Heather Knight has promised England will fight Australia’s fire with fire in the multi-format Women’s Ashes, which begins with a three-match T20 series starting tomorrow.
The three T20s in Adelaide (two points each) are followed by a Test in Canberra (four points), and three ODIs across Canberra and Melbourne (two points each).
Knight admitted England’s preparations have been “quite average”, involving “mums feeding bowling machines, boyfriends and girlfriends slinging [balls]” as the teams had to isolate before flying to Australia early this month.
They were then disrupted by rain on arrival but have played warm-up games against England A, who will face their Australian counterparts.
Australia will be without the injured Beth Mooney but are still the preeminent force in the women’s game.
"We are going to have to be positive and trust our game massively against them," Knight said. "They are very aggressive, and we want to be the same and go right back at them.
"I have made it no secret that the last Ashes [series] was tough, we massively underperformed, and didn't play anywhere near our potential in 2019. Everything we've done has been about addressing that, and when you have a big loss like that, it leaves a bit of soul-searching and what you can do better.
“We definitely did that, we feel like we've built as a group, taken a lot more ownership and have a lot more leaders in the side.”
Knight says England must “punch first” in the T20s if they are to win the series.
"T20 cricket is one of our strongest formats, so I think that will suit us quite nicely. We are really clear how we want to go about playing T20," she said.
“I think the last few series we've really looked to go hard in that first game, previously it's been a weakness of ours. There will obviously be nerves around, that's completely normal, but we are confident we can cope with that and punch first against Australia."
