Heather Knight says she wishes she could “bottle” the experience of a classic Ashes Test match, despite England ultimately falling short.
After a historic contest that saw a new record set for the highest attendance at a women's Test match in England, with over 20,000 fans turning up at Trent Bridge across the five days, England captain Knight expressed a mixture of disappointment with the result combined with an overall sense of pride in her players that went toe to toe with one of the all-time great teams in Australia.
England will be left to rue two evenings where, with the match in the balance, they found themselves second best on both occasions. The evening of day three, a passage of play that Knight lamented as one where England had been “maybe a little too aggressive”, saw Australia score 82 of the simplest runs as England lost their lines and lengths, while their top-order collapse late on Sunday night at the hands of Ash Gardner left them with a mountain to climb.
Day four, in particular, was a thrilling 90 overs of cricket that saw both sides experience delight and despair in equal measure. At one point, Australia were cruising with a lead of 159 and just one wicket down. At which point, Lauren Filer came into the attack and clean bowled both Ellyse Perry and Tahlia McGrath, a moment that Knight pinpointed as one of her favourite memories of playing the sport.
“Certainly disappointment but I think really proud of how the girls have gone about these five days,” said Knight. “I think it's been a very entertaining Test match which has been great.
“Albeit we're on the losing side, I think the fact that we've had five days has led to the great cricket that we've had. I’m proud of how we’ve tried to set out to entertain and inspire.
“I was just thinking back to the spell that Lauren [Filer] bowled before lunch yesterday and just had a little moment to kind of look around at the crowd getting really engaged. At that moment I was like ‘ah, can I bottle this? This is awesome.’”
This was the first women’s Test since 1992 to be played across five days, a change that was vindicated as it gave a classic match the chance to breathe, with both teams compiling scores of 450+ in the first innings, before the pitch began to disintegrate just enough for the balance of powers to shift from those with bat in hand, to those with the ball.
Of whether the move to five days had been justified, Knight replied: “100 per cent. We were saying last night that if it was four days, it probably would have petered out and not been as entertaining as it was.
“I think the fact that there were two really big scores in the first innings meant that if it was a four day Test, that probably would have happened. Kate Cross actually joked to me at the end that it should have been a four-day Test, which was pretty funny from her.”
Defeat means that England have to win five of the six white-ball matches in order to regain the urn, a feat that would be challenging enough, even if they weren’t up against the reigning T20, ODI and Commonwealth Games champions in Australia. In all, going back to 2018, Australia have lost eight of their last 110 matches in a stretch of time that has seen England beat them just twice.
The turnaround is quick, with the T20 series starting on Saturday.
“There will certainly be some tired bodies in both changing rooms,” said Knight. “I think being able to decompress and let things go is really important. In my experience, I think probably the test match in Canberra in the last Ashes actually took quite a lot out of us as a side.
“But I think we'll learn from that quite a lot. The fact that we have to turn things around quite quickly and it can't be too much of a momentum shifter. We'll have a couple of days off, Sophie [Ecclestone] will go play some golf I imagine and enjoy herself but we'll regroup again Thursday afternoon and focus on that.”
