A 6-6 scoreline would sooner portray a tight set on Centre Court than provide the context for a vital One-Day International at Southampton, but as the Women’s Ashes head to the Ageas Bowl, those numbers tell the story of a miracle brewing and now tantalisingly close to completion.
Australia are still very much serving for the match, just one win from regaining the Urn, as they have been for most of the last fortnight, five championship points reduced now to just two. But it is England who suddenly seem to have all the shots, are asking all the questions and, just as crucially, finding the odd net-cord in helpful mood.
That somewhat novel scoreline (a particularly dull afternoon at Twickenham? Rush keepers at the Monday five-a-side?) is proof that the hunter has not quite become the hunted yet, but in both camps, heading into Sunday’s second ODI, there must surely now have been a subconscious mentality shift.
On the back of three successive defeats, to say Australia are in unfamiliar territory would be something of an understatement. You or I might feel a little disorientated after dozing off on the Tube and rousing in Morden, but the tourists’ current state of frazzle must be more like waking up on the outskirts of Minsk.
A team previously nigh-on flawless had looked less and less recognisable in each of their trio of setbacks. Australia’s fielding has always set them apart, but if falling standards in the game’s under-appreciated third facet remain the warning light for any ailing team, then Wednesday night’s display in Bristol will have knackered a few bulbs.
With the ball, they were wayward, too, extras having a productive evening, just like Heather Knight, who finished unbeaten on 75. With the bat, only England’s generosity when it came to catching allowed the visitors a laudable score.
It will be intriguing to see how Australia respond to this alien predicament, torn between staying faithful to what has always worked and changing something that clearly is not right now. That old cliche about the definition of insanity made no allowance for what happens when one method does start producing different results after all.
For now, the most plausible explanation in-house appears to be the absence of Meg Lanning, captain of five World Cup-winning sides, who is missing this series on medical grounds. Under Alyssa Healy, Lanning’s deputy and a fine player in her own right, there does not appear quite the same swagger nor synergy that defines this team at its best. Australia’s biggest strength is their relentlessness and the dread it inspires in opposition players that if one batter or bowler does not take you apart, the next one, or the one after that, almost certainly will. Over the past three games, too many players in yellow appear to have bought into the same myth, content to bank on someone else turning the game.
The alternative, of course, is that England have simply improved, finally now delivering concrete results to justify the nagging sense that the gap between the best and the best of the rest is not the gaping chasm it once was. Sunday’s encounter will be the greatest test of that theory yet, England having hauled themselves back into the series on what has felt, until now, like a run of free-hits, Knight admitting ahead of Wednesday’s win in Bristol that her side were still playing with the pressure off.
Aside from coping with renewed expectations, there are elements that England must tighten up, most obviously in the field after wasting six chances last time out, while the experiment with Sophia Dunkley at the top of the order could do with reaping rewards quickly after its first trial was cut short.
Ten days ago, this series, as a contest, looked like meeting a similarly premature end. Now, though, England are one win from taking it down to the wire.
