India neeeded 31 to win off the last over. England claimed victory by eleven runs.
That is the anguished dilemma Jon Lewis and his selectors find themselves in.
Not for the frst time Heather Knight asked Katherine Sciver-Brunt to bowl the 20th over. The difference this time was that she had already gone for an horrific 20 runs from her previous two overs. Any parallels with another English senior pro called Anderson are inappropriate.
Richa Ghosh made hay, hitting a sequence of loose balls for fours and a six. But it was too late.
England could hardly have got off to a worse start. Danni Wyatt (the first to go first ball; the second was KS-B), Sophia Dunkley then Alice Capsey all returned whence they had come for ten runs.
But this is where England’s depth of talent paid dividends. First Nat Sciver-Brunt (50/42), then the skipper (28/23) and Amy Jones (40/27; 3×4, 2×6) in turn helped right the ship and post a total which had seemed beyond reach.
Despite all India’s apparent riches in batting and bowling – helped now by vastly improved fielding, they still can’t find a way of beating the English in T20s when it really matters.
Unlike her English equivalents, Smriti Mandhana (52/41) can’t relax in the knowledge that others will make up for any early error she might make.
Just when India looked to pull away, the trio of English spinners slowed momentum, enough to allow for the prodigality of runs right at the close. Their combined figures: 11 overs 3-64.
Who’d be a Head of Selectors?
We will now see what Jon Lewis is really made of.
His most celebrated bowler has achieved a hat-trick of below-par performance with the ball. Past and present team-mates have rushed to her defence, but a more objective approach might call otherwise. In this game she fell first ball and returned an analysis the like of which she had never known before.
She had conducted the chorus of approval for her wife’s outstanding innings, when she might better have been preparing herself mentally for her own knock.
There’s the old cricketing fall-back: what would the Aussies do in this situation? We have only to glance at Darcie Brown’s recent performances to get the answer. The cricket-field is no place for sentiment.
Result
England 151-7
India 140-5
England win by 11 runs
Player of the Match: Nat Sciver-Brunt
Teams
India:
Shafali Verma, Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues, Harmanpreet Kaur (captain), Richa Ghosh (w-k), Deepti Sharma, Pooja Vastrakar, Radha Yadav, Shikha Pandey, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Renuka Singh
England:
Sophia Dunkley, Danni Wyatt, Alice Capsey, Nat Sciver-Brunt, Heather Knight (captain), Amy Jones (w-k), Katherine Sciver-Brunt, Sophie Ecclestone, Charlie Dean, Sarah Glenn, Lauren Bell
