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Already, this has been an Ashes summer in Australia like no other.
It’s wrong to think of the outstanding women’s series as a curtain raiser to the main event starting today in Brisbane, but the quality of the cricket on show in that series has absolutely upped the anticipation levels.
The women’s series concluded in Canberra on Tuesday night, with England’s thrilling record run-chase squaring the multi-format series at eight points apiece, but Australia retained the Women’s Ashes as the current holder.
The Test match fizzed out to a pretty lame draw, but the white-ball games were really well contested throughout the series.
(AAP Image/Daniel Munoz)
As it happened, I honestly thought Beth Mooney’s ton will take a fair bit of beating as far as limited overs hundreds go this year. A chanceless, beautifully crafted innings that she played with superb skill, and highlighted by some genuinely classy strokeplay. It was the first women’s Twenty20 International hundred made on Australian score, and is the second highest ever made.
Not ninety minutes later, England opener Danni Wyatt gave it a proper shake, with an innings that took appropriate advantage of some Australian generosity in the field. Wyatt and England captain Heather Knight took the visitors from a seemingly impossible position to sudden short-priced favourites in the space of 18 balls to the end of the 16th over.
Wyatt and Knight put on a hundred-run stand in 58 balls, and with Knight’s dismissal for 51 ending a 139-run fourth wicket partnership that started off hopeful and ended match-winning.
Mooney’s 70-ball 117* was the first women’s Twenty20 century made in Australia, and the second-highest overall behind Meg Lanning. Wyatt’s 56-ball ton was the fastest by an Englishwoman, mostly on account of it also being the first.
It was the first time a Women’s Twenty20 featured two centuries in the same match, and if I’ve piloted CricInfo’s StatsGuru correctly, that’s only happened once in Men’s T20Is, too. Proving it really was a game full of records, Mooney’s 19 fours is the most in an innings in both men’s and women’s T20Is as well. It really was an incredible finish to the series.
Women’s cricket has gone to new levels in the last few years, everyone knows that, but Australia and England have in this series shown the benefits of fulltime professionalism – notwithstanding Australia’s catching in the three T20Is.
Women’s cricket isn’t the domain of the power athlete desperate to clear every fence or push the boundaries of 140km/h. These women are athletes in their own right, and they’re athletes in their own way.
So they rely on changes of pace with the ball, both the quicks and spinners. They have a lovely subtlety with their hands that pushes the ball through gaps, rather than bludgeoning over the top.
The skills on show have been superb, and it’s been wonderful to see the coverage grow as the series went on. And the crowds were amazing. Ticket prices for the five Ashes Tests were steep this year, and plenty of people have taken the far cheaper option to see some high-quality cricket between the old rivals.
And with the increased coverage and awareness comes increased scrutiny; this series might become a watershed moment for the criticism of shot selection, and indeed, of the fielding in the last couple of games. But this is important; they’re now being judged and viewed as cricketers first and foremost, not just ‘girls playing cricket’.
They mightn’t like it right now, but in time, I think these players will look back on these criticisms fondly.
Even better, it’s meant that until Tuesday night when former England wicketkeeper Matt Prior to return serve on Nathan Lyon, we really hadn’t had to put up with the usual, banal pre-Ashes ‘bantz’. I honestly don’t know if Glenn McGrath has piped up with his usual five-nil prediction, because it’s been lost in discussion of actual Ashes cricket if he has. This isn’t a bad thing; the Ashes doesn’t need manufactured hype.
(AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts)
So, if it does kind of feel like the build-up to the First Test has been a bit flat, that’s probably more an indication of how tedious, plastic, and just plain boring weeks of “we’re going to smash you blokes” and “no, we’re going to smash you blokes” had become over the last decade.
In truth, both Australia and England will walk out into the sunshine on the ‘Gabba today in something of a state of flux. Neither side feels particularly settled, and neither side is chock-full of blokes in sublime form. A win in this first Test of the 2017-18 series could provide an advantage like no other in previous summers for the simple reason that the pressure on the trailing side will be immediate.
But that’s also what makes this Ashes summer – or the continuation of this Ashes summer, to be fair – all the more tantalising. The result, at this point, could genuinely go either way.
And there’s still six weeks of this to come!
The women’s Ashes has been tremendous to watch already. The men have big shoes to fill for their series to reach the same lofty heights of excitement.
I can’t wait.