England’s late-summer series against Sri Lanka has been billed as a chance for their young players to shine: if the opening T20 was anything to go by, that is proving an accurate summation. The captain, Heather Knight, eventually made it out to the middle after bumping herself down the order to No 5, but her role was largely reduced to watcher-in-chief – only 15 runs in her partnership of 56 with Alice Capsey came off the bat of Knight.
The 19-year-old Capsey, of course, is England’s future – as she proved in the Ashes earlier this summer, and as she proved again here on a chilly evening in Hove, smashing a 26-ball half-century, her third in an England shirt. Sri Lanka’s left-arm spinner Inoka Ranaweera felt the sharp end: 22 runs off her third over, including three sixes hammered over the leg-side into the depths of the crowd.
