England might have recorded one of the largest margins of victory in their history against South Africa in their opening match last week, but against Bangladesh it was so nearly a different story – a charmed innings of 79 from former captain Heather Knight being the only difference between the teams.
Knight was forced to invoke the “Power of 3 (Reviews)” – dismissed thrice by the on-field officials, she survived each time by appealing to the third umpire.
In the third over of their chase, with England already one down having lost Amy Jones, Knight was given out after the ball squeezed between bat and pad and was taken by the keeper. It was unclear whether the on-field dismissal was for caught behind or LBW – Knight indicating that the ball had hit her pad, suggesting she thought she’d been given out caught, but the TV umpire appeared to think the on-field decision was LBW. Regardless, the TV umpire concluded that there was no LBW case to answer, but also that there was insufficient evidence that she’d hit it to give her out caught, with the Ultra-Edge spike clear but not clearly attributable to the ball hitting the bat. (And if you are confused… welcome to the club!)
Then in the 7th over, with England Tammy Beaumont have joined Jones back in the pavillion, Knight was given out LBW on 8; but was reprieved once more by the third umpire – this time uncontroversially, with the ball clearly missing the stumps according to the ball tracking system.
The third review was perhaps the most disputable. In the fifteenth over, Knight drove towards extra cover and appeared to be spectacularly caught by a low-diving Shorna Akter. Knight (who probably had the best view in the ground) was walking off when the on-field officials asked for the catch to be double-checked, with the third umpire re-adjudicating the decision apparently on the grounds that it wasn’t clear the ball hadn’t touched the turf, even though all the available angles seemed to suggest Shorna’s fingers were underneath it.
Whilst the middle decision was obviously correct, the other two were much less obviously so, and if they’d gone the other way, England could have had few complaints. But Knight survived, and dug in for one of the slowest half-centuries of her career; and although England’s other batters fell one-by-one, a partnership of 79 with Charlie Dean got England the win they needed to go top of the table… albeit partly because Australia dropped a point to the rain on Saturday; because (as I warned on last week’s vodcast) England’s Net Run Rate was only ever going to go down from where it was following the South Africa result, and it is now already lower than Australia’s.
Bangladesh will be pleased to have pushed England so close in a match they definitely didn’t expect to win, but they will also doubtless be disappointed that they got so close to what would have been a famous demon-killing but couldn’t strike the final death-blow.
So often the smaller teams go into these matches with a survival mentality, but Sharmin Akhter got Bangladesh off to a bright start, striking at a run-a-ball early in the powerplay. However, with the loss of a couple of wickets Bangladesh shut up shop and had crawled to 121-5 after 40 overs.
But a strong death phase added 57 runs, 43 of them from the impressive bat of Rabeya Khan, to get them to a total which proved enough to make it tricky for England.
It was a result which told us far more about where England are than the South Africa match, which was very much a self-inflicted implosion on the part of the South Africans. Against Bangladesh, England wobbled badly, got lucky with some DRS calls, but ultimately came through. They now sit atop the table thanks some marginal umpiring calls against a team who expected to win two games in this tournament at best. Of course, the fates always have a part to play in these things; but if England are going to stay on top, they need to find a more convincing way of winning than drawing magic circles in the sand.
