England v Pakistan
Which view of the Edgbaston game do you take?
Here are two contrasting responses to start:
- The performance of England’s top order leaves us wondering just how successful the team can be at World Cup level.
- The recovery started by Heather Knight and Amy Jones and ensured by the spinners restores our confidence.
An international T20 match means it’s best for batters to start in top gear and stay there. Jon Lewis supports that approach, so presumably anyone unwilling or unable to follow it is unlikely to find favour – unless they happen to be the captain or a player celebrating her 100th T20 cap on her home ground and offering a Player of the Match performance.
The one missing figure from England’s top order was Nat Sciver-Brunt, but we can’t be certain even she would have scored a match-winning century.
What if…
If England had been playing against Australia or India, would they have won the game by 53 runs? Pointless to ask, except that it helps to answer the question posed at the start.
Assessing the four wickets that fell so dramatically as latecomers still hunted for a seat, we must admit that the pitch was reacting to the drenching Birmingham had suffered. The ball was holding up. That feature undid three of the four batters to fall early. Their mistimed drives lofted into waiting hands. The run-out was a different matter. The harsh verdict would be ‘nerves’, as 12,000 people watched on in disbelief.
A harsher one would be: Knight had to turn back as the ball passed close to the bowler’s stumps, but Kemp was already halfway down the track.
Together, Maia Bouchier, Danni Wyatt, Alice Capsey and Kemp lasted seventeen deliveries and hit two fours.
The fifth-wicket pair took a noticeably different approach. Both Knight and Jones were prepared to pat the ball back to the bowler, as if settling in for a five-day marathon. Despite their apparent sloth both finished with a scoring-rate of over 100 (111 and 137 respectively). By the time the two were dismissed (119-6) the game was far from safe, but a clinching contribution from Danielle Gibson (41*/21), well supported by Sophie Ecclestone (19*/11), took England to 163-9, a total Pakistan had never achieved in a chase.
Of the younger batters (I have to consider Ecclestone as one of the old hands after her Wunderkind career start) only Gibson did herself justice with the bat. She made it look simple: ‘see ball, hit ball’. She used mostly orthodox foot movements and strokes to take England beyond anything Pakistan could hope to achieve.
Cricket is a cruel mistress. Gibson couldn’t capitalise with a second winning performance with the ball. Sadaf Shamas hit her for 21 runs off a single over to take the shine off a good day’s work.
Selection
Lewis picked fifteen players for the T20 series:
Lauren Bell, Maia Bouchier, Alice Capsey, Charlie Dean, Sophie Ecclestone, Lauren Filer, Danielle Gibson, Sarah Glenn, Bess Heath, Amy Jones, Freya Kemp, Heather Knight, Nat Sciver-Brunt, Linsey Smith and Danielle Wyatt.
NS-B is due back for the next game. The others to miss out in Birmingham were Bess Heath, Lauren Filer and Linsey Smith. That leaves Lewis with few variations in the batting line-up. Since this series must be viewed as preparation for the World Cup in Bangladesh, changes seem more than likely. But will Lewis be willing to use Heath solely as a batter? Many have queried her employment as the second-best keeper to Jones in the country. So presumably Lewis considers her batting good enough on its own.
This month she scored 63 in an RHFT game at Beckenham, but that was a much friendlier batting surface than the sodden pitch at Edgbaston.
Can we put our trust in AI to help us decide final selections? We have to be sure it doesn’t stand for ‘Australian Info’.
Advice to TV Producers
It’s a strange fact that players who are highlighted before a game are highly unlikely to star in it. This foregrounding can take different forms: your photo on the cover of the programme; a feature article on your rise to an international cap on pages 2-7; or, as happened here, a specially staged clip of Bouchier facing Gibson in a quick-fire bat versus ball competition. Yes, it was Bouchier who was spotlighted, not Gibson. Finally, you may not even be picked on the day that matters.
I thought this sombre fact was well known to the people responsible, but no. The BBC built Bouchier up as the next big thing. They probably won’t hang their heads in shame. Even more likely, she’ll be Player of the Match next time.
Still, it was a pleasure seeing live cricket on a BBC screen again. Once upon a time it was the only method possible in the UK.
Attendance
I’ve touched on this topic elsewhere in a different sport (http://4theloveofsport.co.uk/2024/04/30/2024-six-nations-in-retrospect-part-one/), but it did seem strange seeing swathes of empty seats at Edgbaston when all the talk had been of 15,000 tickets having been sold. That’s a wonderful total for women’s cricket in England, but Edgbaston’s capacity reaches to around 25,000, so the 12,000 who did turn up to support had plenty of room to spread themselves out.
Women’s Vitality IT20 Series v Pakistan Women fixtures
11 May: 1st Women’s Vitality IT20 – Edgbaston, Birmingham, England won by 53 runs
17 May: 2nd Women’s Vitality IT20 – The County Ground, Northampton, 6.30pm
19 May: 3rd Women’s Vitality IT20 – Headingley, Leeds, 1pm
Women’s Metro Bank One-Day International Series v Pakistan Women fixtures
23 May: 1st Women’s Metro Bank One-Day International – County Ground, Derby, 1pm
26 May: 2nd Women’s Metro Bank One-Day International – The Cooper Associates County Ground, Taunton, 11am
29 May: 3rd Women’s Metro Bank One-Day International – The Cloud County Ground, Chelmsford, 1pm
