As I write this post the England and West Indies men’s teams are locked in a test match battle at Trent Bridge. England Women played their last home match of the summer (they have a series in Ireland to come before heading over to Bangladesh for the T20 world cup) on Wednesday evening.
SETTING THE SCENE
England Women had won every match against Sri Lanka in the first part of their home season, and went into Wednesday night’s fixture having won all three ODIs and the first four T20Is against New Zealand. England had never previously won as many as 13 matches in a home season, which is what they were looking to achieve. They found themselves batting first…
THE ENGLAND INNINGS
England started badly, and at 87-6 they looked in big trouble. Heather Knight and Charlie Dean put on 54 together for the seventh wicket to dig England out of this hole, and a couple of good blows by Sophie Ecclestone at the end boosted the final total to 155-7. This was enough to require New Zealand to score their highest total of the series to win.
THE NEW ZEALAND RESPONSE
New Zealand were in the game for good while, and even kept Sophie Ecclestone wicketless, ending a run of 34 international innings in which she had claimed at least one scalp. However England never really looked in danger during this innings, and some good death bowling meant that the final margin in their favour was 20 runs.
PHOTOGRAPHS
My usual sign off…









































































































Beautiful photos!