There was a point on the first day of the Ashes Test at Trent Bridge when it looked like England might as well just get on the team bus and head straight back to Loughborough. Test cricket: come rain or shine, across four or five days, there has of late been an inevitability to it – Ellyse Perry will score runs.
Alongside her, partner Tahlia McGrath was looking rock-solid; the pair added 78 runs in the first hour after lunch, McGrath tapping a single through point to bring up the century partnership. Then came Sophie Ecclestone, doing Sophie Ecclestone things. First, she turned one behind the bat of McGrath, whose textbook forward defensive was rendered utterly impotent as she fell for 61.
Then, after a rain shower washed out 90 minutes of play across the afternoon and evening sessions, Jess Jonassen foolishly tried to sweep the left-armer, succeeding only in gloving it into the hands of Tammy Beaumont at short leg. The umpire Anna Harris appeared unmoved, but Heather Knight at slip was convinced; DRS did the rest.
Two balls later, Ecclestone struck again: a quicker, fuller ball which turned away from Alyssa Healy, to knock out her off-stump and send her back to the pavilion for her third consecutive duck in Test cricket.
Australia were 226 for five but the biggest wicket of all – Perry – still eluded England. Mostly, she had proven content to duck under bouncers from the debutant Lauren Filer, steaming in from the Radcliffe Road End; on occasion, she chose to rock back and cut or pull her to the boundary. By the 60th over of the day – Filer’s twelfth – Perry had progressed to 99.
Surrey's Will Jacks (pictured) hit five sixes in an over on his way to 96 from 45 balls, but Middlesex replied with a record-breaking chase to win their Vitality Blast clash by seven wickets at the Oval.
The hosts posted a mammoth 252 for seven, but Stephen Eskinazi and Max Holden both hit rapid half-centuries as Middlesex pulled off the highest chase in Blast history and the second highest in T20 matches around the world.
Eskinazi got the innings of to a flyer, hitting 73 from 39 balls, including 90 in just 6.3 overs with opening partner Joe Cracknell, who made 36 off 16.
Holden then took Middlesex over the line with an unbeaten 68 off 35 balls, while Ryan Higgins smacked 48 off 24. Incredibly, it was Middlesex's first win in 15 T20 games, stretching back to last summer.
Jacks had earlier shared an extraordinary opening stand of 177 in a mere 12.4 overs with Laurie Evans, whose own contribution was an explosive 37-ball 85.
Harrison Ward's quick-fire half-century helped Sussex Sharks to a comfortable seven-wicket win over Gloucestershire in Bristol.
The 23-year-old slogged 51 from 27 balls, including five sixes and two fours, with his opening partnership of 83 with Tom Clark proving vital as they reached their target of 141 with 6.4 overs to spare. PA Media
Then, in a flash, it was over: she swished her bat and found the hands of Nat Sciver-Brunt at gully, handing Filer her second wicket of the day. “I’d had a really great tussle with Filer the whole time,” Perry said at the close. “I thought she was extremely impressive on debut and brought the game alive. That ball just got my measure.”
Healy had said on the eve of the Test: “The next generation are banging on the door and giving us a glimpse of what Ashes cricket could look like for the next 10 years.” On day one, the morning session exemplified that.
With the toss going Australia’s way and Healy choosing to bat first, that gave two of the match’s four Test debutants a chance to do their thing.
As expected, the 20-year-old Phoebe Litchfield – who before Thursday had played just five matches for her country – was tasked with opening the batting. The experienced Beth Mooney was at the other end, but across the first 40 minutes of play, had you been asked which of them was batting in her maiden Test, you might well have guessed wrong. Mooney progressed to seven off her first 20 balls, almost sent a caught-and-bowled into the outstretched right hand of Kate Cross, and was put down four overs later by a diving Danni Wyatt at gully.
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Litchfield, meanwhile, played two sumptuous square drives for four off first Lauren Bell and then Cross, while calmly defending the good-length balls.
As for Filer, brought into the attack in the 18th over, the first ball of her international career could scarcely have been more eventful – it jagged off the pitch and rapped none other than Perry on the pads, causing the umpire Sue Redfern to lift her finger.
Dream starts, of course, can quickly turn into nightmares. Litchfield’s relative inexperience finally became apparent in the ninth over of the morning, when she shouldered arms to Cross, was given out lbw when the ball moved back in, and marched off the pitch, ignoring Mooney’s plea to send the decision upstairs. It was a rookie error – Hawkeye demonstrating that the ball would have missed off stump.
Filer’s own celebrations were cruelly disrupted when Perry did, rightfully, bring DRS into the mix, having got an inside edge. Minutes later, though, there was no such mistake when Mooney edged to Cross at gully, and Filer was mobbed by her teammates.
“It was a bit of a surreal experience. Heather [Knight] said about short, sharp spells, so I knew I wasn’t going to be on for very long – I was just trying to take advantage of the balls that I did have,” Filer said at the close.
“When it hit Perry’s pads, I was screaming! It’s a shame it wasn’t given out but it was a good confidence boost to get into my spell.”
Of course, Filer did – eventually – get to celebrate the wicket of Perry. For England, the only problem was that 99 runs had come in-between times.
Ecclestone might have dragged them back into it but Australia being Australia, even her mammoth consecutive 28-over spell – which finally came to an end only because the new ball was due – was not enough to make this England’s day.
Bell did make good use of that new ball, having Ash Gardner caught behind with the swinging ball for 40 – but not before she had smashed the very part-time leg-spin of Sophia Dunkley over the top for six.
With Australia finishing on 328 for seven, and work left to do, England might already be ruing their decision to field just one frontline spinner in their XI.
