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.
