Australia win by 93 runs, and win the 2019 Women’s Ashes!
That’s it, there’ll be no party-spoiling draws of the series this year. The points scoreline across all formats is 2-10 Australia’s way, meaning England can only close the gap to 6-10 at best. And that looks unlikely given the gulf between the teams tonight. England were shellshocked from the second over, when Beth Mooney went after them with four boundaries in no time. Lanning very quickly matched her, then passed her, and while Mooney fell for a fifty, Lanning powered on to the biggest hundred in this format of the women’s game.
Australia’s biggest ever score was never a realistic chance for England to chase, and predictably they lost early wickets trying to hit out. From then, even the slight chance was gone. England have been exposed in all three formats now in this series, and there will be reviews, recriminations and restructures once this series is done.
Records and jubilation for the Australians though. Oh, they’re having fun. All that firepower does make you wonder if they couldn’t have given that Test match a better shake, though… For now, they’re bringing their Harlem Globetrotters show to Hove on Sunday to do more unspeakable things to England. We’ll be there.
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Preamble
Hello again. Welcome to sunny Essex, home of a lot of things that I don’t know about because I’m not from Essex. Chelmsford is the ground, where Goochy used to prowl with Salim Malik and Mark Waugh in the 1980s.
Today it hosts the first of three Women’s Ashes T20s. These have a bit more riding on them than you might expect after England got pantsed in the 50-over games and was nowhere near the mark in the Test match. But by virtue of escaping with a draw, they can still tie this series on points 8-8.
Three T20 games, 2 points each, and a 2-8 scoreline at present.
They need a clean sweep. Australia meanwhile gave up a lead in the last series to tie it 8-8 and they do not want to do that again. So both teams are going to come out today desperate to win. Should be fun.