* Wickets Matter In 50-Over Cricket

As in the previous two games, England’s key bowlers – Brunt and Shrubsole – received plaudits aplenty for keeping things tight. Shrubsole in particular was lauded for costing just 25 runs from her 10 overs.

But the problem is that neither of them took any wickets.

In the 1st ODI (which England won) early wickets put that little bit of pressure on Australia’s middle-order and kept the total slightly under-par. This time, Australia got off to a much smoother start, sailed through the middle overs, and were able to throw the bat at it at the end, delivering a total which was perhaps as much as 30 runs over par; and which England were simply unable to live with.

* Australia’s Coaches Deliver

Several people on Twitter commented that England were hitting the ball directly to fielders – they weren’t! The fields were simply so expertly placed (and clinically adjusted for each batsman) that it just looked like they were. Basically, the Australian coaching and captaincy team delivered a tactical master-class out there today.

Similarly the decision to move Healy up the order was perfect – bringing on the big-hitter just when the innings needed some impetus. In fact… I did wonder at the time if it might have been to England’s advantage if Sciver had “accidentally” dropped Bolton!

(And yes… although England later pulled a similar trick by moving Brunt up the order, at the point they did it, it was already far too late.)

* England Can Bowl… But Australia Can Bat

I still think England’s bowling attack is slightly stronger than Australia’s; but the problem is that Australia’s batting is orders of magnitude stronger than England’s. With England, once you get Charlotte Edwards out, you know you are already half way there. Whereas with Australia, once you get rid of Villani you get Lanning… then Perry… then (today) Healy… then Blackwell – only then do you get down to someone (today, Jonassen) who wouldn’t immediately walk into any other team in the world, England included.

* Australia Are Now Odds-On… But England Can Hope

Though Tuesday’s performance offered a glimpse of what we all know England can do, in our hearts it has always been clear that these Ashes were going to be an uphill struggle against the undisputed World Champions. Today just confirmed that. Nevertheless, there is still hope for England – if they can win the Test, they then need to win just one of the 3 T20s to retain the 14-billion-year-old* trophy. And that sounds doable… right…???

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* Well… if our friends at Cricket Australia can claim the trophy is 300 years old on the grounds that it was made from a 300 year old tree, I figure we might as well take this to its logical conclusion, based upon the age of the atoms which comprised the tree!

In the wake of something like Australia’s clinically emphatic victory at Bristol last Thursday, the temptation is always to reach for the shotgun; and indeed many of our readers indicated that they would: 85% of you voted for England to ring the changes in our (not very scientific!) poll, with a majority favouring bringing in Lauren Winfield at the expense of Amy Jones.

But I think it is their mindset England need to change, not their team.

Dropping Jones (or Elwiss) after one duff knock isn’t the answer – the batting failures on Thursday were collective. Heather Knight alone fell to a moment of brilliance – Lanning’s direct hit from midwicket. Otherwise as Megan Schutt admitted afterwards, on a pitch with no daemons in it Australia found that all they needed to do was bowl it full and straight and wait for England to fail to defend their stumps, as all 9 wickets to fall in England’s post-drinks collapse went either bowled or LBW.

So England need to get back to basics with the bat – defending the stumps might sound like a glib piece of advice to offer to a professional cricketer; but if you don’t do it, you’ll find yourself back in the pavilion, and it can be difficult to score runs from there!

England’s bowlers also need to learn some lessons. All those short-pitched bouncers might scare the bejeezus out of the batsmen you find at club or county level, but at the pinnacle of the game (at the pace the women bowl) it doesn’t work, and the Australians were happy to either ignore it or give it the treatment it deserved.

Indeed the Aussies themselves had found this out on Tuesday – the short stuff was ineffective; the coaches had clearly identified this; and by Thursday it was history.

If England can do what Australia did – listen to the coaches and get the basics right – they can stay in this series. If they can’t, it’s going to be a short game on Sunday… and an even shorter Test in two weeks time.

* England Wasted A Good Toss

Though this was a good pitch, on an overcast morning bowling was the obvious choice; so it was a bit of a no-brainier for Charlotte Edwards to put the Aussies in and throw the ball to Brunt and Shrubsole. And although the Stars didn’t quite get off to a flyer, England nevertheless failed to make the inroads they must have been hoping for, allowing the Australian openers to build a solid platform which their middle order later exploited with aplomb. So the toss win was somewhat wasted, but…

* Australia Wasted Their Final Overs

With just two wickets down going into the last 10 overs of their innings, at 187/2 the Stars must have been eyeing up a score nearer to 280; so 259/6 represented something of a mini-victory for England at that that stage of the match; and from an England perspective 260 certainly felt “gettable” albeit it would have been close to a record chase.

* Edwards On Top of the World

Although Lanning got the big score (and the big Man of the Match champagne) it was Edwards that looked like the one player truly in command of the crease today; playing it like she had all the time in the world to pick her shots. In the end it wasn’t the Aussies but the drinks break that did for her, as an uncharacteristic lapse in concentration saw her bowled by a nothing delivery from Megan Schutt.

* England Batting Like… England

Edwards aside, England batted largely like… well… England! Knight looked scratchy and survived a couple of edges which really should have been caught by Healy. Taylor got a start but didn’t push on; and once the ‘keeper was dismissed, England collapsed, Gangnam Style. As Megan Schutt admitted afterwards, all Australia had to do was bowl straight and the wickets fell faster than the stock market on Black Wednesday.

* Cricket Was The Winner

Okay, if you are an England fan this is scratching around for consolation; but for the second match in a row we’ve had a crowd of well over 3,000 at a women’s international, which is just brilliant; and full credit to the ECB, Sky, the BBC and the counties who have all pulled together to market this series like no other series in “our” game has ever been marketed before.

It will be interesting though to see what the mainstream press make of things now they don’t have a victory to trumpet. Yesterday’s headlines were of the “Girls show the boys how it’s done!” ilk. Are we now showing them how it’s NOT done? 😉

* Australia Lost It Early

Speaking after the match, Ellyse Perry hit the nail on the head: “We didn’t get off to a great start with the bat.” And yes, that really was the difference.

Jess Jonassen (career ODI Strike Rate 87) made just 5 off 17 balls (SR 29); bringing to the crease Meg Lanning (career ODI SR 97) who then scored only 6 off 18 balls (SR 33).

In short, this was not the kind of start the Southern Stars are used to making; and they were playing mental catch-up with themselves ever after, leading to some risky running in the last 15 overs, and 4 of their last 5 wickets falling to Run Outs. 

* Villani Holding Back

Ellyse Villani’s Strike Rate was a more respectable 69; but she looked timid at the crease, as if she was consciously holding back her more natural attacking instincts; and her tame dismissal reflected that – caught at square leg, basically not even playing a shot.

* Blackwell Down The Pitch

Alex Blackwell had a couple of big LBW shouts against her, but they were never going to be given because she was coming a long, long way down the pitch to almost every ball. This was a definite tactic – she wasn’t doing it for Berkshire last month! England need to look at how they can counter this, maybe by bowling for the stumping?

* Sciver NOT Smashing It

Nat Sciver made a career-best 65 in her last match in New Zealand. Today she went one better – 66 off 75 balls, and a well-deserved Man of the Match medal to boot!

I think she looked more relaxed at the crease here than I’ve ever seen her before, and she was playing with a grace and elegance which she has sometimes lacked – not trying to smash it out of the ground, but pivoting and pirouetting into her shots.

Nat is a supremely fit individual – probably the most athletic of the current squad – but she seems to have realised that cricket is about more than being able to bench-press the ball into the stands; and it is a lesson that others, particularly some on the fringes of the team, could well learn!

* Elwiss To The Manor Born

Georgia Elwiss hasn’t had the best start to the season at county level, but pulling the England shirt on today (for the first time in over a year) she looked to the manor born from the first ball, and you get the sense that this could be her summer.

A (slight) surprise selection she may have been, but Elwiss has definitely NOT left the building! (If this form continues, expect to see her batting higher up the order too, by September!)

It seems that the war of words in the Ashes has begun this week. A piece on cricket.com.au has new Southern Stars’ coach, Matthew Mott, speaking out against the points system which took England to victory in 2014 – whereby the single Test match was worth 6 points, compared with 2 points for each ODI and T20.

This series, the Test has been downgraded to 4 points, and Mott is reported as saying: “I think it’s a fairer system looking at it, the weighting of it is just about right. Whether you win or lose that Test match, it doesn’t really disadvantage or advantage you in the whole scheme of things.”

It’s a view that seems to be held by many people – in particular since England retained the Ashes in 2014 despite losing both the ODI and the T20 components of the series 2-1 to Australia. Presumably this is the main reason for the downgrading of the Test match this time around.

But was 6 points for the one Test really “unfair”, as Mott believes? When the multi-format points Ashes was first announced back in 2013, the Test was awarded 6 points in order to place it on an equal footing with the other two formats, which were (and still are) both worth 6 points each in total (2 points per game).

It’s worth remembering that the Ashes had previously always been contested only across the Test format, just as they are in the men’s game. It therefore made sense to consider the Test equally valuable to the ODIs and T20s.

Why the change? The main argument in favour of making the Test worth 4 points, as compared to 6, seems to be that it means that neither side can gain a huge advantage if they win the Test. It’s perceived that winning one game shouldn’t put you further ahead on points than winning two ODIs/T20s does.

Of course, you have to wonder if Cricket Australia (for I strongly suspect it was CA who pushed for the downgrading of the Test to 4 points), not to mention Mott himself, would still think that 6 points for a victory in the Test was “unfair” if Australia had won at Perth (which they could so easily have done), and taken a 6-0 lead in the series last time around.

Leaving that aside…while I can see that downgrading the Test does have the potential to keep the series alive longer, especially now that it’s being played between the ODIs and T20s, I’m still not sure I agree that the Test should only be worth 4 points.

Test cricket was so-called for a reason – because it was felt to be the ultimate test of cricketing superiority, and for good reason. It’s much harder to sustain cricketing excellence across 4 (or 5 in TOG*) days than it is across 40 or even 100 overs. Anything can happen in a T20. That’s not the case in a Test.

And despite the fact that the commercial focus in women’s cricket from the ICC and the boards now seems to be on the T20 and ODI formats, Test cricket is still considered the pinnacle by pretty much every female cricketer in the world. It’s surely a problem if winning in the pinnacle format, as Mott himself says, “doesn’t really disadvantage or advantage you in the whole scheme of things”.

It seems to me that the real solution is to play two Tests, worth 3 points each. That way, the Test format would still have equal weighting across the series as a whole, but we could avoid the accusation that, by gaining 6 points from just one game, a team didn’t really deserve to win the Ashes.

Whether the boards – in particular CA, who have resisted a two-Test Ashes series for almost a decade now – are amenable to considering this next time around is, of course, another story.

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*TOG – The Other Game (aka men’s cricket)

There might not have really been much actual substance in today’s WBBL announcement – just one player per team was unveiled, plus the dates and a (somewhat disappointing) TV schedule. But as a the marketing around the event gets serious, the Women’s Big Bash is already looking set to be the Women’s Big SPLASH!

Cricket Australia have form here – the Men’s Big Bash is a tightly coordinated exercise, run under close central control, under the American model of sports franchising, which emphasises the collective health of the competition as a whole, over and above that of individual teams.

And that is one advantage the WBBL has in being a ‘spin off’ of the (M)BBL – the team uniforms look amazing, and are a million miles away from the “50 Shades of Black” we’ve currently got going on in our Women’s County Championship.

Plus CA clearly realises how important it is to show a human side to the corporate identity of the teams. So the Twitter feeds (because… OF COURSE they all have Twitter feeds… and OF COURSE they all look AWESOME) carefully balance the WBBL logo, the team badge and the faces of the key players announced thus far.

All in all, Cricket Australia have done a fantastic job. They realise that WBBL is first and foremost a BUSINESS which needs to be successful in engaging their potential CUSTOMERS – i.e. the fans – and they’ve set the standard which the ECB’s new Women’s Cricket Super League is going to have a hell of a job to follow.

How does the standard of England’s Women’s County Championship compare to Australia’s Women’s National Cricket League? Perhaps one player’s stats tell a story?

New South Wales’ Kara Sutherland had a pretty indifferent season in the WNCL in 2014-15. In 7 matches, the all-rounder took only 3 wickets at 52 and (admittedly batting down the order) scored just 1 run in 4 innings, averaging 0.5 thanks to a couple of not-outs. Looking back at previous years, the story is a similar one: Sutherland is a very good club player, who probably isn’t quite classy enough to play at the highest level of domestic cricket in Australia.

Consequently, it was something of a surprise when Kent – England’s reigning county champions, and home to (among others) England captain Charlotte Edwards and four other contracted England players – signed Sutherland as their “overseas” for the 2015 Women’s County Championship.

But watching Sutherland play for Kent against Berkshire and Ireland in the T20s, however, was something of a revelation – she looked pretty good, bowling at a similar pace to Daisy Gardner, who I rate as probably the best “county” bowler (excluding England and Academy players) around at the moment; and Sutherland’s stats reflect this. So far this season, she has taken 9 wickets at 21. Meanwhile with the bat, she averages 16 – not spectacular… but a lot better than 0.5!

As commentators, we’ve often wondered about the relative standard of the Women’s County Championship compared to the WNCL; and it is usually taken as a “given” that WNCL is the stronger.

But it can be difficult to find hard facts to back-up this hunch; and that is why The Strange Case of Kara Sutherland is so interesting. A player who struggles in WNCL but looks pretty good in the Women’s County Champs? I’d say this was rather strong evidence that domestic cricket in Australia is of a much higher standard than it is here… and that is a big part of why we need the ECB’s new Womens Cricket Super League to succeed in its mission to strengthen our domestic game.

When England’s Women’s Ashes ODI squad was announced earlier this week, the omission of Danielle Wyatt was no great surprise to followers of the women’s game. But it does beg the question: just what has TAFKAW* got to do to get selected for England outside of the T20 arena?

Even in T20s, Wyatt has had little opportunity to shine at international level recently. Since the contracts were put in place last year, she has played 6 T20s – three against South Africa last summer, and three versus New Zealand over the winter. But in those games, she has bowled only once, taking 0/5; and batted just twice, scoring 0 and 7. So whilst it is true that she could have made more of her opportunities… when those opportunities are so few and far between, is it really fair to expect her to instantly be able to just ‘turn it on’ at the highest level?

Meanwhile, Wyatt’s form at county level has been superlative – hitting runs all over the place, and averaging over 40, with a highest score of 102 in domestic cricket this season. Even her bowling seems to be getting back on track – we have seen her bowl twice this season and while she wasn’t turning it like Holly Colvin at Billingshurst, not many would be; and she has nevertheless done a job, taking 6 wickets at 29, and bowling very few bad balls.

In contrast, Georgia Elwiss, who was selected, has NOT had a great start to the county season – she averages just 19 with the bat, with a highest score of 34; and has taken only 3 wickets with the ball.

But Elwiss did have one opportunity which Wyatt did not – she was selected for the Academy tour of the UAE, where she made a hatful of runs against Australia’s youngsters – the Shooting Stars.

However, we must then raise the question: is scoring hundreds at county level really so much less valuable than making runs against a very inexperienced Shooting Stars team, in a series of “jumpers for goalposts”** matches on a road in the UAE?

Apparently, the England selectors think so… but I’m not so sure!

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* The Artist Formerly Known As WAG!
** These games were NOT played under standard international playing conditions, with teams effectively making substitutions and batting on when technically All Out.

In the immortal words of the Aussie soap theme, “Everybody needs good neighbours!” But in sport (as in Ramsay Street) it is often the BAD neighbours that make the biggest stories – think the Mets v the Yankees in Major League Baseball; Carlton v Collingwood in Aussie Rules; or Celtic v Rangers in Scottish football.

And women’s cricket is no exception – Kent and Sussex are neighbours… but GOOD neighbours? Hardly!

So if Sussex were to be contemplating a franchise bid, it is a pretty safe bet that it won’t be a joint bid with Kent! Ditto Middlesex and Surrey; not to mention that oldest and fiercest of great cricketing rivalries, Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Yet with only 6 franchises to share around in the proposed Women’s Cricket Super League, this could well be a major sticking-point.

The counties listed above are probably six of the most likely franchise candidates, especially when you factor-in financial viability; but it would mean 4 of the 6 franchises within 60 miles of London, and the other two based either side of the Pennines – leaving huge swathes of the country, from the Midlands to the south west, without a sniff of top-level women’s cricket.

And this DOES matter – perhaps not commercially, but certainly from the perspective of building England’s next generation around localised “Centres of Excellence” for coaching and development.

Is there a way to cut through this? It won’t be easy.

A “South East” franchise that somehow combined Sussex and Kent would still need to be based somewhere; and there aren’t too many options once you start to consider the minimum standards being mandated for facilities – it is going to be either Brighton or Canterbury*, which means it will be Sussex or Kent in all but name. (And likely in name too, because that would be the obvious way of marketing it to the existing (men’s) fan-base.)

The other option for the ECB is to “pick one” – one of Kent or Sussex; one of Middlesex or Surrey. But how do you do that fairly and transparently? (And how big is your budget for legal fees when the “loser” sues?)

One thing is for certain – Clare Connor and her team at the ECB are going to need to walk on political water to make this one work! Can they do it? Yes! (But it ain’t gonna be easy!)

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* Or possibly Beckenham… but that doesn’t buck the point!

As a sport, cricket is all about risk – the bowler who pitches it on a tempting length, inviting the drive; the batsman who looks to go over the top, even while knowing that in this game there are no second chances.

So it is perhaps surprising that cricket’s governing body in this country, the ECB, has been so conservative over the years. In particular they have never got to grips with their most fundamental problem – that in a country where cricket is very-much a second-level sport, there are simply too many teams; tied to an organisational structure that, being based around the ancient counties, is quite literally Medieval.

The women’s game has arguably suffered more from this than the men’s. Forced to adopt the county structure wholesale after the merger with men’s cricket in the late 90s, there were never really enough elite players to support such a broad base, and even now several of the Division 1 counties frequently “carry” players who neither bat nor bowl.

And yet, when change has been suggested in the past, the answer has always been: “We can’t upset the apple cart”; and “Better the devil you know” so “Cling to nurse, for fear of something worse”!

That’s why the new Women’s Cricket Super League is so important – for women’s cricket and maybe yet for the men’s game too. At a stroke, it cuts the Gordian Knot that has bound the game for so long and takes a big leap into the unknown.

For let us be clear, this is a risk. It could fall flat on it’s face before it even gets started. There are certainly parties interested in hosting teams (not all of them current First Class counties) but at least 5 of them are based within a 60 mile radius of London, which might make commercial sense, but would make a mockery of attempts to rebuild a reinvigorated organisational pyramid around the franchises as local centres of excellence.

And even once the system is established, its success is far-from guaranteed. The ECB are putting a lot of money in themselves, and will require their franchisees to support a robust business plan. But four years is a long time in business. People and sponsors come and go; and with the hosts themselves being expected to put in some money to match the ECB’s contribution, it would be remarkable if all six franchises made it through financially unscathed. If you want to know what the results could look like… just ask anyone who follows women’s soccer in America!

But almost because this is a risk, CRICKETher has never felt so excited about the future of our sport. The contracts were great; the Kia’s were great… but both were for the tiny elite. This is for the wider game and for the future. It isn’t just for those who are playing now, but also for those who will contest the Women’s Super League in 2025, the Women’s Ashes in 2027, and the World Cup in 2029.

And if at that time we are looking back on our careers as journalists, covering a robust, healthy game, then we’ll know that THIS was where that journey really started.