For the written press, the Rose Ageas Utilita Bowl is the best of grounds, and it is the worst of grounds. The press box, embedded inside the luxurious Hilton Hotel, is spacious and comfortable, with a panoramic view of the field of play. The media catering is exactly what you’d expect from a 4-star hotel – delicious and plentiful, with cakes and puddings to die for. (Honestly if you ate them every day, you probably would die for it… due to the ensuing heart attack!)
But, there are buts! Because the hotel is set well back behind the stands and the promenade, you are a loooong way from the middle. Plus to prevent the room turning into a greenhouse in the sun, the windows have been tinted. The combination of the two means it can be quite difficult to see the ball, and you have to sort of “imagine” where it probably is by the actions of the players. (At least… you do when your eyes are as old as mine are!) And like Lord’s, the press box itself is “sealed”, so you never really feel part of the action. (Lord’s have recently tried to counter this by pumping in sound from the TV effects mic, but for me this actually makes it worse, a-la “uncanny valley“.)
As a playing facility though, it is definitely up there with the best – the outfield is like a carpet, with great drainage, which is useful when you’ve had a bucketful of overnight rain. The one slightly funky aspect is the asymmetry of the outfield when it is set up for these internationals – or perhaps more accurately, the symmetry of it, as the issue stems from the fact that the field of play is pretty-much a perfect circle. This means the straight boundaries are extremely short, but the square boundaries are massive.
Yes, there is some perspective going on in the photo above, but the square boundaries are nonetheless 50% longer than the straight. This means you have to pick your shots quite carefully – play a slog sweep well behind square, and the ball is racing to the rope; play it in front of square and you need to be hitting it a long, long way to clear the outfielders. Maia Bouchier of all people should know this, having played a lot of matches here for Vipers over the past few years, but after England got off to a very fast start, she was caught in just that trap – holing out to a catch by Georgia Plimmer at deep midwicket.
Danni Wyatt and Nat Sciver-Brunt both showed the way to play here, NSB focusing on the sweeps and the reverses, and Wyatt on the cuts through backward point, allowing them to accelerate through the middle overs as New Zealand’s bowlers struggled to consistently bowl to their fields. Both were eventually dismissed though – and you’ll never guess how? That’s right! (You were obviously paying attention!) Caught at deep midwicket! To be fair, they’d given themselves the platform by that stage to take risks, and it meant that England’s pinch hitters* could come in at the end and drive a few more big nails into the coffin. Freya Kemp and Alice Capsey both came in hitting boundaries from the off at a Strike Rate of 150+ to get England over the 200 mark.
(*Yes – this is the correct sense in which to use the term “pinch hitter” borrowed from baseball – someone who comes in at the end, not the beginning!)
Except… no… that’s not quite what happened, is it? Kemp did come in to whack 26 off 17 balls; but it was Heather Knight who walked in at the death instead of Capsey. Knight faced 4 balls but never looked like finding the boundary and so England missed reaching 200 by a frustrating 3 runs. Did it make any difference at the end of the day? Of course not – not today. But one day it might.
Nonetheless, 197 is still a massive total in women’s T20 cricket – the Ghost is a typical score in T20 internationals between the Championship sides in the past few years, and England left it for dust. New Zealand’s highest ever successful chase in T20s is 174, achieved last year against South Africa; so they were going to have to bat out of their skins to get anywhere near England.
England had earlier opted to play not just three but four spinners, one of whom (Linsey Smith) regularly opens the bowling for her region at this very ground; so if you are going to play four spinners, you have to back them… right? To open the bowling, right?
Nope – apparently not! Instead, England opened with Nat Sciver-Brunt and Freya Kemp, neither of whom are really proper opening bowlers, and both of whom are coming back from injuries which mean they’ve had very restricted bowling opportunities in the past few months. The 5 overs Kemp bowled for Vipers last week were the first she has bowled all season, and it showed. With her shoulder strapped up more heavily than Hannibal Lecter under interrogation, her opening overs were very, very ordinary – she has obviously lost a yard of pace, which she might one day get back, but right now she shouldn’t be opening the bowling for her club side, let alone England. Though at least her opening overs were better than her final ones, which were just quite bad bad. Why would you flog her like this, when other bowlers had overs remaining? Answers on a postcard to H Knight, 12 Wendy Way, Somerset. (That’s not her actual address (I hope!) but you might as well send it there as to her actual home – she isn’t going to read it either way!)
Again… it didn’t really matter, because when the spinners had finally got the ball in their hands in that post-powerplay phase, they’d taken New Zealand down. Sarah Glenn took 3 in an over – tying Suzie Bates in a knot, then ghosting one beautifully through Maddy Green, before Sophie Devine gifted her the third, caught at long on – and it was time to start the car. Jess Kerr had some fun, making a quick 38 off 26, but there was no pressure at that point, and she was dropped more often than a plate at a Greek wedding along the way.
England’s fielding generally was half-baked, to put it politely; but it sums up the day to repeat that it didn’t matter, because they’d hit a bag of runs, and the spinners had bowled well. But if England are looking for lessons on the road to the T20 World Cup, where there will be far harder games than this, they are there – it’s just a question of whether they will heed them.
