It’s the hope that kills you. Fighting desperately to keep the Australians in check for three-and-a-half-days, a fantastic display of bowling from England this afternoon - and a second five-wicket-haul of the match from Sophie Ecclestone - saw them edge ahead in the Test for the very first time. But with 268 required for victory, England’s top order sunk from 55 for none to 73 for four, before Sophia Dunkley also departed on the brink of close. England will come back tomorrow requiring 152 to win with five wickets still in hand.
An enthralling day’s cricket that swung wildly from Australian dominance to English delight and back again, the two heroes were opposing spinners Sophie Ecclestone and Ashleigh Gardner.
Australia, who at one stage were 149 for one, blinked in the face of relentless Ecclestone pressure, as she was once again the star of the show. England’s best bowler by a distance, she is both their greatest defensive asset and their most potent attacking threat. Bowling almost unchanged throughout the day, she conceded her runs at barely a tick more than two-an-over and picked up another five wickets to finish with match figures of 10-192. The fourth best in England women’s Test history.
Her final wicket, that of Darcie Brown, was given LBW and confirmed on review. The England team watched the replay from almost the other side of the ground after Ecclestone’s wild celebrations had seen the whole team sprint in unison after their runaway spinner. When DRS confirmed the decision, Ecclestone sank to the ground in exhausted delight. Across the Test, she had bowled a scarcely believable 77.1 overs.
Australia’s final three wickets fell without a run being scored, and England carried that momentum into their batting innings as openers Tammy Beaumont and Emma Lamb got the chase off to a flyer, regularly finding the boundary off the Aussie seamers of Darcie Brown, Kim Garth and Annabel Sutherland. But then Gardner came on, and with her very first delivery, Beaumont (22) was gone.
Beaumont’s edge to slip prompted a borderline fatal England collapse as Lamb, Nat Sciver-Brunt (0) and Heather Knight (9) all fell in the space of five overs. Gardner taking three wickets herself as she added Sciver-Brunt and Knight to her list of victims after the former top edged a sweep, before the latter was trapped LBW to a ball that spun sharply. Lamb was the only batter not to fall to Gardner, with Tahlia McGrath striking her on the front pad and seeing her go for 28.
Australia were rampant and threatening to run away with the match there and then. But a spirited fightback from Dunkley and Wyatt kept England’s head above water, even if Dunkley would edge Kim Garth behind in the closing stages of the day. Wyatt, along with nightwatcher Kate Cross, finished unbeaten on 20 and 5 respectively.
That England were in the position to fight for a victory was thanks to a vastly improved bowling performance from what had followed on the evening of day three where their seamers lost their lines and lengths and batting had rarely looked so easy. This morning, it looked as if the tough times were going to continue as Kate Cross and Sciver-Brunt dropped chances either side of a solitary wicket.
However, cometh the hour, cometh the Lauren Filer. Picked as the wildcard quick, and described by her captain Heather Knight as, “one of, if not the”, fastest bowler in the country, she clean bowled Ellyse Perry and Tahlia McGrath in consecutive overs, a spell that gave England hope after a morning session that had threatened to see the match disappear.
England were a different team after that double-strike. And from the moment that Sophie Ecclestone clean bowled Jonassen on the sweep for 14, there was no stopping them.
Mooney was the next to go, as she got an inside edge on a delivery from Ecclestone that subsequently crashed into the stumps, before Gardner edged Cross to the slips and Sutherland chipped a pull to square-leg.
Praise should also be reserved for Kate Cross. By her own admission, her spell on the evening of day three had been the worst she’d ever bowled in an England shirt. She’d dropped a sharp caught-and-bowled which had damaged her thumb, and in the second over of today, she dropped a simple chance at cover that subsequently required her to receive more medical attention.
From that point on, however, she was excellent. Clean bowling Phoebe Litchfield, before in the afternoon removing Gardner.
That wicket brought Australia captain Alyssa Healy to the crease, who having got three ducks in a row in Ashes Test cricket, demoted herself to No8 with first-innings centurion Sutherland, as well as Gardner, promoted ahead of her. From her first-ball, she got the faintest of edges that split the gloves of wicketkeeper Amy Jones and went down. Healy, at least, allowed herself a wry smile, and would go on to score a crucial half-century.
