Heather Knight ‘disappointed but proud’ after England’s Ashes Test loss
H
eather Knight says she needs she might “bottle” the expertise of a traditional Ashes Test match, regardless of England finally falling brief.
After a historic contest that noticed a brand new file set for the best attendance at a girls’s Test match in England, with over 20,000 followers turning up at Trent Bridge throughout the 5 days, England captain Knight expressed a mix of disappointment with the end result mixed with an general sense of satisfaction in her gamers that went toe to toe with one of many all-time nice groups in Australia.
England will likely be left to rue two evenings the place, with the match within the stability, they discovered themselves second finest on each events. The night of day three, a passage of play that Knight lamented as one the place England had been “maybe a little too aggressive”, noticed Australia rating 82 of the best runs as England misplaced their traces and lengths, whereas their top-order collapse late on Sunday night time by the hands of Ash Gardner left them with a mountain to climb.
Day 4, specifically, was an exhilarating 90 overs of cricket that noticed either side expertise delight and despair in equal measure. At one level, Australia had been cruising with a lead of 159 and only one wicket down. At which level, Lauren Filer got here into the assault and clear bowled each Ellyse Perry and Tahlia McGrath, a second that Knight pinpointed as certainly one of her favorite reminiscences of enjoying the game.
“Certainly disappointment but I think really proud of how the girls have gone about these five days,” stated Knight. “I think it’s been a very entertaining Test match which has been great.
“Albeit we’re on the losing side, I think the fact that we’ve had five days has led to the great cricket that we’ve had. I’m proud of how we’ve tried to set out to entertain and inspire.
“I was just thinking back to the spell that Lauren [Filer] bowled before lunch yesterday and just had a little moment to kind of look around at the crowd getting really engaged. At that moment I was like ‘ah, can I bottle this? This is awesome.’”
This was the primary girls’s Test since 1992 to be performed throughout 5 days, a change that was vindicated because it gave a traditional match the possibility to breathe, with each groups compiling scores of 450+ within the first innings, earlier than the pitch started to disintegrate simply sufficient for the stability of powers to shift from these with bat in hand, to these with the ball.
Of whether or not the transfer to 5 days had been justified, Knight replied: “100 per cent. We were saying last night that if it was four days, it probably would have petered out and not been as entertaining as it was.
“I think the fact that there were two really big scores in the first innings meant that if it was a four day Test, that probably would have happened. Kate Cross actually joked to me at the end that it should have been a four-day Test, which was pretty funny from her.”
Defeat signifies that England must win 5 of the six white-ball matches with a purpose to regain the urn, a feat that might be difficult sufficient, even when they weren’t up in opposition to the reigning T20, ODI and Commonwealth Games champions in Australia. In all, going again to 2018, Australia have misplaced eight of their final 110 matches in a stretch of time that has seen England beat them simply twice.
The turnaround is fast, with the T20 collection beginning on Saturday.
“There will certainly be some tired bodies in both changing rooms,” stated Knight. “I think being able to decompress and let things go is really important. In my experience, I think probably the test match in Canberra in the last Ashes actually took quite a lot out of us as a side.
“But I think we’ll learn from that quite a lot. The fact that we have to turn things around quite quickly and it can’t be too much of a momentum shifter. We’ll have a couple of days off, Sophie [Ecclestone] will go play some golf I imagine and enjoy herself but we’ll regroup again Thursday afternoon and focus on that.”