India’s middle order outclassed England’s to win the 2nd T20 in front of a boisterous crowd at Bristol. With both sides contriving to lose 3 wickets cheaply during the powerplay, the two 4th-wicket partnerships were pitted against each other through the middle overs, with Jemimah Rodrigues and Amanjot Kaur’s 93 off 55 balls ultimately trumping Tammy Beaumont and Amy Jones’s 70 off 49.
Having opted to chase after winning the toss again, despite that not having been an entirely successful strategy at Trent Bridge, England opened the bowling with Alice Capsey – an experiment that looks unlikely to be repeated after Smriti Mandhana stroked her for two beautifully timed 4s in an over which went for 11. After Smriti’s century in the first game, it looked ominous for England, but she barely added to her score before she was caught on the ring by Lauren Bell, who made an easy chance look a lot harder than it actually was by initially heading off in the wrong direction before leaping back to where she’d initially been to take the catch.
This was after Lauren Filer had already seen off Shafali Verma with an aggressive bodyline delivery which Shafali could only fend off to Amy Jones behind the stumps; and with the returning Harmanpreet Kaur coming and going within two balls, England were well-placed at the end of the powerplay with India 35-3.
It doesn’t feel quite right to say that Jemimah and Amanjot initially “dug in” – they plundered 14 runs off Linsey Smith’s opening over – but they didn’t really start to accelerate until the 10 over mark. Jemi stamped her authority all over Em Arlott, smacking her for 6, 4, 4 – but the more significant over was the following one, bowled by Filer.
Filer tried to repeat the same trick that had bought her the wicket of Shafali – short and directed at the body – but Jemi found a way of dealing with it, by simply waiting and ramping her over the keeper. The ramp is often a risky shot in the women’s game because there isn’t the pace on the ball that you get in men’s cricket, but with Filer you to get a lot more of that pace, meaning you don’t have to time it perfectly to have it fly off to the boundary, which is exactly what happened. (Expect others to learn the lesson, and blunt Filer’s key wicket-taking delivery going forwards!)
From there, Jemimah and Amanjot grew in confidence, hitting at more than 12 an over to create an imposing platform. Jemimah will cringe when she comes to watch her dismissal again – caught chasing a Lauren Bell wide, for the second time in this series – but that aside, she hauled India back into the game, and left a legacy which Amanjot and Richa Ghosh turned into a dynasty – adding a further 57 runs off 34 balls to put 181-4 on the board.
It can’t have helped that England were literally rudderless for a good chunk of India’s most dominant period. With Nat Sciver-Brunt off the field with a “tight hip”, we learned afterwards that Sophia Dunkley was supposed to be in charge as the official Vice Captain for this series; but in practice it was Sophie Ecclestone who actually took over and appeared to be directing both the field and the bowling changes.
Unlike the 210 England faced in Nottingham, 181 didn’t feel totally unchasable, but England contrived to make it as difficult as possible for themselves. It wasn’t just losing 3 wickets for not-much – it was the manner of their losing them: Dunkley running herself out, and Nat Sciver-Brunt totally mistiming a pull to a decent catch from her opposite number Harmanpreet. Danni Wyatt-Hodge meanwhile, who has been carving it up in domestic cricket with 372 runs at a Strike Rate of 158, did manage not to bag a 4th consecutive international duck, but only by 1 run, before offering up the tamest of catches, also to Harmanpreet.
Thus it all came down to Beaumont and Jones – which really meant it all came down to Beaumont: a century from her, and England would have won the game; but anything less you felt would have left them short. And she got half-way there – striking the ball better than anyone else out there tonight for a 33-ball 50, but a slight hesitation on a quick single – the kind she often takes and makes – and she was run out by inches.
And that was always going to be that – Amy Jones, who had been very-much playing second-fiddle, did accelerate a bit, but was then predictably caught playing an indecisive shot straight back to the bowler; and it continued downhill from there.
Was this as bad as the 1st T20? In terms of the scorecard, no – they lost by just 24 runs in the end, after Sophie Ecclestone struck a flurry of boundaries at the death – which is (if my maths is correct) a lot less than the 97 they lost by in Nottingham. But in other ways this was a worse defeat. Nottingham had a majestic hundred from Smriti – the kind that wins you the game 999 times out of 1,000. This had a battling middle-order fight-back after England had India on the ropes early on. If England had had been able to take another couple of wickets in the middle overs, or not lose 3 themselves in the powerplay, the game was on. But instead they let the bowling go to pieces, and then cracked under pressure with the bat.
It’s the same story over and over again. Before taking this job, England coach Charlotte Edwards seemed to understand that this was a long-term project to build a new team capable of taking on the best in the world; but as Martin Davies argues in this piece, already short-term considerations seem to have been prioritised instead, and the future looks, if anything, further away than ever.
