Sometimes, those behind-the-scenes cameras show more than they know. In a silent Australian dressing room in 2019, the players were staring at the indeterminate middle-distance like commuters on a train. Eventually, the one raised voice belonged to Alyssa Healy.
This was the last day of the Ashes Test at Taunton, where Australia had to decide whether to offer England a chase in an attempt to win, or bat the game to death. Criticised afterwards for choosing the latter, coach Matthew Mott and captain Meg Lanning adopted thin-lipped Australian sternness to insist that an England team trailing in a multi-format series didn’t deserve to be offered a path back.
