Ash Gardner scored a swashbuckling hundred as England were ground to dust in the their penultimate match of the group stages of the World Cup.

The rules of Indoor Cricket dictate that a batter has to retire out when they reach 25 runs; but unfortunately for England the rules of Indore Cricket contain no such stipulation, with Gardner and Annabel Sutherland putting on the Ritz as they raced to be the first to reach a hundred before the runs required ran out. In the end, despite Gardner blocking out the last 3 deliveries of the 40th over to give Sutherland the chance to reach 3 figures, the latter decided to be content with 98* – telling Gardner to get it done after they’d run a single which left her off strike 3 balls into the 41st.

That Sutherland had that opportunity was entirely within England’s gift. When Nat Sciver-Brunt taunted New Zealand the summer before last, by blocking ball after ball to allow Maia Bouchier to get a century at Worcester, I said at the time that if I’d been Sophie Devine I’d have told Jess Kerr to bowl 4 wides; and I’d have done the same if I’d been NSB here. I suspect it’s what Meg Lanning would have done too; but that’s not NSB’s style, and Sutherland was given the chance, making two attempts to convert it with big slogs, before accepting that it wasn’t to be this time – there will be other centuries, of that I’m certain.

Gardner won the race despite being 10 runs behind Sutherland on just 81 going into the 39th over; but three 4s off a somewhat perplexed-looking Sophie Ecclestone took Gardner into the 90s, and she didn’t look back from there. Having gone at just-shy of 8-an-over in the Middle phase, Australia turned the volume up again, hitting 86 runs in the Late Middle phase as they romped to a win that was at one stage looking very unlikely.

Four cheap wickets early on had England on 92% win probability at the 20-over mark. They were “proper” wickets too. Lauren Bell, who has always had a bit of a rep for struggling to bowl to left-handers, found a pearl to bowl Phoebe Litchfield; while Linsey Smith bowled Georgia Voll, who slightly naively tried to slog-sweep the master of the top-spinner; and then caught-and-bowled Ellyse Perry. (The latter looked like just batter error, but the regularity with which Smith seems to get these wickets caught and bowled suggests that something deeper is going on.) Finally, a brilliant catch at cover by Sciver-Brunt saw off Beth Mooney, and Australia were up the creek.

But it turns out that they had not just one paddle, but two; and as a result England lost for the first time in this tournament.

However, although Gardner and Sutherland flogged them, England’s problem once again wasn’t really the bowling but the batting. They weren’t awful collectively, but despite a strong finish, with Charlie Dean and Alice Capsey helping them put on 76 runs in the last 10 overs, they couldn’t quite recover from a middle over lull that saw them add just 26 runs between overs 21 and 30. Wasting 10 overs like that just isn’t going to win you many games of cricket at the highest level, and it left England 30-50 short of par. They’d probably still have lost, but maybe not quite so bleakly.

Charlotte Edwards continues to show faith in her chosen XI, which has only changed once in this tournament when Lauren Bell and Sophie Ecclestone were unwell. In terms of the batting, this has meant that Emma Lamb has kept her spot despite a run of low scores and a highest of just 13. Consequently there was only one question on the lips of England fans: Where’s Waggy*?

(*Danni Wyatt-Hodge – legend has it that it was Edwards herself who gave a teenage Danni Wyatt the nickname “WAG” due to her love of high fashion.)

Lamb looks so low on confidence that I think it would be kinder to put her out of her misery, and bring Wyatt-Hodge back for the final group match against New Zealand. That match is completely irrelevant to England – they are now guaranteed to finish either 2nd or 3rd whatever happens, and so will play the loser of Australia v South Africa in the semifinals.

Australia look unbeatable right now, but I still think India are the one side that could upset them; so I finish once again by repeating my prediction that we are going to see a rerun of 2017: England will progress to the final by beating South Africa, while India finally click and beat Australia. But the pressure of a home final will tell, and England will win the World Cup. You read it here first.

This week:

• England’s batting issues remain, despite their win over India
• South Africa bounce back
• Rainy days in Colombo, but should they lead to changes in the regs?

At the end of the 38th over of this huge World Cup match in Indore, with India 218-3 chasing 288, Andrew Miller on Cricinfo’s live text wrote:

England are dying a death by a thousand cuts right now

(As an aside, I can exclusively(!) confirm that Miller is a bit of a Swiftie, so this was a reference to Taylor Swift’s song Death By A Thousand Cuts.)

Our WinHer Win Predictor agreed with Miller – at 40 overs, it had India on 87% likelihood of the win, with Deepti Sharma and Smriti Mandhana looking very much in control of what would have been India’s highest successful chase in ODIs.

But in the end it was India who died the death by a thousand cuts, as England’s death bowling and especially their fielding kept the pressure on India, who lost both their set batters to catches in the deep as they tried to play the big shots they were starting to need. Ultimately, Deepti’s methodical batting – scoring 50 off 57 balls – was both what kept India in the game until the final over; but ironically also what left Amanjot and Sneh Rana with too much to do in the last 18 balls.

It is a story which will be familiar to anyone who followed our coverage of the English domestic One Day Cup semi-finals. We saw two big, long, drawn-out chases, but the successful one was the one where Hampshire kept the Rate just above the Required Rate.

In the unsuccessful one – Blaze v Lancashire – Blaze stayed close and looked in touch, but the Rate was always below the Required Rate, and just like India today, it left them with too much to do at the death.

The bottom line is that if you don’t bat at over the rate, you are relying on the other team to eff it up at the death, but whilst there is undoubtedly pressure on both sides, especially with semi-final qualification on the line, the bowlers have an advantage over the batters – the batters can afford no mistakes. Deepti Sharma doesn’t quite get hold of a slog-sweep off Ecclestone, and she’s walking back to the dugout. In contrast, Lauren Bell can bowl a terrible full toss which is hit for 4 to Sneh Rana off the first ball of the penultimate over, but come back to keep India to just 5 further runs off the over, and leave Linsey Smith a defendable 14 off the last.

Linsey Smith bowled out that final over for 9 (of which 4 were from the final ball, which was moot by that point) to conclude another fantastic performance. Don’t look too hard at the wickets column for her today – an economy rate of 4 off 10 overs is worth far more than the 1 wicket.

Earlier, England’s batters had notched-up 288 in pretty much the way you’d have predicted if you’d watched any of their previous outings at this World Cup. Heather Knight and Nat Sciver-Brunt looked good; everyone else looked wobbly, including Amy Jones, who nonetheless did manage to hit her highest ODI score since her back-to-back 100s against West Indies last summer.

It was Heather Knight though who did the hard yards for England on the day she won her 300th cap for her country. It feels slightly surprising that this was only her sixth hundred in all that time. (Tammy Beaumont has scored 14 centuries in nearly 50 fewer matches.) It was a brave and battling innings, which showed she retains the steel backbone that kept her in the captaincy for almost 10 years.

Yesterday, Charlotte Edwards told the press that she was “not concerned” about England’s batting. Edwards is always consciously playing a role in these media situations, so it almost feels unfair to quote her quite so badly, but it is pretty clear once again that she should be concerned. Even if England go on to win this World Cup – and they are now just two wins away from doing so – we have seen that they remain totally dependent on a couple of aging old soldiers in Knight and Sciver-Brunt, for whom this tournament is undoubtedly starting to feel long and relentless. How long they can keep it up, remains to be seen.

The result means that England have qualified for the semis, despite looking pretty mediocre. India meanwhile still have their destiny in their own hands – win their remaining two matches, and they will definitely still qualify. They’ve got New Zealand next, who are in the exact same boat – it isn’t quite a virtual quarter-final, because they’ll each have one more still to play and the hope that the other will slip-up; but it is set to be the the key match now prior to the knockouts. My advice? Beg, borrow or steal a television on Thursday to see how it unfolds.

This week:

• England unconvincing with the bat – but what changes should they make?
• ⁠Beth Mooney rescues Australia
• ⁠Nadine de Klerk upsets India’s apple-cart
• ⁠World Cup umpiring woes
• ⁠Our views on plans for a WPL mega-auction

England might have recorded one of the largest margins of victory in their history against South Africa in their opening match last week, but against Bangladesh it was so nearly a different story – a charmed innings of 79 from former captain Heather Knight being the only difference between the teams.

Knight was forced to invoke the “Power of 3 (Reviews)” – dismissed thrice by the on-field officials, she survived each time by appealing to the third umpire.

In the third over of their chase, with England already one down having lost Amy Jones, Knight was given out after the ball squeezed between bat and pad and was taken by the keeper. It was unclear whether the on-field dismissal was for caught behind or LBW – Knight indicating that the ball had hit her pad, suggesting she thought she’d been given out caught, but the TV umpire appeared to think the on-field decision was LBW. Regardless, the TV umpire concluded that there was no LBW case to answer, but also that there was insufficient evidence that she’d hit it to give her out caught, with the Ultra-Edge spike clear but not clearly attributable to the ball hitting the bat. (And if you are confused… welcome to the club!)

Then in the 7th over, with England Tammy Beaumont have joined Jones back in the pavillion, Knight was given out LBW on 8; but was reprieved once more by the third umpire – this time uncontroversially, with the ball clearly missing the stumps according to the ball tracking system.

The third review was perhaps the most disputable. In the fifteenth over, Knight drove towards extra cover and appeared to be spectacularly caught by a low-diving Shorna Akter. Knight (who probably had the best view in the ground) was walking off when the on-field officials asked for the catch to be double-checked, with the third umpire re-adjudicating the decision apparently on the grounds that it wasn’t clear the ball hadn’t touched the turf, even though all the available angles seemed to suggest Shorna’s fingers were underneath it.

Whilst the middle decision was obviously correct, the other two were much less obviously so, and if they’d gone the other way, England could have had few complaints. But Knight survived, and dug in for one of the slowest half-centuries of her career; and although England’s other batters fell one-by-one, a partnership of 79 with Charlie Dean got England the win they needed to go top of the table… albeit partly because Australia dropped a point to the rain on Saturday; because (as I warned on last week’s vodcast) England’s Net Run Rate was only ever going to go down from where it was following the South Africa result, and it is now already lower than Australia’s.

Bangladesh will be pleased to have pushed England so close in a match they definitely didn’t expect to win, but they will also doubtless be disappointed that they got so close to what would have been a famous demon-killing but couldn’t strike the final death-blow.

So often the smaller teams go into these matches with a survival mentality, but Sharmin Akhter got Bangladesh off to a bright start, striking at a run-a-ball early in the powerplay. However, with the loss of a couple of wickets Bangladesh shut up shop and had crawled to 121-5 after 40 overs.

But a strong death phase added 57 runs, 43 of them from the impressive bat of Rabeya Khan, to get them to a total which proved enough to make it tricky for England.

It was a result which told us far more about where England are than the South Africa match, which was very much a self-inflicted implosion on the part of the South Africans. Against Bangladesh, England wobbled badly, got lucky with some DRS calls, but ultimately came through. They now sit atop the table thanks some marginal umpiring calls against a team who expected to win two games in this tournament at best. Of course, the fates always have a part to play in these things; but if England are going to stay on top, they need to find a more convincing way of winning than drawing magic circles in the sand.

I woke up at 5am this morning full of excitement for a day I’d been looking forward to for months – I refer, of course, to the release of the new Taylor Swift album Life of a Showgirl on which the American singer reflects that “oftentimes it doesn’t feel so glamorous to be me”.

I know how you feel Tay! Like… one time back in 2017, I was one of a handful of people schlepping up to oh-so-not-very-glamorous Leicester to watch a Women’s World Cup match between South Africa and West Indies. And let’s put it this way – it wasn’t one of the fixtures everyone was clamouring to cover!

Nonetheless, it turned out to be one of the most memorable matches of the tournament – South Africa bowling West Indies out for 48 on their way to one of the fastest victories in World Cup history, winning with 262 balls to spare.

Appropriately, I was wearing my official 2017 World Cup press polo today, to watch from the sofa as South Africa were again involved in a low-scoring mugging; but this time the boot was on England’s foot, and South Africa were the victims.

England will have been mightily relieved to win the toss and have the opportunity to insert South Africa – there has been big pressure on the team batting first in the opening matches of this World Cup, and we’ve seen wobbles from both India (124-6 at one stage) and Australia (128-5) already this week, whilst Pakistan were skittled for 129.

With Nat Sciver-Brunt having admitted in the pre-match press conference that she wasn’t going to be able to bowl 10 overs, somewhat contradicting what coach Charlotte Edwards had said the day before, England’s selections were driven partly by the need to find some extra overs from somewhere, meaning Alice Capsey and Emma Lamb getting the nod over Danni Wyatt-Hodge, who to be fair has some decent experience running drinks in India, having spent an entire WPL doing it for UP Warriorz in 2024!

But neither Capsey nor Lamb were required, with either bat or ball, as South Africa imploded in the 30° heat of Guwahati.

After a bit of a loosener of an opening over from Lauren Bell, Linsey Smith picked up the ball at the other end, and within two deliveries she had South Africa in trouble. Natalie Germanos on comms called it “the big wicket”, because… that’s what she always says! But on this occasion she was right, with captain Laura Wolvaardt being the first dismissal – a classic Linsey Smith Caught & Bowled.

In her following over, Smith took another – Tazmin Brits, bowled by a drifting quicker delivery that ended up somewhere between an arm-ball and an inswinger.

By the time the 3rd wicket fell, leaving South Africa in what looked like real trouble at 17-3, Charlie Dean was not so much celebrating in the England huddle as shaking her head in disbelief, whilst I texted a friend that South Africa must have been wishing they had selected Tumi Sekhukhune so they could just send her in to block out the next 45 overs.

The wobble was well and truly happening, as it had for both India and Australia; but unlike those two, South Africa could not pull out of the skid they were in. One by one, they fell, mostly to pretty basic bowling – simply bringing the stumps into play, and letting the ever-increasing pressure do the hard work.

Only Sinalo Jafta (22) made it to double-figures, and she should have been stumped by Amy Jones on 8 – a relatively straightforward chance, of the sort which you’d generally expect Jones to be taking in her sleep.

It was one of two or three mistakes from the England keeper, who for the first time since she took the gloves following the retirement of Sarah Taylor, might be starting to feel some selection pressure, at least in terms of her keeping, with the brilliant form of Rhianna Southby. Southby was always capable of moments of brilliance, but is now backing them up with the more bread-and-butter sustained spells of competence which you need from a keeper in 50 over cricket – hence her “selection” as a non-travelling reserve for this tournament.

In the end, South Africa were bowled out for 73. It was 25 more than West Indies had made in Leicester that day in 2017, but I don’t suppose that even if it occurred to any of them (and several of them were there that day, including Wolvaardt and Marizanne Kapp) it was much consolation. Oftentimes it doesn’t feel so glamorous to be South Africa, and this time was one of those times.

Having got themselves into the position they did, it was important for England to go out and back up the bowling with a 10-wicket win, as South Africa had done in 2017. There were obviously a few nerves, and Marizanne Kapp threatened to  make it interesting with her usual fire. England didn’t go particularly hard, and in terms of runs scored, the teams were even-stevens at the end of the powerplay – England on 39 where South Africa had been 38; although of course the difference was that South Africa had lost 5 wickets!

In what could turn out to be a critical moment in England’s progress through this tournament, Amy Jones was dropped by Masabata Klaas off her own bowling, just as she was looking to accelerate. Jones is a Confidence Player™ and if she’d gone then, there could have been ramifications well beyond this match; but she went on to finish strongly on 40* hitting back-to-back 4s off Ayabonga Khaka as England reached for the… well, it is hard to call 73 “the stars”, but you can only chase the total you are chasing, and England will be heading now into a run of (theoretically!) easier games against Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan with some momentum behind them.