is why Ecclestone remains a tail-ender – a very good tail-ender, but a tail-ender nonetheless – she only really has one gear, and when she needed to keep a lid on it, she couldn’t help herself. (Perhaps a Speed Awareness Course is in order?)

It was left to Kate Cross to save England from what really would have been snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, sweeping and ramping her way to 19 to take England level, before Knight hit the winning runs with 11 balls to spare.

So that’s 3 defeats in a row now for Australia – unprecedented territory for this team, and they really do seem genuinely rattled. The old superstars can still deliver a professional show, but they aren’t hitting the high notes quite the way they once did, whilst the young guns are not yet churning out the hits. Perhaps… dare I say it, Issy Wong was right? England have done what nobody thought they could do – brought the series back to level-pegging. A river has been crossed, and though they still need to win both of the remaining matches to win back the Ashes, they might just be looking like favourites for the first time in a long time against the self-proclaimed (and… to be fair… quite a lot of other people proclaimed) greatest team in history.

Alice Capsey loves Lord’s. And Lord’s loves Alice Capsey. Back at the ground where she announced herself on the big stage with a half-century in the first edition of The Hundred, she smashed 46 off 23 balls – a Strike Rate of exactly 200 – to keep England’s Ashes hopes alive going into the ODIs next week. Are you not entertained, she asked the crowd of over 21,000 at the Home of Cricket? Oh yes, they roared back! When she’s at her best, she’s absolute box-office – there’s no one in cricket like her. And getting dropped twice? All part of the plan – every hero has to have their moment of jeopardy, after all.

In theory all DLS-adjusted chases should be equal – that’s the point of the system – balancing the number of runs required, and the time you have to get them, with the wickets in hand. But a 14 over chase doesn’t feel like an easy one – England needed to go at 0.75 runs/ over more than Australia had done, for still quite a lot of overs – you can’t treat it like a 5 over thrash, but you still need to go at pace.

Capsey herself hasn’t had the best run of form coming into this match. Her recent run of scores for England, since hitting 51 as England thrashed Ireland at the T20 World Cup in South Africa: 3, 6, 0, 3 & 5. Was her place under threat for the ODIs? Very possibly, with Tammy Beaumont coming back and Emma Lamb also challenging for a spot. Is it now? Well… possibly, yes – it could well be a decision England have already made – but as she showed tonight, when she launches she’s headed for the stars!

England had made a decent start, going at all-but 10/ over in their 4-over powerplay, but they then lost both openers in the space of 2 balls either side of the end of the powerplay, meaning Capsey and Sciver-Brunt had to start again, both on 0. They both got off the mark with singles, but in the knowledge that they needed 8s they knew they couldn’t hang around. One more single was all Capsey needed to feel she’d got the pace of the pitch, before taking on Jess Jonassen and hammering her over cow corner for six. The party was just starting, and by the time she hit her second six off Schutt, almost 10 yards further and 4 rows back into the stand, it was in full swing – Lord’s was rocking. The crowd wanted only one thing more – for her to finish it off. She couldn’t quite give them that, but they’ll go home with only one performance in their minds, and every single one of them will be back for more.

This being England, there was a little scare at the end. Nat Sciver-Brunt was bowled by Georgia Wareham; Amy Jones swung and missed at the one ball she faced; then Heather Knight was given out LBW, brining Dani Gibson to the crease with 2 needed from 5 balls. Gibson held her nerve, reversing for 4 to make sure of the win with 4 balls to spare.

Australia had earlier made a par 155-7. (The average score over the past couple of years in T20s between the top international side is 151.) It was one of those innings where no one really stood out – Mooney, Gardner and Perry all made 30+, but none went on – Perry’s 34 was the top score of the innings. Grace Harris, also coming in off a run of poor scores, added a handy (and rapid) 25.

England’s bowlers similarly had to work hard. Sarah Glenn got smashed for 16 off one over, with Beth Mooney hitting fours off 3 consecutive legal deliveries (with a wide in-between the first and second); whist Nat Sciver-Brunt, who is definitely not 100%, conceded 17 (all off Ellyse Perry) off her final over.

Dani Gibson was probably the big positive in terms of the bowling – not because she was brilliant, but because she delivered a solid 3 overs, suggesting England really have something to build on with her as a seam-bowling allrounder going forwards. She isn’t the finished article just yet – Freya Davies is a much, much better bowler right now; but as a long-term replacement for Sciver-Brunt, who is pushing 31 and obviously creaking, Gibson looks promising, and England probably need to look at her for the ODIs in terms of investment potential as well as “now” potential.

So England live to fight another day. Can they go on to win all three ODIs, and thus regain the Ashes? The odds remain massively against them – they are on a wing and a (Lord’s) prayer – but Australia will be just a little bit rattled by what has happened this week in London, and with full houses guaranteed (albeit at smaller grounds) for the ODI series, with the crowd on their side, you can’t count them out just yet.

Australia lost a white ball match “in normal time*” for the first time in almost two years – since India beat them in an ODI in September 2021 – in a madcap game watched by more than 20,000 fans at The Oval. (*India did also beat them in a Super Over in 2022.)

England – and in particular Sophia Dunkley – rode their luck early on, after having been inserted by Australia for the second time running. Australia’s strategy to Dunkley was unchanged from Edgbaston on Saturday – bowl short and get her caught – but once again it didn’t really pay off. She did take on the short balls, and she didn’t do it with too much control, so there were chances, but Australia didn’t make them count, allowing her and Wyatt to hit a pretty decent 54-0 off the powerplay.

Dunks’ luck finally ran out in the 7th over, but England had a platform to reach 100-1 in the 12th over, with something close to 200 looking like a real possibility.

What happened next was the seesaw to end all seesaws. England lost 5 wickets in the space of 4 overs; their run-rate collapsed; and it appeared to be game over, as the Australian’s brought Megan Schutt back on to turn the screw.

8 ball overs were of course traditional in Australia until comparatively recently, so perhaps an 8 ball over shouldn’t have been entirely surprising; but this was one for the history books for all the wrong reasons – the extra two deliveries comprising a no-ball (smacked for 4) and a wide down the leg side that hurtled to the (very short) straight boundary. With Wyatt hitting 3 other 4s plus a single, and Ecclestone helping out with a couple, the over went for 25. In the space of 8 balls, the game had turned back in England’s favour, and Australia found themselves up Schutt’s creek.

That one over meant that England were able to drive on to a very decent total – 151 is a typical 1st innings score in T20s between the top sides, and 186 is well above par on almost any day. Wyatt finished with 76 from 46 balls; but Sophie Ecclestone’s contribution at the end was also vital. We said the other day that Ecclestone is not going to be someone that England can rely on to make runs every time, but very-much like Katherine Sciver-Brunt used to, she’ll make a handy 20 or 30 every so often, and she’ll rarely make a more important 22 than she did today, especially because it was off just 12 balls. Given the margin of victory in the end, that strike rate was key.

Australia weren’t going to go down without a fight. (Do they ever?) They got off to an even better start than England, with Healy looking in great nick, in contrast to Dunkley’s madcap antics earlier in the evening, and there were echoes in her strokeplay of 2020 at the MCG. Australia were ahead after the powerplay, but suffered something of a collapse of their own in the early middle phase, as England’s spinners collectively turned on the pressure.

Glenn and Dean were both superb in the middle phases, keeping the ball tight and giving the Australian batters no freedom to play their shots. (Dean’s final figures look a tad expensive, but she got hit by Healy early on, and then slogged out of the ground by Georgia Wareham at the end – she was better than 1-41 today.) Australia needed 15 runs per over in the death phase – surely an impossible ask?

This being Australia however they still believed they could win, and they got close with Ellyse Perry passing 50 by hitting the last two balls for 6 and getting them within 4 runs of victory. (Though to be fair, Ecclestone doubtless knew that all she needed to do with those last two balls was land them on the pitch, so she was likely focussed on that – it didn’t matter if Perry hit them for maximums, as long as the weren’t wides or no balls.)

Of course, 14/ over isn’t 15, but it is still a B.I.G. death phase, and completed Australia’s highest ever chase in T20 internationals. But it wasn’t quite sufficient. England went with the same strategy of holding back Ecclestone for the final over, and although Bell’s 19th went for 11 again, this time Ecclestone found herself defending 20 rather than 5, and England clung on.

Given that the series nonetheless stands 6-2, and England still need to win all the remaining white ball games to regain the Ashes, it is probably fair to say that it is actually still England who are up Schutt’s Creek… but with a win under their belt at last, at least now they have a paddle.

After an unprecedented 20,000 spectators turned out for England’s Ashes T20 at Edgbaston on Saturday night, normality was restored a short drive down the road on Sunday at Worcester, as the proverbial man and his dog watched Sparks defend 233 to beat Thunder.

Under heavy skies, Thunder’s bowlers had the better of the early exchanges, with Sparks openers Eve Jones and Bethan Ellis bowled by Tara Norris and Mahika Gaur respectively. Erin Burns brought a little impetus to proceedings, but by the end of the powerplay she too was back in the pavilion, spooning a pretty innocuous delivery from Gaur to Deandra Dottin on the ring at backward point, leaving Sparks an anaemic 32-3 at the 10 over mark.

But Ami Campbell (68) and Abbey Freeborn (67) steadied the ship with a game-changing partnership which ultimately reached 139. It was somewhat attritional cricket early on, with Campbell and Freeborn digging out the runs at 4/5 per over, while Thunder’s attack toiled without making the breakthrough as Sparks reached 105-3 at drinks.

It was until after the 30^th over, with Campbell and Freeborn both having passed 50, that the pair started to cut loose, upping the run-rate to more than 8 per over. But both were dismissed in the space of 4 balls – first Campbell, stumped in slightly strange circumstances after failing to connect with a Tara Norris bouncer; then Freeborn bowled by Laura Jackson; whilst in-between, Davina Perrin also came and went LBW to Norris for a golden duck.

This left Sparks’ tail with an uphill task to post a decent total, but a decent 33 off 36 balls from Charis Pavely was the key to them reaching 233-10, bowled out off the final ball of the innings.

In reply, Seren Smale looked to play positively from the start, finding the boundary 3 times in Katie George’s opening over, which went for 15; but at the other end her opening partner Naomi Dattani was having a nightmare which culminated in a 12-ball duck as she was bowled through the gate by Georgia Davis.

Thunder looked well-placed at the 20-over mark with Smale having passed 50 in the previous over, and Deandra Dottin going at a run a ball; but after being dropped off the first ball of the 20^th over, Dottin was adjudged LBW off the second for 21 off 23 balls.

Smale carried Thunder’s hopes through to the 39^th over, but having batted for over two hours and worked her way to 94 off 125 balls, she played a tired club off Katie George, and watched in despair as it fell into the reliable hands of Eve Jones at mid on.

With the required rate having climbed to 6.6 runs per over going into the final 10, Thunder didn’t have time to hang around, but needed to balance that against having only 4 wickets in hand. That soon became 3 when Liberty Heap edged George to Freeborn behind the stumps, exposing the Thunder tail, which lasted until the 49^th over when a smashing diving catch by Dive-ina Perrin ended things with Thunder 30 short on 204 all out.

Australia ground out a win off the penultimate ball in a slightly scrappy game at a packed-out Edgbaston. A crowd just shy of 20,000 (19,527) cheered every boundary, roared for every wicket, sang along to every cheesy song, and even booed the TV umpire when Alice Capsey was adjudged (probably fairly, it should be said) run out.

It was certainly a contest, but whether it was a “good” contest could… well… be contested! If they are really honest, neither side will go back to the hotel tonight feeling they played well.

Only 3 England batters made it into double-figures. Sophia Dunkley had a good game on paper with 56 off 49 balls, but it was a really weird innings – Australia had clearly decided that the way to get her was to bowl bouncers outside off stump and get her caught on the boundary, and it is true that she wasn’t dealing with them convincingly, but she was mostly just pulling them weakly through mid on. That wasn’t where the trap was set, so she survived long enough to get a half-century and finish England’s highest scorer. With Wyatt, Capsey and Sciver-Brunt facing 20 balls at the other end, and hitting just two 4s between them, it felt at times like watching a men’s county T20 cup game from the 00s, before anyone had really figured out how to play the then-new shortest form of the game.

Heather Knight coming in at 5 found some form – playing a couple of nice shots rampy shots on her way to 29 off 22, but couldn’t push on; and at 115-4 going into the death, England looked like they were going to struggle to make a par score, especially when Dunkley was dismissed off the first ball of the 17th over. But Amy Jones played a fantastic hand to smash 40 off 21 balls, including two 6s and get England up to a defendable total. Jones was really the only England batter who looked like she knew where the middle of her bat was, and combined with some good work later behind the wicket, including the kind of stumping to get Tahlia McGrath that no one else currently playing the game can pull off, there was a rare case for selecting someone on the losing side as Player of the Match.

As for Australia, they were poor in the field – probably the worst performance I’ve seen from them in the professional era. It wasn’t so much that they let run outs and catches go begging… though they did… but that they let England nurdle the ball around for large chunks of the game, because a fielder was never quite in the right place. This is where they really miss Meg Lanning – Healy just isn’t as proactive and doesn’t have Lanning’s attention to detail, which meant that Australia gave up maybe 20-30 more runs than they would have if Lanning had been out there.

With 150 on the board, England will have felt that they had a chance at the innings break, but they were going to need to take wickets – a required rate of under 8-an-over wasn’t going to trouble Australia if batters got set, and so it proved. Ironically, Australia also only had 3 batters make double-figures,  but the difference was that those 3 – Mooney, McGrath and Gardner – did it up top, so although Australia went into the death still needing 8-an-over, they had the wickets in hand to handle any calamity.

With 16 still needed off the last two overs, England made the interesting decision to bowl Lauren Bell in the 19th, saving Ecclestone for the last. The theory these days is generally that the 19th is the key over – that’s “make or break” time, when you bowl your best bowler, hoping that they can keep the ask high enough for the 20th over that the pressure of it being the “final over” does the rest. Bell going for 11 off the 19th probably reinforces that case, though she did take the wicket of Perry with a lovely slower ball.

This left Ecclestone with a lot of work to do, defending 5 off 6 balls. Sutherland sent the first of those 6 balls back with interest over Ecclestone to the boundary, leaving Australia needing just one more; but the pressure then got to Sutherland, and after two dots she panicked, edging behind to leave us all wondering if a super-over was on the cards, with that one still required off two remaining deliveries. Could Ecclestone pull off the miracle? She could not… and it was probably too much to expect. Georgia Wareham got just enough on her first ball to dash through for the single, and Australia won with a single ball to spare.

The Ashes still aren’t mathematically gone – if England win all of the remaining games, they can still snatch back the trophy; and today will have given them hope (false hope, perhaps, but still hope) that they can challenge Australia on their day. But they now need “their day” to come 5 times in the next 3 weeks, and that feels like optimism taken too far.

The Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket has blasted the ECB in a landmark report which brands cricket institutionally racist, sexist and classist.

Commission Chair Cindy Butts told the media, in a damning inversion of the ECB’s own promotional slogan:

“The stark reality is cricket is not a game for everyone.”

Specifically on women’s cricket, the report concludes:

“Women are marginalised and routinely experience sexism and misogyny. The women’s game is treated as subordinate to the men’s game, and women have little or no power, voice or influence within cricket’s decision-making structures.”

The ICEC’s report makes 44 recommendations which it believes can transform cricket within the next 5-7 years.

Amongst these recommendations are calls for salary and governance equity which (if implemented) would completely remodel the landscape of cricket in England and Wales.

This includes a call for the ECB to move towards fully equal pay at domestic level by 2029 and at international level by 2030, with England women being paid (on average) the same renumeration, including match fees, central retainers and commercial payments, to the men’s white-ball team.

It also recommends that women’s salaries in the Hundred should be equalised with the men by 2025; whilst for domestic players in regional cricket, average pay and prize money should be equal by 2029.

The detail of the report allows the ECB little-to-no wriggle-room in terms of how “equality” should be calculated, and makes it very clear that just equalising match fees (for example) will be far from sufficient to meet their criteria.

The ECB are under no obligation to implement any of these recommendations, and doing so will be a huge challenge. Pay in domestic men’s cricket is largely dictated by the market, and funding the regions sufficiently such that Stars skipper Bryony Smith is paid the same as Surrey men’s captain Chris Jordan will cost the ECB an extraordinary amount of money. Equalising salaries in The Hundred alone would cost the ECB almost £6m per season. Equity will not come cheap.

On governance, the report recommends that the women’s game should have equal representation to the men’s game, including direct representation “in the same way as FCCs [the men’s First Class Counties]”.

It should be emphasised that this recommendation is explicitly for the men’s and women’s games to be represented equally, and is separate from the call for men and women to be equally present on the game’s boards and committees. To achieve this, the ECB will need to give governance representation to the women’s regions, giving them a vote in key decisions, such as the future of The Hundred – so the men’s First Class Counties will be unable to just abolish The Hundred without considering the impact on the women’s game.

Again, this won’t be straightforward. The men’s counties are big independent businesses, and there are 18 of them; whilst the women’s regions are essentially owned by the ECB, dependent on their “mother” counties for resources, and are only 8 in number. So does each region get 2¼ votes? And how do we ensure the men’s counties don’t put pressure on “their” region’s representatives to vote a particular way? (Especially given that many of the individuals working in women’s regional cricket will be hoping one day to apply for (much better paid) jobs in the men’s game?)

The ECB have promised to reflect carefully on the Commissions recommendations over the next few months. But reflecting is free and easy, and won’t change anything. The hard part is very much to come.

More on this story:

• Cultural change across a sport founded on misogyny is far from straightforward – by Raf Nicholson for the Guardian

Ash Gardner spun Australia to victory on the final morning at Trent Bridge, eclipsing the performances of 10-wicket Sophie Ecclestone and double-centurion Tammy Beaumont, taking a sensational 8-fer in the second innings to finish with match figures of 12-165 – the second-best match figures ever recorded in a Women’s Test.

England were clearly the underdogs going into the final day, needing another 150-odd runs with just 5 wickets in hand. And it was the latter number that was the more important – with 90 overs to bat, if they stayed-put, they were almost certainly going to win the game. But it is a fine balance for players who have been selected and groomed for aggressive white-ball cricket. Amy Jones blocked out 13 balls without scoring before dancing down the track and playing a lovely lofted drive, straight out of the one-day playbook. Two balls later, she tried to do the same again, missed it, and Healy took the bails off with Jones about a millimetre short – such are the fine margins of elite sport.

It was the second time in the match Jones had given her wicket away, and whilst there is no doubt whatsoever that she remains the best wicket-keeper in the world, you can’t carry a keeper who is struggling with the bat in international cricket these days, and feels more and more like the only thing keeping her in the team [sorry…!] is the lack of an alternative – if Bess Heath could keep like Ellie Threlkeld (or Threkeld could bat like Heath) I suspect Jones’s days would be numbered.

Sophie Ecclestone was able to hang around for half an hour, and does look like a potential replacement for Katherine Brunt’s role in the batting line-up – coming in somewhere between the bottom of the middle order and the top of the tail. But like Brunt, she is someone who is going to give you the odd 30 and the very occasional 50 – not a regular contribution. And that’s not a criticism of her – her role is to carry the team’s bowling, as she did throughout this match. Any contribution with the bat is a bonus not an expectation. To be honest, we shouldn’t even have had to see her bat today – if England’s top order had done their job last night, she’d still be in the pavilion right now, preparing to celebrate a famous win, not commiserating over a demoralising defeat.

And this defeat will be demoralising for England. They now need to win 5 of the 6 white ball games against a team who have lost just one white-ball match in the past two years, and whom England haven’t beaten in any format since a dead-rubber win at Bristol in 2019. That’s a psychological hurdle the size of a double-decker bus, and England are trying to jump it Evel Knievel-style… on a moped.

From an Australian perspective, they’ve taken a bit of stick from the press back home, particularly the bowlers; but they’ve got the job done. It was like they somehow understood the 5 day format better than England. So they didn’t rush to play shots; they didn’t panic over batting out a maiden to Sophie Ecclestone; they gave their bowlers time to work their spells. In the end they “used” the extra day, where England ended up just trying to survive it.

Could England have made some different selections? Given Gardner’s dominance in the final innings it does look like Jon Lewis, for all his red ball experience (250 First Class matches – the vast majority of them in England, including at this very ground) disastrously misread the pitch and conditions. My guess is that his lack of experience in women’s cricket didn’t help: he applied some logic from the men’s game – “the quickest bowlers can blow a team away” – without understanding that the quickest bowlers in the women’s game just aren’t that quick. They can hurry a batter into a mistake, as Lauren Filer did on more than one occasion in this match, but they mostly aren’t going to blast anyone away in the way that a Mitchell Starc or a Jofra Archer can.

Playing Dean instead of Filer would also have given England a slightly more Test-friendly tail. It’s easy to look back in hindsight though, and as Mark Robinson once told me in a press conference, “cricket isn’t played in hindsight”. The team England put on the pitch was a team that could have won this match – they got reasonably close, which is perhaps the key reason why the defeat will be so demoralising – it’s the hope that kills you, and all that! This was their one chance to win back the Ashes, and they didn’t quite have enough batting or enough bowling to do it. Oh well… there’s always next time.

Test cricket… like time, in the words of the celebrated mathematician Eric Temple Bell… makes fools of us all.

Everyone, that is, except Sophie Ecclestone; but her extraordinary efforts in this match will all have been for nothing, unless England’s late middle order can pull of the heist of the century tomorrow and snatch victory from what currently looks like the jaws of certain defeat, with 5 wickets down and 152 still required.

Test cricket certainly made a fool out of me, predicting yesterday that Australia would pile on the runs today and declare with the game out of sight of England. Instead England’s bowlers fought back, led by Ecclestone whose 10 wickets in the match bought her entry to a club almost as exclusive as the one Tammy Beaumont joined yesterday – just 11 other women have taken 10 or more wickets in a match; whilst 8 (including TB) have scored double-hundreds.

Ecclestone bowled 463 deliveries in this match – the most bowled by a woman in a Test match in the 21st century – taking 10 wickets for 192. And there was barely a dud ball in there either, until she threw down a full toss to Alyssa Healy 15 minutes into the final session. Healy was well set, having just brought up a half-century to silence the critics who were looking for her to make headlines with a record 4th straight duck in Test cricket, and she pounced, chipping it over the head of Emma Lamb, who somehow hauled it back and held on to the catch. Four balls later, Ecclestone trapped Darcie Brown LBW, and England had completed a cracking fight-back, leaving themselves chasing 268 for the win.

Of course, Ecclestone didn’t do it all by herself. Lauren Filer was billed as an “impact” bowler, and she certainly earned her match fee by bowling both Ellyse Perry and Tahlia McGrath in quick succession – both were decent deliveries, putting pressure on the batter to play and forcing the mistake – that’s certainly “impact”! And there were 2 wickets too for Kate Cross, who was clearly struggling yesterday with fatigue, but bravely sent down another 13 overs today; and the ball that got Phoebe Litchfield was a bit of a Jaffa, though perhaps also a tad fortunate? (I’d lay money she couldn’t repeat it if she’d bowled another 100 overs.)

England’s chase of 268 was never going to be easy – it would be by some margin the highest run chase ever made in women’s Tests. But England have scored that many in ODIs on plenty of occasions of late, and it was only 25 more than they made when they almost chased the target Australia set them in the last Ashes Test at Manuka. With well in excess of 100 overs to get them, it definitely felt doable. If they could just make it through to the close unscathed, as Australia had done last night, that would be perfect and we’d be set for a cracking finish tomorrow.

But… well… Test cricket makes fools of us all, doesn’t it? And it absolutely did of England in the final session, as they proceeded to crack under the pressure. I really didn’t want to be writing anything negative this evening – I was determined that I’d be able to be positive after the bowlers had brought them back into it. But I can’t – they bojangled it up good and proper!

Ash Gardner said in the press conference yesterday that spin would be crucial in the final innings, and she called it right, ripping the heart out of England’s batting order with the wickets of Tammy Beaumont, Heather Knight and Nat Sciver-Brunt. If you’d asked Australia what 3 wickets they really wanted in that evening session, those would have been the three. Getting Lamb and Dunkley as well was just a bonus; and it is really just Amy Jones to come now before Australia are into the tail. (Yes – Ecclestone can give it a whack in white ball cricket, but she’s a tailender here.)

England fans might feel hard done by, having seen DRS go to “Umpire’s Call” on the Knight and Lamb LBWs; but at the end of the day, Sue Redfern and Anna Harris made the right decisions – Lamb’s was (just) hitting; and Knight’s did strike her (just) in line. I’m not a big fan of “Umpire’s Call” – I think if it is hitting, it is hitting – but the important point here is that it was hitting, and you can’t really argue with that.

Is there any hope for England tomorrow? With BBC’s weather forecast saying 0% chance of rain, and 90 overs available, it ain’t gonna be a draw. So England need a miracle, and it could happen… but it feels like a very, very, very long shot.

On February 16 1935, Betty Snowball (or “Batty” Snowball, as I’d no doubt have called her if I’d been writing a blog back in 1935!) broke a record that had been in the books for 43 days – the highest ever score by an English woman cricketer. Snowball made 189 in England’s first innings of the only Test against New Zealand in Christchurch, overtaking the 119 made by Myrtle Maclagan against Australia in Sydney a few weeks previously.

It would be a record that would stand for over 88 years – though she lived into her eighties, Snowball herself, who died in 1988, never saw it beaten.

But today at Trent Bridge… 32,270 days later… Tammy Beaumont finally eclipsed Snowball’s innings, making 208 off 331 balls as England posted 463 all out in reply to Australia’s 473.

And you can’t argue Beaumont didn’t do it the hard way either. Snowball’s 189 was made against a novice New Zealand side playing their first ever Test, who had been bowled out for 44 (yes – four-four!) in just under 30 overs that morning.

Beaumont’s was made against the mighty Australia – arguably the most dominant team cricket has ever seen – in front of a crowd that likely surpassed another pretty old record. We don’t have exact figures yet, but the attendance at Trent Bridge today almost certainly took this match past the 72-year-old mark of 15,000 for the highest ever aggregate attendance at a women’s Test in England, set in 1951.

England began the day on 218-2, with plenty of wickets in hand, but still 255 runs behind – an Everest to climb. Realistically, their best-case scenario was to match Australia’s run rate and try to draw somewhere close to their 1st innings total of 473 some time in the evening session. And that they did – bowled out 10 runs behind. Another 11 runs would have been nice, just to be able to say the words “first innings lead”, but in the context of the game it is probably irrelevant.

TB will rightly get the headlines (Raf will be kicking herself she didn’t get to do the Sky Sports ‘Back Pages’ slot tonight rather than last night, when it was mostly (men’s) football transfer gossip and Frankie Dettori) and within half an hour Kent had issued a press release about “Kent Women Captain Tammy Beaumont”, even though she hasn’t actually played for them for quite some years!

But she couldn’t have done it without the support of a few others in the lineup. It was a bit of a case of: good, bad, good, bad, by turns. Nat Sciver looked nailed-on for a hundred of her own before nicking one to Healy whilst Sophia Dunkley really struggled – almost as if the coaches had given her mixed messages about how to play – and basically just clung on for 50 balls.

Danni Wyatt had said before the game that her instructions were to play the way she always does, and so she did, making a swift (by Test standards) 44. Amy Jones played a couple of nice shots, and then got out in such an Amy Jones way that if it had been anyone else, Amy Jones would have sued her for breach of copyright.

Sophie Ecclestone chipped in; Kate Cross didn’t (no shade – she isn’t really expected to); Lauren Filer had a bit of fun – the only player in the match so far to finish with a strike rate over 100, for her 11 off 10; before Lauren Bell came to the crease at No. 11, whereupon Tammy decided she might as well have a swish at that point, and… as they say… the rest is history – literally!

This left England with 19 overs to have a pop at Australia, with their batters tired after a long, hot day in the field, and England’s quick bowlers well-rested and hopefully chomping at the bit to get stuck in.

But… they kinda didn’t.

A year on from their travails against South Africa’s left-handers (remembering Tumi Sekhukhune’s 130-ball marathon in the second innings at Taunton) they still don’t seem to have a plan for Beth Mooney – at least, not one that is in any way effective – two slips and two gullies might be funky, but it wasn’t functional. If only someone could have predicted that Australia would open the batting with a left-hander… or even two!

There was apparently a suggestion on comms that England were deliberately engaging in a bit of 80s-style declaration bowling to allow Australia to pile on enough runs to feel able to give England a crack, but I don’t buy it: it might have made sense if this was a 4-day game, but with two days left? Surely not!

Occam’s razor suggests a simpler explanation – England just weren’t very good, and let Australia off the hook, such as it was, extending their lead to 92 with 10 wickets in hand. Their only hope now looks to be that either the pitch starts to misbehave… and even then, they still have to bat last on it, with Alana King already starting to find some significant turn with the odd ball today.

More likely, Australia will bat England out of the match tomorrow, and then try to bowl them out on Day 5 to take the win, and almost certainly the Ashes too. England are now playing for a draw. And I wouldn’t put my money on them getting it.