England’s chances of a first Test victory since January 2014 and a first win against Australia in any format since July 2019 hung in the balance at stumps on the fourth day at Trent Bridge, as they sunk to 116 for five in pursuit of a fourth-innings target of 268.
Though Sophie Ecclestone claimed her side would “go away tonight and figure out how we’re going to win this Test match”, Australia are confident that victory is within easy reach.
“It is teetering a little bit,” Australia’s Beth Mooney said. “I back our bowlers to take the five wickets. We feel like we’re the happier team walking off this afternoon, for sure.”
England had strolled to 55 without loss after 10 overs, but a collapse of four wickets for 18 runs in five overs midway through the evening session tipped momentum in favour of Australia. In desperation, both Emma Lamb and Heather Knight – trapped lbw by Tahlia McGrath and Ash Gardner respectively – sent their decisions upstairs, but DRS showed both as being umpire’s call on impact.
Knight became Gardner’s third victim, after the off-spinner had earlier tempted the first-innings double-centurion Tammy Beaumont into slicing a half-volley to slip. In between times, Nat Sciver-Brunt was the agent of her own demise, miscuing a pull to be caught by Kim Garth running round from short leg. Minutes before the close, Garth chipped in with a wicket of her own, her outswinger taking the edge of Sophia Dunkley and landing in the gloves of Alyssa Healy behind the stumps.
Though the nightwatcher Kate Cross sent the penultimate ball of the day crashing through mid‑off for four, there are still 152 runs needed to secure victory. With Australia’s spinners licking their lips at the prospect of a fifth day on this pitch, England have a mountain to climb.
It was meant to be Ecclestone’s day, after her cumulative match‑haul of 10 for 192 across 77.1 overs (the most bowled by any Englishwoman in a Test since 1987) led what seemed like a routing of Australia for 257. Wickets fell in clusters, including four for 20 in 34 balls immediately after lunch, and – after a 59-run partnership between Healy and Alana King for the eighth wicket – the loss of Australia’s final three batters in the space of seven balls for no runs after tea.
“I knew I was going to bowl a lot of overs, but I didn’t think it would be this many,” Ecclestone said. “You can’t really prepare for that, you’ve just got to go with it and be tough in the mind.”
Ecclestone had switched to the Radcliffe Road End at the start of the day, in what seemed to be an attempt to make the most of some scuffed-up footholes at the Pavilion End (from which her previous 50 overs had been delivered). That did the job to see off Mooney, who was finally dismissed halfway through the afternoon session 15 runs short of a maiden Test century, by a ball which spun out of the footmarks on to her stumps.
Around her, there were some uncharacteristically tentative shots from the Australians: first-innings centurion Annabel Sutherland pulled Ecclestone straight to square-leg, while Gardner edged Cross to slip. Most strangely of all, the Australia captain Healy, carded at No 6, did not emerge from the dressing room until six wickets had already gone down. That meant a longer wait nursing three quarters of a double‑pair (after three successive ducks in Test cricket).
She almost achieved that dubious honour when she was put down by Amy Jones behind the stumps first ball – one of a series of spilled chances across the day, including five by the wicketkeeper-first slip pairing of Jones and Knight. Had they taken those chances, they might yet be celebrating a win.
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Instead, Healy clung on to bring up a 61-ball half-century in the second over after tea – but fell three balls later, limply holing out off a full toss to Lamb at midwicket, to hand Ecclestone her fourth wicket of the day. Darcie Brown, trapped lbw, completed the set; Ecclestone led her team from the pitch holding the ball aloft for the second time in four days.
At the close of play Ecclestone said the England head coach, Jon Lewis, had given the team “a bit of a rocket” after a difficult last hour on Saturday evening.
Whatever he said, it seemed initially to have worked: they resumed day four with much more of a spring in their steps, especially when Cross – in her third over of the morning – bowled a jaffa which pitched a mile outside off and jagged back in to hit Phoebe Litchfield’s middle stump. England were also buoyed by the return of Sciver-Brunt to the attack, after she was unable to bowl on Saturday due to a knee injury.
But it was Lauren Filer who made the morning session fizz, finally living up to her pre-match billing by Lewis as “a key wicket-taking threat”. In back-to-back wicket maidens just before lunch, in which she clocked speeds of 76mph, she removed two of the world’s best batters in quick succession – Ellyse Perry bowled trying to fend off a bouncer, before McGrath was beaten for pace and the ball ricocheted off her pads into the stumps.
Perry, dismissed for the second time in the match by England’s debutante pacer, looked rather sheepish. As it turned out, Australia had the last laugh.
