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Australia went into the final leg of the series knowing that they needed to do no more than win one of the three T20 games to retain the Women’s Ashes.
So they skilfully did no more than that.
Here are the ratings for the T20 leg of the Women’s Ashes.
Retaining and Regaining Ashes
Grade: B+
Australia were 6-4 up after the ODIs and Test match. If they could get to eight points, then it would be impossible for England to surpass their points tally for the series. This would mean, since Australia already held the Ashes, that they would retain them.
One of the great thing about Ashes series (both men’s and women’s) is that the concepts of regaining and retaining the Ashes are so similar and that this similarity is represented by similarly similar words. Opens up an entire world of potential confusion.
And, ultimately, isn’t that what we’re all looking for in our cricket discussions?
Ellyses
Grade: B
Australia knew that they needed something special to retain the Ashes, so went into the First T20 with a top seven packed with Ellyses/Elyses/Alyssas, like some kind of Just-Ellyse League.
Oh, sure, you had to use anagrams to reveal the secret Ellyse identities of some of them, but canny fans could see straight through their nomenclature disguises.
Alyssa Healy
Elyse Villani
Ellyse Perry
Ah, an arch Elyse (Rachael Haynes)
Arghh! Grand Elise (Ashleigh Gardner)
Ms Elise Manic-Kid (Delissa Kimmince)
The sole member of the top order failing to make an appearance as part of the Just-Ellyse League? Beth Mooney, who, presumably is therefore the Green Lantern of the Australian women’s cricket team.
Little bit of comic book humour there for y’all. Enjoy!
(AAP Image/Daniel Munoz)
Beth Mooney
Grade: B+
Beth Mooney didn’t allow her lack of Ellyse-ness to upset her. Instead, she set about pretty much singlehandedly chasing down England’s substandard total of 9/132 in the first game.
England had actually done well to recover to that total after being 4/16 early on, but Mooney still made their final score look inadequate. She smashed 86* from 56 balls to ensure Australia retained the Ashes.
M.O.O.N.E.Y. spells blistering half-century.
She would, in fact, do even better in the final game of the series, scoring 117* from 70 balls.
M.O.O.N.E.Y. spells even more blistering ton.
Mooney’s excellent run of form reminded me of a similar period of batting productivity from one of Australia’s great male ODI openers of the 1980s and 90s. Indeed, it’s almost as if Beth Mooney is a dark, edgy, gender-swapped modern reboot of that player.
Or, as a simple Spoonerism will reveal, she’s a meth Boonie.
Stumpings
Grade: C+
With the Women’s Ashes safely secured, Australia’s next goal was to win the series.
England, on the other hand, still had an opportunity to draw the series. In the second match, they made 6/152 batting first from their twenty overs, a much tougher target for Australia to run down.
Despite Mooney and Healy getting Australia off to another rollicking start in pursuit, the Australians soon stumbled, from 0/45 to 5/65. And while there was a brief recovery, they were eventually all out for 112, defeated by forty runs.
The highlight of the collapse from an England perspective was yet another patented LightningStumping ™ from Sarah Taylor, as Elyse ‘A Wretched Hive of Scum and’ Villani briefly left her crease.
Amazing to think that the abbreviation for a stumping is now officially represented in scorecards all around the world by Sarah Taylor’s initials.
A fitting tribute by the ICC.
Danni Wyatt
Grade: A-
So with one game remaining, Australia led the series 8-6. And must surely have thought they’d secured the series win after the previously mentioned Beth Mooney ton saw the Australians tally 2/178 from their twenty overs batting first.
England’s response was to initiate a game of Risk Your Wicket Every Ball as they skied shots and ran crazy singles at every opportunity. And while, startlingly, this ploy did see them lose a few wickets, it began to reap dividends as Danni Wyatt and Heather Knight put on a 139-run partnership.
(Photo by Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
Oh, sure, Australia dropped a few catches along the way, but let’s not take anything away from Wyatt’s superb innings. Catches are a cowardly way of taking a wicket anyway.
Wyatt, like Mooney before her, was, in the new jargon, ‘hitting 360’. I dunno. This lingo seems overly degree-centric to me. I’m looking forward to some cricket hipster commentator counteracting all this talk about ‘hitting 360’ by instead measuring the range of shots in radians.
You know, like this:
“Gee, it looks like Maxwell’s hitting 2 Pi out there.”
“You look like you’ve been hitting two pies too, Tub.”
(Insert guffaws, nonsense, banter)
Because, yes. The Women’s Ashes are done, tied 8-8.
Now brace yourselves for the men, and their associated commentary team.