Australia are six from six in the Women’s Ashes after England put on an embarrassing display with the bat, collapsing to 90 all out in 17.3 overs – one of their worst performances in a T20 – to hand Australia a 72-run victory in the series’ final T20.
Chasing 163, only two England players – Heather Knight and Danni Wyatt-Hodge – made it into double figures, in what was their poorest batting performance of the tour. England’s shot selection was inept, offering up soft catches against Darcie Brown, who took two wickets on recall to the T20 side, and mis-executing the sweep against Georgia Wareham, who claimed three.
Jon Lewis, the head coach, did not hold back in his assessment of his side’s latest collapse. “We’ve been really outplayed,” he said. “It’s a poor batting performance and we hold our hands up to that. This tour, we’ve practised really well, but we haven’t played very well. The bit that we’re missing when we cross the line, as to how we go out and perform. For the players and the coaching staff, that’s really frustrating.”
An emotional Knight said she was fighting back the tears after her side’s latest defeat that leaves Australia on course for an unprecedented 16-0 Ashes clean sweep.
Knight told BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra: “I am trying not to cry, you always try to do that. I am gutted. It has been a disappointing tour. I am frustrated and it was not a great performance. We felt it was a total we could chase, but the wickets cost us and we were not able to get any sort of momentum.
“We have competed at times [during the series] and fought hard, but it has been a brutal tour and we need to learn and be better and remember these moments to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Australia once again demonstrated supremacy in the field, with Georgia Voll taking a stunning diving catch at backward point to see off Sophie Ecclestone, before Ellyse Perry flung herself at cover and ran out Linsey Smith.
Another illustration of the difference between England and Australia was Beth Mooney. Twice in a row in the 20th over Mooney stole a second run from under England’s noses, pulling out a full-stretch dive to beat Smith’s throw in from deep midwicket, before using sheer speed to outpace long-on, making her ground just before Amy Jones could whip off the bails.
Mooney finished on 94 not out, including 10 fours. Or to put it another way, this was the bleep test live in action and Mooney aced it – just as she does in practice, where she has gained her reputation as one of the fastest runners in the women’s game. England have no one who can match her and whatever Lewis might think that is not because of the Australian weather.
Pressed on England’s errors with the bat, Lewis had few answers. “It’s very hard to explain,” he said. “I need to go and speak to the players and work out what their thought processes were. We’ve made some poor choices.”
A new-look bowling attack had done well to restrict Australia to 162 for five: the next highest score after Mooney’s was Georgia Voll’s 23. The decision to drop Sarah Glenn paved the way for Smith’s Ashes debut and she helped England keep it tighter in the powerplay by sending down two overs without conceding a boundary, before returning at the death to have Annabel Sutherland caught in the deep. Her performance provokes the question of why England left her on the sidelines until the series was already dead and buried.
Joining her in the middle was Alice Capsey, who frustrated Voll into miscuing a slog-sweep to deep midwicket after Australia had gone 29 balls without a boundary. Perry holed out to Freya Kemp on the ring and Grace Harris was caught attempting the ramp before she could match her Canberra heroics.
Altogether the Barmy Army trumpeter, present for the first time this tour, enjoyed many opportunities to blast out Jerusalem from the hill of the Adelaide Oval – well, at least for the first 20 overs.
England still have an entire Test match to endure: at this rate, Knight – who has been a vocal advocate of five-day women’s Tests – will probably be relieved that Cricket Australia decided to make this one four days.
