Beth Mooney laced a drive through cover, embraced her stand-in captain, Rachel Haynes, and the home dugout emptied on to the outfield at North Sydney Oval. As Australia celebrated a win in the opening Twenty20 that secured an unassailable 8-4 lead in the multiformat Women’s Ashes, England were inconsolable. With two matches left in this final leg, Heather Knight’s women can salvage the T20 series. But that does not count for much right now.
Lord’s feels long ago: 117 days and 10,000 miles to be precise. The summer’s World Cup triumph, unforgettable as it is, provides a thin balm to the wounds of a second successive Ashes failure. “We came out here to try and get them back and we haven’t done that and it hurts,” said an emotionally drained Knight, flanked by the head coach, Mark Robinson. “We’ve got to do a bit of mourning,” he added.
After mourning, Robinson called for rallying. The two remaining T20s are opportunities to level the series and build towards the 2018 World T20. Once they are over, some players will return home, others will take up residence with their Women’s Big Bash League franchises and Robinson will unpick where it all went wrong.
Were England too conservative? Probably. The crux of the summer’s World Cup success came, ultimately, through England’s ability to stay in games. For all the headline-grabbing totals they posted during the tournament, the crunch ties – against Australia in the group stage, South Africa in the semis and India in the final – were won through an ability to hold their nerve long enough for the opposition lose theirs. It is more knack than coincidence, relying on taking games deep. In these Ashes, that strategy worked in the third ODI, but it did not in the first – a defeat that had England playing catch-up from the start.
A noticeable difference between the two teams was their respective energy. England are fitter than they ever have been, showcased by their recovery from 16 for four to post 132 in this opening T20, through hard running and clean striking at the death. But there was a lethargy to their work throughout the series that meant they were never able to seize moments there for the taking.
Nat Sciver, the adrenalin-jolted heartbeat of the middle order, never got going. Nor did Lauren Winfield, who looked frazzled after a tough few months. Dani Wyatt’s 36-ball half-century was the only time on the night that England asked a question Australia struggled to answer. There have been precious few others over nearly four weeks since the opening ODI.
Compare that to the form of Australia’s talisman Ellyse Perry – 324 runs and nine wickets in the series so far – and the manner in which Beth Mooney, unselected for the ODIs, dropped into this T20 and rattled off a match-winning 86 not out. One squad – even nursing the absence of Meg Lanning, the best batsman in the world – was battle-ready. The other was running on fumes.
It is understandable when you consider the workload over the past four months: a draining home World Cup, the Kia Women’s Super League and preparation for the Ashes, all punctuated by a gap of little more than a week. Robinson said before the tournament that it was a high-risk factor after the summer, many of his players barely seeing their own beds between the start of the World Cup and the end of the Kia Super League.
He alluded to it again as Friday’s press conference wound down: “It was quite a hard ask,” he said. “We came here on the request of Cricket Australia because they wanted to do this one-off, standalone series. It didn’t really suit us.” English cricket has long had a burnout issue and it could seep into the women’s game.
As the women’s calendar gets busier, this will become the norm and, more so than before, the best sides will be those possessing the best depth. And it is in with this in mind that one casts worrying glances at England’s fast bowling reserves beyond Katherine Brunt and Anya Shrubsole.
Both have struggled to make the hard decks of Australia work for them, combining for only seven wickets; for Australia Perry and Megan Schutt have 25 between them. On Friday a hamstring injury kept Shrubsole out of the XI, while Brunt’s figures of one for 33 from three overs returned the worst economy rate of her career.
At 25, there is no reason Shrubsole should not have another 10 years. But Brunt, 32, has a body held together by her own bloody-mindedness. As she has said during the tour, a win in Australia could have tempted her into a dream retirement, even if it was a fraction premature. But the very fact that this is a discussion to begin suggests it would be timely to focus on getting the most from Brunt in the cleverest way. She need not be the workhorse any more.
To that end, there is an argument Brunt should be escorted to next year’s World T20 by managing her workload next summer, with South Africa and New Zealand set to tour. One snag: there is a lack of faith in those next in line. Tash Farrant, Kate Cross and Beth Langston have enough to break into a 15 but not an XI and there is no evidence of the next Brunt bruising her way through domestic cricket to take the mantle as the out-and-out attack leader.
It would not be an Ashes defeat without melodramatic introspection. Maybe a bit of R&R can solve many of England’s woes. But, with the savvy Robinson at the helm, who made his name rejuvenating ailing bowlers and weary attacks, the time might be right to take a closer look.
