Charlie Dean described England’s nine-wicket thrashing of New Zealand in their opening ODI at Chester-le-Street as “pretty brilliant”.
Player-of-the-match Dean finished with four for 38 off nine overs after New Zealand won the toss and opted to bat only to slump to 156 all out on a decent batting wicket with over 16 overs remaining.
England openers Tammy Beaumont (76 not out off 69 balls) and Maia Bouchier (67 off 50) were both in fine form as the hosts romped to 157 for one in reply in the 22nd over.
Dean told Sky Sports: “How good were our openers today? Tammy and Maia set a batting blueprint of how we want to go about our ODI cricket.
“To finish the game in that way is pretty brilliant. It was a really good team performance today.”
England skipper Heather Knight was also delighted by her side’s display as they eased to a 1-0 lead in the three-match series.
Knight added: “It was really pleasing. I think the way we attacked that game was brilliant.
“I think the fact we kept looking for wickets throughout the innings was the really pleasing thing. Obviously we got some early ones then to keep pushing for wickets, keep being attacking and bowl them out for that score on a pretty decent pitch.
“Then the nonchalance from the top two was very entertaining to watch. I was pretty happy to sit and watch waiting to bat. It was a masterclass from those two.”
New Zealand were clearly under-cooked in the opening match of their tour, which also includes a five-match T20 series.
The tourists had not played since losing a three-match ODI series 2-1 on home soil against England in April and captain Sophie Devine said they were “really disappointed”.
Devine said: “We’ve got to trust the work we’ve been doing for the last six or seven weeks. We’ve got a big series coming up. We will reflect and come back harder.
“We’ve got to identify some key areas where we went wrong but we’ve also got to take some positives.”
On her side’s poor batting display, Devine added: “We know we are going to have to score 250, 260 and we were on par for that if we’d batted all of our overs.”
