The England women’s cricket team were touted as gold medal hopes at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. They didn’t even manage bronze. Heather Knight was ruled out on the eve of the tournament with a hip injury and the stand-in captain, Nat Sciver-Brunt, struggled to assert her authority: her wife, Katherine, was reprimanded for swearing on the field of play; England threw away their bronze-medal match against New Zealand; and Sophie Ecclestone was shown live on television knocking a chair over with her bat.
Why hark back to something that happened more than two years ago? Because England’s disastrous group-stage exit from the T20 World Cup, at the hands of West Indies, had eerie echoes of summer 2022. This time, Knight’s injury was a “popped calf” (her words), but it was once again the vice-captain, Sciver-Brunt, who was forced to step in when Knight couldn’t take the field.
