At Edgbaston on Saturday night, a record 19,527 spectators watched as England almost missed defeating Australia before the T20 world champions ultimately reached their goal of 154 with one ball remaining.
Australia needed five runs from the final over, so captain Heather Knight had left the finest bowler in the world, Sophie Ecclestone, to bowl it. The opening ball of the over was driven down the ground for four runs by Annabel Sutherland. Ecclestone then dove to preserve the single, and Amy Jones then took a challenging high catch off Sutherland’s bat.
Georgia Wareham, who finished undefeated on 61, though, hammered the following ball across cover, and she and Beth Mooney sprinted frantically to grab the winning single.
The entire series, Jones added, “we’ve felt like the underdogs, but it feels to us as if the gap is closing and that’s a really exciting feeling.”
The crowd, which outnumbered that at the Commonwealth Games last summer, had watched the death overs with rapt attention. With Mooney and Ash Gardner at the crease, Australia appeared to be in complete control. Australia needed 24 runs from the final 19 balls; Gardner had just hit Sarah Glenn for a six over deep midwicket.
But as Gardner sought to hit another boundary, the leg-spinner deceived her into edging to Jones behind the stumps. Glenn then bowled Grace Harris with the first ball, opting for a massive slog. Mooney kept making progress, but Lauren Bell bowled Ellyse Perry with the ideal back-of-the-hand slower ball, setting up a frantic final over in which England came close to upending Australia’s winning position.
At 118 for seven in the 18th over, England appeared to be in trouble despite Sophia Dunkley’s half-century of 42 balls, but exhilarating late-order cameo from No. 6 Jones, who struck 40 not out off 21 balls, ignited the batting and brought them to almost par.
Overall, Australia’s field performance was surprisingly clumsy. Jess Jonassen missed a simple opportunity to run out the England wicketkeeper four balls into Jones’s batting. She was also dropped by Wareham at deep midwicket while on 15. Despite Jonassen’s excuse that “it was actually quite swirly, there was a fair bit of wind out there,” Jones was able to take advantage of the situation by launching a six into the jubilant Hollies Stand, scoring 18 runs off the penultimate over, and sending the final ball of the 20th over midwicket for six.
It was “up there” with her finest England innings ever, according to Jones, who also said: “I take a lot of confidence from it – that’s how I want to play every game.”
Only three of the four boundaries that England scored during their powerplay were made by Dunkley, and the hosts’ position was severely hampered by the loss of three wickets in the first eight overs. In the ninth over, Nat Sciver-Brunt smashed Jonassen over deep midwicket while Megan Schutt removed Danni Wyatt’s off-stump.
In the meanwhile, Darcie Brown was met with an equally loud boo as she rushed out to run out Alice Capsey, while the latter was welcomed by a huge shout from the crowd when she stepped out to bat. Capsey exhibited scepticism, but replays revealed that she had not grounded her bat in time, necessitating her removal from the game.
Knight and Dunkley enjoyed a fifty-run combination, but when they fell in quick succession at the end — Knight was caught off the bat by Dunkley at short third after two earlier opportunities had been missed — it left Dani Gibson, a debutant, facing Schutt’s hat-trick ball.
She managed to survive it, but in the subsequent over, after only scoring one run, she sent up a leading edge to extra cover. England appeared to have made a mess of things when Ecclestone stole the following ball behind the stumps, temporarily leaving Jonassen, too, on a hat-trick. However, Jones came to their team’s rescue.
In order for England to win the series and reclaim the Ashes, they must now win all five of the remaining games. The next T20 match is on Wednesday at the Oval.
