Faced with a must-win game against one of the best teams in the world, England silenced the doubters by strolling to an impressive victory on a warm Wednesday evening.

But enough about the football.*

In the cricket at Old Trafford in Manchester, faced with a similar situation, England took a running dive… and belly-flopped into a puddle of mud – India winning the game with 18 balls to spare, and the T20 series with a match still to play.

India were roared on by a crowd of over 7,000 that contained more Indian flags and shirts than English ones. It was an Indian crowd in nature as well as in colours – at one stage chants of “Radha! Radha!” rang out from the stands after a brilliant piece of fielding from the spinner on the boundary had saved what had looked like a certain 4, as if this were the WPL not a summer’s evening in England.

It wasn’t the perfect all-round performance from India – with the bat, they’ll be disappointed they let their foot off the gas after a typically explosive start from Shafali and Smriti. In truth it probably shouldn’t have got as far as the 17th over.

Lauren Filer caused them a few problems again, but she also showed her limitations – you can bowl as fast as you want, but you need to be hitting something – either the stumps or the batter – or you aren’t actually going to take any wickets. And bowling short outside off is mostly just going to invite runs, especially to a player like Shafali, who knows that with pace guaranteed even an edge is probably going to fly over the infield, which is exactly what happened in her first over, which went for 14, and allowed India to get ahead of the game early.

But it was with the ball and in the field that India really won this match, and looked a cut above the side that visited these shores 3 years ago. I felt after that series that England’s official ranking as the No. 2 side in the world ahead of India was probably slightly flattering them; but it looks much more the case today.

India’s spinners in particular bowled with incredible discipline, making it impossible for England’s batters to play their shots; and even with the ropes well out at Old Trafford, India’s fielders relentlessly turned 2s into singles. Alice Capsey was ruthlessly tormented by the tightness of the bowling – hitting one real shot in her innings of 18 – a slog-sweep off Deepti that dissected the two fielders at cow corner. The rest was a horrible edge for 4 through the keeper, and 8 singles.

And it wasn’t any better a day for anyone else in an England batting shirt – Sophia Dunkley being England’s top scorer with just 22. Ironically, I don’t think Dunkley did anything different today compared to her knock on Friday at The Oval, when she made 75 – it was just that on this occasion her erratic strokeplay found a fielder sooner rather than later.

A horrid final over from Deepti allowed England to get over the line of total ignominy, as Issy Wong and Sophie Ecclestone carted her for 16 to pass 120; but still 126 is not going to win you many games of cricket at this level, and so it proved today.

Around 40 minutes after play finished, with the press conferences done and dusted, Tammy Beaumont was back out on the field at Old Trafford running sprints around the boundary. Whether it was some kind of forfeit or punishment, I can’t say. But what I can say is that it isn’t really her fault alone that England lost – this just isn’t a team capable of beating the best in the world. And India are starting to look like a team ready to lay claim to being just that.

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*The Lionesses beat the Netherlands 4-0 at the Women’s Euros in Zurich.

Batting Rankings

Ranking = Runs * Strike Rate

Bowling Rankings

Ranking = Wickets / Economy

This week:

• England win a bonkers 3rd T20 v India
• England’s captaincy omnishambles in the 2nd T20
• Grace Scrivens all-but confirmed as England’s NEXT skipper

In late September 1066, a young French knight called Robert de Beaumont completed a perilous crossing of the English Channel, landing near Pevensey in Sussex, to take command of a division of the Norman army led by William the Conqueror. According to the chronicles, de Beaumont “performed feats of valour worthy of perpetual remembrance” at the Battle of Hastings, which saw him rewarded with substantial grants of land and ultimately enobled as Earl of Leicester by William’s son Henry I.

Tamsin Tilley Beaumont (I guess the “de” got lost somewhere along the way) is almost certainly a direct descendent of Robert*; and on Friday 4th July 2025, she completed a perilous crossing of London, landing near Vauxhall, to take command of England’s women’s cricket team.

Tammy’s Army included several changes from the first two games. One of England’s key selection dilemmas at the moment is that they don’t really have any allrounders – NSB is now an allrounder “In Name Only” due to injury worries, and her replacement today, Paige Scholfield (note to commentators: it is “Sco-field” – the “L” is silent) is in exactly the same boat.

Alice Capsey is the only batter who bowls at all, but she got thoroughly turned-over by India in the first game, and only bowled one over in the second. At the other end of the ledger, Sophie Ecclestone will produce the occasional knock as a bowler who can give it a bit of a slog, but overall her record is poor – the 35 she made in the last game was her first international T20 score over 30 since 2022.

So England went into this match once again playing 5 specialist bowlers, bringing in Charlie Dean and Issy Wong; leaving them with a long tail and a desperate need for the top order to fire after they chose to bat first.

England’s openers did make it through the powerplay unscathed for the first time in this series; but India’s commitment and energy in the field helped keep them to 44 off the first 6 overs, with Sophia Dunkley scoring the bulk of them (32/44) in her usual frenetic manner.

Danni Wyatt-Hodge was a batter playing for her place going at a Strike Rate under 90, and when she finally connected properly with one in the 9th over that sailed (just) over the boundary for 6, the look of relief on her face was visible from space. India contrived to drop both England batters in that over, and it felt like a bit of a turning point as Wyatt-Hodge lifted her Strike Rate over 100. Getting to the 10 over mark at 82-0 was the platform England needed for a really big score, with 180-200 in their sights.

At 136-0 from 15 overs, everyone in the press box was hunched over StatsGuru checking the record books; but even at that stage, England’s trajectory was looking like the lower-end of that 180-200 range. And then…

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like what happened next. From 136-0 England collapsed to 171-9, losing 9 wickets for 35 in the last 5 overs. The Death Overs have never looked more deadly.

The thing is, 171 is objectively a decent score – right at the top end for matches between the top sides in recent years. And yet… when 180-200 had been there for the taking, England hadn’t taken it. In her pre-match captain’s presser, Tammy Beaumont had dragged out the old cliche that “Tough times don’t last; tough people do!” But it was India’s bowlers, not England’s batters, who had toughed it out and kept believing; and it was India’s bowlers that got the rewards, with a momentum-shift that left England dizzy like a heavyweight getting pummelled on the ropes.

England came out to bowl and I was immediately transported back to Australia in January, not by the balmy summer evening (temperatures have actually eased somewhat in London compared to earlier in the week) but by England dropping a catch, as Lauren Bell misjudged and then shelled a skier on the boundary at deep 3rd in the 2nd over.

England could have waved bye-bye to Shafali for 4 off 4 balls; but by the end of the powerplay she was instead 32 off 15, and a player who has had to spend a little time in the wilderness recently looked very-much BACK. She eventually let Ecclestone slide one through the gate just short of her 50; but it was job done for her, lighting a fire under India’s reply which made them firm favourites at the halfway mark.

But somehow, England kept believing, and it was Lauren Filer who started the fight-back. Filer took the wicket of Jemimah and then made Smriti look pretty clumsy facing a very uncomfortable 4 balls in the 14th over, before taking her wicket off a miscued slog from the very next ball she faced from the England quick. Having returned 0-22 from her first two overs; Filer took 2-8 from her last two, with the speed gun topping-out at 79mph; and suddenly England were back in it; whilst India had fallen behind the rate for the first time in the match.

England were still awful; catches were still dropped. But with 3 overs to go, and 30 required, England made the big decision to gamble on burning Ecclestone’s final over and despite another drop, it pretty-much paid-off – India took 10 from it; but 20 from the last two proved just two much and off the final delivery it was Harmanpreet who found herself with an arrow through her eye, unable to hit the final 6 India needed.

“Feats of valour worthy of perpetual remembrance” is probably putting a little too much icing on the cake; but Tammy’s Army had won… and then lost… and then won again, the most remarkable game of cricket – one that I (and no doubt, she) will remember for a long, long time.

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*Don’t be too impressed by this though – if you are of the same ethnicity, you almost certainly are too, due to something called the “genetic isopoint“!

India’s middle order outclassed England’s to win the 2nd T20 in front of a boisterous crowd at Bristol. With both sides contriving to lose 3 wickets cheaply during the powerplay, the two 4th-wicket partnerships were pitted against each other through the middle overs, with Jemimah Rodrigues and Amanjot Kaur’s 93 off 55 balls ultimately trumping Tammy Beaumont and Amy Jones’s  70 off 49.

Having opted to chase after winning the toss again, despite that not having been an entirely successful strategy at Trent Bridge, England opened the bowling with Alice Capsey – an experiment that looks unlikely to be repeated after Smriti Mandhana stroked her for two beautifully timed 4s in an over which went for 11. After Smriti’s century in the first game, it looked ominous for England, but she barely added to her score before she was caught on the ring by Lauren Bell, who made an easy chance look a lot harder than it actually was by initially heading off in the wrong direction before leaping back to where she’d initially been to take the catch.

This was after Lauren Filer had already seen off Shafali Verma with an aggressive bodyline delivery which Shafali could only fend off to Amy Jones behind the stumps; and with the returning Harmanpreet Kaur coming and going within two balls, England were well-placed at the end of the powerplay with India 35-3.

It doesn’t feel quite right to say that Jemimah and Amanjot initially “dug in” – they plundered 14 runs off Linsey Smith’s opening over – but they didn’t really start to accelerate until the 10 over mark. Jemi stamped her authority all over Em Arlott, smacking her for 6, 4, 4 – but the more significant over was the following one, bowled by Filer.

Filer tried to repeat the same trick that had bought her the wicket of Shafali – short and directed at the body – but Jemi found a way of dealing with it, by simply waiting and ramping her over the keeper. The ramp is often a risky shot in the women’s game because there isn’t the pace on the ball that you get in men’s cricket, but with Filer you to get a lot more of that pace, meaning you don’t have to time it perfectly to have it fly off to the boundary, which is exactly what happened. (Expect others to learn the lesson, and blunt Filer’s key wicket-taking delivery going forwards!)

From there, Jemimah and Amanjot grew in confidence, hitting at more than 12 an over to create an imposing platform. Jemimah will cringe when she comes to watch her dismissal again – caught chasing a Lauren Bell wide, for the second time in this series – but that aside, she hauled India back into the game, and left a legacy which Amanjot and Richa Ghosh turned into a dynasty – adding a further 57 runs off 34 balls to put 181-4 on the board.

It can’t have helped that England were literally rudderless for a good chunk of India’s most dominant period. With Nat Sciver-Brunt off the field with a “tight hip”, we learned afterwards that Sophia Dunkley was supposed to be in charge as the official Vice Captain for this series; but in practice it was Sophie Ecclestone who actually took over and appeared to be directing both the field and the bowling changes.

Unlike the 210 England faced in Nottingham, 181 didn’t feel totally unchasable, but England contrived to make it as difficult as possible for themselves. It wasn’t just losing 3 wickets for not-much – it was the manner of their losing them: Dunkley running herself out, and Nat Sciver-Brunt totally mistiming a pull to a decent catch from her opposite number Harmanpreet. Danni Wyatt-Hodge meanwhile, who has been carving it up in domestic cricket with 372 runs at a Strike Rate of 158, did manage not to bag a 4th consecutive international duck, but only by 1 run, before offering up the tamest of catches, also to Harmanpreet.

Thus it all came down to Beaumont and Jones – which really meant it all came down to Beaumont: a century from her, and England would have won the game; but anything less you felt would have left them short. And she got half-way there – striking the ball better than anyone else out there tonight for a 33-ball 50, but a slight hesitation on a quick single – the kind she often takes and makes – and she was run out by inches.

And that was always going to be that – Amy Jones, who had been very-much playing second-fiddle, did accelerate a bit, but was then predictably caught playing an indecisive shot straight back to the bowler; and it continued downhill from there.

Was this as bad as the 1st T20? In terms of the scorecard, no – they lost by just 24 runs in the end, after Sophie Ecclestone struck a flurry of boundaries at the death – which is (if my maths is correct) a lot less than the 97 they lost by in Nottingham. But in other ways this was a worse defeat. Nottingham had a majestic hundred from Smriti – the kind that wins you the game 999 times out of 1,000. This had a battling middle-order fight-back after England had India on the ropes early on. If England had been able to take another couple of wickets in the middle overs, or not lose 3 themselves in the powerplay, the game was on. But instead they let the bowling go to pieces, and then cracked under pressure with the bat.

It’s the same story over and over again. Before taking this job, England coach Charlotte Edwards seemed to understand that this was a long-term project to build a new team capable of taking on the best in the world; but as Martin Davies argues in this piece, already short-term considerations seem to have been prioritised instead, and the future looks, if anything, further away than ever.

This week:

• Bend It Like… Wyatt Hodge
• England revert to JonBall after Smriti Mandhana’s hundred
• Charis Pavely shines for England A v New Zealand A
• Dean to captain in The Hundred but who will lead Rockets?

I still remember to this day, the rousing speech given by our primary school football coach, as we chewed our half-time oranges during a big match against our local rivals.

“Lads,” he said. “If they can score 8 in the first half, we can score 8 in the second!”

Yes – winning might have been beyond us; but an honourable draw was still very-much on the cards.

Dear Reader, we did not score 8 in the second. (They did though… and more, if I recall!)

To be fair to Charlotte Edwards, who I’m guessing found herself delivering a similar sermon in the innings break at Trent Bridge today, a team has successfully chased more than the 210 England needed to surpass India here. Hayley Matthews scored 132 off 64 balls as the West Indies overhauled Australia’s 212 with one ball to spare, at North Sydney Oval in October 2023.

Nat Sciver-Brunt did her best to emulate Matthews – reaching 66 off 42, before snicking an attempted cut to Richa Ghosh behind the stumps. But the game was already gone by that stage, with the second of England’s three Genuine International No. XIs having already joined her at the crease. (Linsey Smith isn’t a complete mug with the bat at county level, but in international cricket she is not… and nor should she be expected to be… any great shakes.) Lauren Bell holed-out on the deep midwicket boundary 4 balls later, and India celebrated an elephantine win by 97 runs.

The significance of the margin of victory should not be lost on England. If Alice Capsey had snaffled that half-chance to catch Smriti Mandhana in the second over when she was on 13… and no one else had scored any more runs than they did… India would still have won. Smriti’s glorious century – her first in T20 internationals – was mathematically all-but irrelevant.

It was a majestic performance from India’s stand-in skipper, who can time a cricket ball like no one else. Her opening two boundaries were just dinked down the ground – off any other bat in the world, they’d have been fielded by the bowler; off hers they were being gathered in from the fence. She took risks later on, but with malice aforethought – slog-sweeping Sophie Ecclestone’s first ball back in international cricket, she could have been caught by one of two fielders on the midwicket boundary; but it hovered between them before falling just over the rope for 6. It was a statement shot; an “I’ll show you who’s boss!” shot. Another 6 followed, and a 4 from Shafali, as the over went for 19. Ecclestone wasn’t totally knocked out of the game – she did come back – but for the first time in almost a year she didn’t bowl her full complement of overs in a T20 international. It wasn’t quite the comeback she’d have been hoping for.

In some ways, it is a bit of a surprise that Smriti hasn’t scored a T20 international hundred before – she’s one of the great players of her generation, twice Wisden’s Leading Woman Cricketer in the World, and in the 11th year of her stellar career. If she has a flaw, it is that she too often goes for one big shot too many and gets caught – 69% of her international innings end this way, which is on the high side. And indeed that is how it eventually ended for her today – Ecclestone getting a modicum of revenge in the final over. But by that time India had passed 200 and England had been put very firmly in their place. The second innings was a formality, only confirming what we already knew – today was not their day.

Defeats happen of course – even Australia lose games occasionally! But the concern for Charlotte Edwards ought to be that this summer is risking looking awfully familiar to anyone who watched the last few years of JonBall. England can beat the lesser sides black and blue, but as soon as they come up against a better team (even if they are only better “on the day”, as the West Indies were in that T20 World Cup “Virtual Quarter Final” which England lost) they struggle to take wickets and then collapse like a line of dominoes as soon as they are put under any pressure.

It’s not just one or two players, but Danni Wyatt-Hodge is bagging so many ducks for England that she could consider an alternative career as a gamekeeper; whilst Amy Jones appeared to just give up after a ball from Radha slid past her, and Richa was able to complete the stumping despite fumbling it horribly.

Alice Capsey was on a hiding to nothing already by the time she came in, but yet another soft dismissal, giving Arundhati Reddy catching practice on the ring, evoked memories of Lauren Winfield-Hill, whose England career never really took off despite opportunity after opportunity, but whose career international T20 average is actually (just) above where Capsey’s is now – 20.45 for Capsey, vs 20.55 for Winfield-Hill.

I didn’t expect England to win every game in this series – India are a good side, even with their current injury crisis – it wasn’t going to be a whitewash. I did however hope that England would start to show some steel, but there was precious little evidence of that today.

This week:

• A hectic 2025 World Cup schedule
• Sophie Devine’s impending ODI retirement
• 4 England squads in the same week 🤯
• English players win big in the WBBL draft
• Does decoupling The Hundred risk downgrading the women’s comp?

This week:

• Ecclestone returns for England v India
• Wicket-keeping succession plans
• Who will feature for England A v New Zealand A?
• T20 Blast: Somerset v Lancashire (Taylor’s Version)

It’s fair to say that there could have been an easier day for Taunton to host their first stand-alone Women’s Blast fixture. With their men’s team playing against Gloucestershire in the “Cider Derby” just up the road in Bristol, and that game also being shown live on Sky Sports, the task of getting cricket fans through the gates at the County Ground in one of cricket’s smallest towns (Taunton isn’t even officially a city!) must have felt like all the Labours of Hercules.

So, tossed a curveball by the fixture computer, Somerset decided the answer was to throw one back – hiring the Taylor Swift tribute act Forever Swift to do a post-match show and pricing the tickets at an “I’m Cutting My Own Hand Off ‘Ere Guv” £5 – less than a pint of beer.

And it worked! Somerset sold over 2,500 tickets, in addition to their 1,000 women’s memberships. Even the weather, which had looked decidedly dicey in the forecast, chose to be kind – it wasn’t warm, but the rain stayed away, and right on time at 6:30 Tara Norris opened the bowling to Bex Odgers, and a new era was underway at Taunton.

Norris’s first over was solid; but it was Kate Cross, opening the bowling from the same end as she did for England here less than a week ago, on her way to 3-21, who got the breakthrough, bowling Amelie Munday for a 6-ball duck.

Odgers made the early running for Somerset, playing a couple of nice strokes and easily finding the ample boundaries at Taunton; but was stumped by Ellie Threlkeld for 18 off 18, two balls after the end of the powerplay.

Odgers was replaced by veteran Fran Wilson – now coming towards the end of her career, back at the county where she began it nearly 20 years ago. Wilson opened her account with consecutive 4s off Sophie Morris; but at the other end Niamh Holland really struggled to get going, and was eventually run out for 10, ball-watching after being called through for a quick single by Wilson. At the halfway mark, Somerset were 49-3 and needing something special from the lower middle order if they were to stay in the game.

Sophie Luff hit Grace Johnson for a 10-run 12th over, but when Fran Wilson tried to take the same attitude into the following over she was comprehensively bowled coming down the pitch to Sophie Morris. Luff followed her back soon afterwards, offering a lame leading edge to Alana King off Tara Norris.

Inexplicably, Amanda-Jade Wellington was carded to come in behind both Charlie Dean and Alex Griffiths; but when she did finally reach the crease, after Dean had been caught behind trying to ramp a bouncer (yes… really!) off Kate Cross, her impact was immediate. Her presence seemed to spark Griffiths into life too, and the pair put on 45 off 26 balls for the 7th wicket as a strong Death Phase saw the hosts recover to 132-7 – Wellington checking out on 25* off 14 balls.

With Eve Jones back at the top of the order for Lancashire after a month-long injury layoff, she and Emma Lamb played positively to finish the powerplay 43 without loss. There were a couple of half-chances – a difficult caught and bowled; a run out that might have been close with a direct hit – but it wasn’t until the final delivery of the 9th over that Charlie Dean got the breakthrough – Jones LBW for 28. Lamb followed the very next ball for 32, scooping to short backward square; and suddenly Lancashire had two batters on 0 at the crease.

Fi Morris (once of this parish, in her Western Storm days) and Seren Smale made lumbered progress, and Smale (11 off 13) knew it – eventually losing patience and taking a huge swing at Amanda-Jade Wellington. It was hit into space, but went so high that Charlie Dean had plenty of time to position herself beneath it and poach the catch.

Dean then added a little revenge for her own wicket – bowling Ellie Threlkeld for 1 – and Lancashire, who had been up at 78% on the win predictor at the halfway stage, were looking at a non-trivial 28 off 24 balls. Wellington’s final over went for just 5; but Ailsa Lister, who is having the time of her life recently, thumped two 6s off Alex Griffith to help turn the equation on its head to 9 off 12.

But was there one more twist in the tail-end of this game? A brilliant double-wicket 19th over from Dean, who finished with figures of 4-9, left Griffiths to defend 8 off the last over. Singles off the first two balls kept Somerset in with a shout, but luck intervened on Lancashire’s behalf as a big, eyes-wide-shut heave from Lister took an edge past the keeper for 4. Lister then grabbed two more to get the visitors over the line with 2 balls to spare.