Melbourne’s cricket ground is famed for its size. It has never seemed larger than it did last week, when England’s fielders were chasing the ball all over its vast green sward. Both on the ground and in the air the ball just kept escaping them, as Australia’s batters scored the first, then the second, ever centuries by women at their country’s oldest (and biggest) sporting venue.
The third women’s Test held at the MCG was certainly a historic occasion, but not in the way England would have hoped. The tourists succumbed to the first ever whitewash in a women’s Ashes: they finished without a single point in the multi-format series, having lost all seven of their matches.
