The third and fourth days of the Canberra test showed up the T20 and The Hundred as the petty baubles they are.
The last day stands alongside the most palpitating Ashes tests the world has known, and there have been several of them.
Third Day
The third day script was written by an English hand. The English looked out for the count, only two wickets left and an ocean of runs behind Australia in the first innings. They could go down to ignominious defeat inside three days.
From there Heather Knight (168*) and Sophie Ecclestone (34) stayed together to add a record 100 runs for the ninth wicket and frustrate the opposition. Knight’s innings stands alongside the most glorious ever played in the Ashes. At the crease for 7 hours 7 minutes, if you please. Kate Cross (11) too hung around longer than No 11s are supposed to. Suddenly England found themselves a mere 40 runs behind on the first innings.
At the end of the day Katherine Brunt took over. She dismissed Rachael Haynes and Alyssa Healy (a golden pair, caught behind both times!) to give her side the merest whiff of an unlikely win. Australia 13-2.
Fourth day
The hosts strove to reinforce their position as the strongest batting line-up in the world. As their lead rose way past 200, the usual voices were heard on these occasions. They demanded decisive action: ‘Why hasn’t she declared?’ ‘Why is she so defensive?’ ‘These captains, they’re all chicken when it comes to making the big call.’
But Meg Lanning bided her time. When Tahlia McGrath’s wicket fell to Charlie Dean (she can be well satisfied with her 2-24 on debut), she called her troops in. It was just half-an-hour before tea. Far too late, surely. England would need 257 runs, a total never yet achieved in a test, off a maximum of 48 overs. And it was a fourth-day track.
England’s Reaction to the Challenge
The top order of the batting looks wonderfully consistent: Winfield-Hill 33, Beaumont 36, Knight 48, Sciver 58 and especially Dunkley 45 off 32 balls, laid down the gauntlet. England were going for it. At one stage they needed a mere 45 off ten overs. Easy peasy. Later they were only 24 runs short, and it took more exemplary courage from Beth Mooney to catch Dunkley on the boundary in a dive – her jaw still held in place by metal plates. It hardly bears thinking about.
That marked the turn of the tide; the next five wickets fell in a heap for 20 runs in 3.3 overs. 224-4 crashed to 244-9. Lanning’s gamble looked like the work of a professor of mathematics.
This is where the long-format game holds all the trumps. There are four possible results, not two – a win, a loss, a draw or, most enthralling of all, a tie (a quick memo to read Jack Fingleton’s masterly review of the first tied test between Australia and the West Indies in 1961. Oxygen and a tissue recommended).
How would England react to this reverse? Fielders gathered around the bat (we look forward to seeing that in this summer’s Hundred).
How would you expect the last over to proceed? Thirteen runs needed; only one wicket to fall. Would you imagine England’s No 11 Cross taking a single of the last ball of the previous over, knowing full well that she would be facing the last six deliveries? Would you expect Meg Lanning to choose her least experienced bowler, Alana King, to deliver them? Both happened. Lanning believed that King’s leg-spin offered the brightest hope of a wicket. Cross is shrewd and brave.
Every ball becomes crucial. One wicket and Australia retain the Ashes. If the bat remains steady, England live to fight another day.
Cross plays the over out amid scenes of the highest tension. The game is drawn. The one disappointment for eternal optimists is that the England batters didn’t continue to put bat to ball. That is one more defining feature of the long-format. When, if ever, does the batting captain tell her team ‘Enough is enough. We call off the chase’?
For all the consistency of the top order, it needed at least one player to go on to a really big total to make the game safe. Knight invited Australia to bat first, but her bowlers failed twice to take all ten wickets. Brunt was once more the hero of the attack with 8 wickets. Nobody else could achieve major breakthroughs.
Another boring Draw?
Critics of the multi-day game can point to yet another drawn test. There have been far too many of them in women’s cricket.
