England’s one-sided series against West Indies last month was merely a dress rehearsal: India was always going to be the main show. And so the curtain finally went up on the Charlotte Edwards-Nat Sciver-Brunt era for a Trent Bridge Saturday matinee.
The audience, though, went home disappointed after witnessing an England performance akin to The Play That Goes Wrong, bowled out for 113 inside 15 overs, to hand India a 97-run win, England’s heaviest T20 defeat in terms of runs.
Edwards’s calling-card has been about transforming England into a side that plays smart cricket and find ways to win. With the honourable exception of Sciver-Brunt – whose 66 from 42 balls was the only contribution of note – this performance failed on both counts.
“One person can’t win a game,” said a frustrated Sciver-Brunt. “It’s all about partnerships with the bat. We wanted to do that, but we couldn’t execute.”
India’s left-arm spinner Shree Charani finished with four for 12 on her T20 debut, including removing Sciver-Brunt after a review showed the captain had nicked off behind the stumps. Charani’s maiden wicket in the ninth over encapsulated everything that was wrong with the run chase: Alice Capsey meekly wafting one into the hands of Arundhati Reddy at short third man as England sunk to 70 for five.
India were without their captain, Harmanpreet Kaur, who had failed to recover in time after sustaining a head injury during Wednesday’s warm-up match. But Smriti Mandhana shrugged off her absence with the same easy nonchalance with which she hit the ball, the stand-in striking a maiden T20 international hundred as India racked up 210 for five – their second-highest total.
Mandhana reached three figures in the 16th over, driving sweetly over the top – at which point she removed her helmet and pointed up at the India dressing room, grinning. She explained it was aimed at her teammate Radha Yadav. “Three days back, me and Radha were having a conversation – all these girls are really hard on me sometimes,” she said. “She was telling me: ‘It’s high time you get a century in T20s, you keep getting out in 70s, 80s, you are not doing justice to your talent.’
“And I was like: ‘OK Radha, this time I will try to get it in one of the matches of the series.’ I did not think it would come in the first match. The finger was towards her: ‘I got it today.’”
Mandhana holed out to extra cover with four balls remaining, handing Sophie Ecclestone her first international wicket since England’s humiliation at the MCG Test five months ago. Her return to the international stage was a fraught one: some nervous fumbles in the field, followed by a 19-run opening over when the left-handed Mandhana twice clattered her over the boundary rope. Her return was one for 43 off three overs: she looked every inch a cricketer who had opted out of domestic cricket for Lancashire for a wellbeing break.
It was a tough day, too, for Danni Wyatt-Hodge, who shelled Harleen Deol in the deep – the worst of a series of missed chances by the hosts – before adding a third consecutive duck to this summer’s pond of them.
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Deol added 17 runs after the let-off, contributing a punchy 43 from 23 balls, and though India’s innings tailed off slightly – thanks to three wickets in successive overs at the death from Lauren Bell – they still topped 200.
There had been questions about India’s bowling before this series, with two experienced seamers in Renuka Singh and Pooja Vastrakar missing out because of injury, but with such a mammoth score on the board England were always the ones under pressure. It told, as they lost three wickets in the power play. After that, Mandhana said, the plan was simple: “Execute your best ball to Nat and give a single to her.”
Sciver-Brunt said: “My personality is pretty steady, not too many ups and downs. I want to make sure the girls know that it’s not panic stations. We’ll pick ourselves back up again.”
They have 72 hours to do just that before the second T20 at Bristol on Tuesday.
