A record crowd of 19,527 watched as England came within a whisker of beating Australia at Edgbaston on Saturday evening, before the T20 world champions finally overhauled their target of 154 with just one ball to spare.
Captain Heather Knight had left the best bowler in the world, Sophie Ecclestone, to bowl the final over, with Australia needing five runs from it. Annabel Sutherland drove the first ball of the over down the ground for four, but Ecclestone then dived to save the single, and Amy Jones then took a tricky high catch off the bat of Sutherland.
Georgia Wareham, though, punched the next ball through cover, and she and Beth Mooney, who finished unbeaten on 61, ran hard to pick up the winning single.
“We’ve felt like underdogs the whole way through [the series], but it feels to us as if the gap is closing and that’s a really exciting feeling,” Jones said.
The crowd, which surpassed any seen in the Commonwealth Games last summer, had watched breathlessly as the death overs unfolded. Australia were looking firmly in control, needing 24 runs from the final 19 balls with the established pair of Mooney and Ash Gardner at the crease; Gardner had just smashed Sarah Glenn for six over deep midwicket.
But, from nowhere, the leg-spinner tricked Gardner into edging to Jones behind the stumps, as she attempted to smash another boundary; Glenn then bowled Grace Harris first ball, going for a huge slog. Mooney continued to chip away, but Lauren Bell executed the perfect back-of-the-hand slower ball to bowl Ellyse Perry, setting up a tense final over in which England almost, but not quite, knocked Australia off their winning perch.
Earlier, despite a 42-ball half-century from Sophia Dunkley, England had looked to be in trouble at 118 for seven in the 18th over, but an exciting late-order cameo from No 6 Jones, who scored 40 not out off 21 balls, lit up the innings and took them to something approaching par.
Overall, it was an uncharacteristically klutzy effort from Australia in the field. Four balls into Jones’s innings, Jess Jonassen had fluffed an easy chance to run out the England wicketkeeper, while she was also dropped by Wareham at deep midwicket when on 15. Jonassen blamed the conditions – “it was actually quite swirly, there was a fair bit of wind out there” – but either way, Jones was able to capitalise by smashing a six into the delighted Hollies Stand, taking 18 runs off the penultimate over, and sending the final ball of the 20th flying over midwicket for six.
Jones labelled it “up there” with her ever best innings for England, adding: “I take a lot of confidence from it – that’s how I want to play every game.”
Just four boundaries had come off the England powerplay – three of them hit by Dunkley – while the loss of three wickets in the opening eight overs pegged the hosts back considerably. Megan Schutt took out the off-stump of Danni Wyatt, while Nat Sciver-Brunt drove Jonassen into the hands of deep midwicket in the eighth.
In between times, Alice Capsey was greeted by an enormous cheer from the ground when she walked out to bat… while an equally enormous boo greeted Darcie Brown a few minutes later, when she threw down the stumps and ran her out. Capsey looked sceptical but replays showed that she had failed to ground her bat in time, and off she had to go.
Knight shared a fifty partnership with Dunkley, but when the pair fell in successive overs at the back end – a catch off the bat of Dunkley at last taken at short third, after two previous chances had gone down – it left poor debutant Dani Gibson facing up to Schutt’s hat-trick ball.
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She survived it – only to send up a leading edge to extra cover in the next over, with just a single to her name. When Ecclestone nicked the next ball behind the stumps, leaving Jonassen, too, briefly on a hat-trick, England looked to have a made a mess of things – until Jones came to their rescue.
England go again in the next T20 at the Oval on Wednesday, now needing to win all five of the remaining matches in the series if they are to regain the Ashes.
