Australia v England Third ODI Report Card

Featuring courageous leadership, arresting Australia's batting, missed comedy opportunities and classic catches competitions

Courageous Leadership
Grade: B+

England started the third ODI by burning all their reviews immediately. At the end of the previous match, Heather Knight had asked for more bravery from her team, and this was her leading from the front.

The DRS is the refuge of the coward, she was saying. Chin up and abide by the onfield umpire’s decision, please.

And so, within four overs, Knight had thrown away both of her reviews attempting to overturn imaginary edges to the keeper. To be fair, she’d also successfully overturned one non-imaginary edge to the keeper, when the Snicko spotted a Phoebe Litchfield glove on one of Lauren Filer’s deliveries.

Still, the song isn’t ‘one out of three ain’t bad’, is it? (Strictly speaking, from a mathematical perspective, we don’t have enough information to determine to what outcome ‘one out of three’ maps, but if we make the not outrageous assumptions that Meatloaf’s probability distribution function (MLpdf) is symmetrical and that badness is quantified within a [0,1] range, then, if MLpdf(2/3) = ‘ain’t bad’, that implies MLpdf(1/3) = MLpdf(1 - 2/3) = 1 - MLpdf(2/3) = NOT(‘ain’t bad’) = ‘bad’. A chain of logic for Knight to consider, for sure.)

Arresting Australia’s Batting
Grade: B

The start of Filer’s run up is a delight. Like a ten year old playing a police officer in a school play, she’s up on her heels, marching in with arms pumping side to side. If she could start dropping in the odd ‘what’s all this, then?’ during it, that’d be appreciated.

But Filer wasn’t the only one saying ‘that’s you nicked, then’ to Australian batters. More Lauren order followed, as Lauren Bell ushered Ellyse Perry from the field of play. Nat Sciver-Brunt slapped the cuffs on Alyssa Healy. And Charlie Dean escorted Annabel Sutherland into the back of a divvy van.

Australia were suddenly 4/59 in the fifteenth over, and the prospect of them attempting to follow their defence of 180 in the previous match with a defence of 120 in this one loomed large.

Missed Comedy Opportunities
Grade: D

Instead, we got an Ashes ton. Or, more precisely, Ash’s ton, as Ash Gardner rightly rejected the entire notion of this absurd Van Diemen’s Land ‘prison colony’ skit.