After Australia in winter, after a chasting Ashes defeat, England’s comfortable series wins on the West Indies, just the same way that some positivity needed to be brought back to the beginning of a new regime.
The whole thing from England was that tough challenges would come. Well, the first of them has arrived.
To allow the first ball of the match to shut down a single, a Missfield from Eclestone set a tone for a sub-farming attempt, in which he made Madhana an expensive and Danny Wet-Hodes dropped Deol on a deep mid-quint on a deep mid-quint.
With India’s game being taken to England, the hosts offered very little through the response.
Both bowlers, seams and spin were scoring runs offering next to the danger of taking wickets. Less than ideal combination.
Across the innings, only 18 balls bowled by England must have hit the stumps – this is just 14.5% – and only four of those delivery came from four seamers.
There is some mitigation in the fact that he attempted to bowl wide yorkers for a time in the second part of India’s innings, but former England’s Emper Catherine Skivor-Bunt told the BBC Test match that it would expect a stump to hit the T20 between 60 to 70% balls, 14.5% significantly lower.
Attempting the second biggest pursuit in women’s T20i history was always going to be a challenge, but it is the way of falling of England that can worry them.
Eight out of 10 wickets fell to spin. A very familiar failure for this side.
Since the beginning of 2023, England batsmen have average 18.4 against Spin in T20 against India and Australia, only Pakistan (13.2) and Bangladesh (11.6) average.
With a 50 -over World Cup in India and Sri Lanka to arrive in this autumn, it is a problem that needs to be addressed with some urgency.
The nature of T20 cricket means that England can easily return with an equally confident win in the second T20.
However, with the aim of challenging Australia and becoming the best team in the world, Edwards and the company will know that such goals would not be achieved overnight – this result was the proof of this.
