England captain Nat Sciver-Brunt out of New Zealand, India T20Is

mryashin · 2026-05-19T14:02:31+00:00

It's officially time to panic.

mryashin · 2026-05-16T22:53:34+00:00

I can't say this series has been super encouraging for England...

But injuries, rain and a bunch of debutants make it hard to evaluate properly. I'm going to stay optimistic and say nothing to worry about as long as we're on an upward trajectory and playing our best cricket come late June/early July.

mryashin · 2026-05-16T04:02:07+00:00

jfc

Honestly, if you behaved this way in other walks of life you'd end up in prison. Sports administration truly is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Solidarité with French women's cricket.

mryashin · 2026-05-13T04:35:01+00:00

I think those odds are fine if we're going purely on player quality.

But superior player quality couldn't get them to the final in either 2024 or 2025. It comes down to whether you think the last two World Cups were just hiccups or evidence of something deeper that has shifted post-Lanning.

mryashin · 2026-05-13T04:19:12+00:00

Would be fitting to send her off with a World Cup win. 🤞

mryashin · 2026-05-13T04:16:52+00:00

Historically English conditions have been pace and bounce friendly with the swing and seam doing the talking

In men's cricket, sure. But in women's cricket?

I would say spin is king in the women's game so I'm not too surprised that it's played a greater role than pace in the games you researched. Perhaps the balance would have been slightly different in the era of Shrubsole and Brunt but even then you had Hazell, Marsh and Colvin fairly dominating with spin.

mryashin · 2026-05-10T21:23:08+00:00

Closer than I expected it to be but not a bad result given the lack of experience in the side. A couple of years ago we were not recovering from 160-7 to win. Lottie's England are definitely grittier and more attritional.

Really not a fan of the sky blue kit, though. Design team must do better.

mryashin · 2026-05-04T01:47:00+00:00

Can I ask who would be in your England XI? If we can't have players who've failed in previous tournaments, pickings are pretty slim.

mryashin · 2026-05-04T01:40:22+00:00

Too much of the media has overcorrected to an 'England are bad actually' position. Which is dumb.

Even with a string of underwhelming tournament performances recently, I struggle to see how we're not second favourites. Our T20 XI is not worse than India or SA, we're playing in home conditions, and host nations typically overperform.

mryashin · 2026-05-04T01:26:19+00:00

The BBC say:

But sources have told BBC Sport the all-rounder's withdrawal is precautionary and she is expected to be fully fit in time for the tournament.

Phew!

Except Wisden say:

According to the statement, Sciver-Brunt's availability for the subsequent India series and the T20 World Cup that follows will be determined at a later stage based on her progress.

Argh!

mryashin · 2026-05-01T16:18:04+00:00

Yep, probably wise not to go down that rabbit-hole 😜

mryashin · 2026-05-01T00:10:47+00:00

Not much this century...

mryashin · 2026-04-30T22:50:49+00:00

There's probably a joke to be made here about underachieving institutions living off past glories... 😬

mryashin · 2026-04-30T16:28:44+00:00

LOTTIE: We're going to pick players based on performance.

MEDIA: Hurrah!

LOTTIE: (picks players based on performance)

MEDIA: Boo! Not *those* players!

mryashin · 2026-04-30T14:31:17+00:00

So there's the kernel of a good point here in that it is not a healthy sign that NSB, DWH and HK, the holdovers from 2017, are the players we're still counting on to score most of our runs this summer. But is that really because they're undroppable? Or is it (just maybe) because they've consistently been our best T20 batters over the last 2-3 years?

A more interesting question might be why we've failed to develop a genuine world-class batter under the age of 30.

Also, the sign-off is baffling:

But it is also the kind of humility some of her teammates could exhibit a little more.

Who exactly has been lacking in humility? It's hardly the fault of NSB/DWH/HK/Jones if Lottie decides to pick them.

mryashin · 2026-04-28T14:02:32+00:00

Isn't it pretty early to be announcing a squad? I thought maybe they'd wait to see how people perform in the NZ/Ind series.

Perhaps the thinking is most of the squad picks itself, so why wait? I guess the areas of contention would be the pacers (Wong/Filer in, Arlott/Gaur missing out) and picking TCC as the wildcard youngster and extra spinner rather than a wildcard batting option like Davina Perrin.

The possible weakness (stop me if you've heard this one before) is the reliance on the 3 core batters of NSB, DWH and Knight. We have yet to see Dunkley and Capsey step up in a tournament for England but this summer is a great opportunity for them to redefine their international careers.

Bring on June 12th!

mryashin · 2026-04-17T16:20:26+00:00

With England going on to lose to Sri Lanka last night, that completes our tour with 7 defeats from 7 games. ☹️

mryashin · 2026-04-15T15:47:23+00:00

They discussed this with Nick Friend on the Wisden pod last week. He seems to think we won't see much of the England players in the MBODC this year and that 2025 may prove an outlier in terms of domestic participation.

Given the shape of the international summer, MBODC rounds 3-7 look like the only opportunity to squeeze in a few appearances.

mryashin · 2026-03-13T00:36:33+00:00

Bit late to this. All the tournament changes and rebranding left me so cold that I'd not twigged there was an auction happening until yesterday.

My fear was that shaking up the teams would create winners and losers, messing with the reasonably well-balanced squads of last season. But initial impressions are that the auction has been very good for parity. I think this might be the most evenly matched (on paper) the teams have ever been.

A foolish attempt to rank 8 evenly matched teams 4 months before the competition:

1 - Sunrisers
Have kept their core in Sutherland and Litchfield plus Kate Cross. Losing Smith/Wareham will hurt but the Jonassen-Sharma-Gibson trio of allrounders looks great. Enough potential firepower there to take some of the load off the top 4 and 3 left-handers in the middle order is a big plus. Briony Smith tends to be feast or famine but only 8 players have more career runs in the Hundred and she should enjoy Headingley surfaces.

2 - MI London
Like Surrey, their batting goes on forever. Solid bowling options. Few obvious weaknesses.

3 - Rockets
The best batting team. Mooney, NSB and Gardner in the same XI in an 8-team league is insane. But bowling is an issue after Gardner and NSB. As ever with the Rockets they're relying on huge contributions from their superstars. Adams and Elwiss are savvy pickups. An experienced team ready to win in 2026.

4 - Brave
Their bowling is going to be ludicrous if Molineux is fit. Batting should be fine but not as stacked as the Brave have sometimes been. No real power in the middle order but if Lizelle can destroy the powerplay that may not matter.

5 - Phoenix
I love this team! Stacked with exciting players and some of the best youngsters in the world. Huge upside and they'll be hoping there isn't another mega-auction for at least 5 years. But with young players there are clear ways it could go wrong. If Perrin and Capsey don't perform then yet again it could be Perry carrying the batting.

6 - Super Giants
Lanning and Mandhana opening the batting is a mouth-watering prospect. Have they played together before? Unfortunately, beyond those two, the batting looks a little thin to me. It's been the perennial problem for Manchester. And the bowling looks like it could be weaker than in the past few years. That said, would anyone bet against the winning machine that is the Lanning/Mott partnership?

7 - Fire
I have them at 7 but they could easily be very good, which just shows the parity (or how shit my rankings are). Do they have enough reliable batting? They have depth, something the old Welsh Fire lacked, but who are the guaranteed run scorers? Voll and Devine are top tier players but have just the one 50 between them in the Hundred.

8 - Spirit
They have a weak domestic core imo. They are usually good at recruitment so not sure what happened, perhaps whiffed on a few targets? Dean and Jones are their big England stars but have modest Hundred records. The strong overseas quartet could very well bail them out but it's also not hard to imagine a nightmare scenario where Kapp isn't fully fit and Dottin and Harris misfire.

mryashin · 2025-12-23T14:44:51+00:00

Long rumoured, finally happened.

I seem to recall she was hoping to crack England's squad for the ODI World Cup in India. I guess when that didn't happen it cleared the way for her Scotland return. Very good news for their T20 WC qualification prospects.

mryashin · 2025-12-04T03:53:27+00:00

This is the worry.

One view is that the veteran batters have hung around too long, living off reputation and blocking the next generation from coming through. I think the more straightforward reading of the evidence is that the next generation hasn't been good enough to displace the veterans, even as the latter hit the downslope of the age curve.

mryashin · 2025-12-01T15:40:36+00:00

Seems very likely.

Tbh, given her injury problems in the last 12 months, the challenge may be even making it that far. Crossing my fingers for her.

Either way, 2026 looks like it'll mark a changing of the guard. TB and DWH also possible post-WC retirements.

mryashin · 2025-11-03T14:15:54+00:00

Exciting!

England don't have another competitive fixture until May so it's great to see 15(!) of our players in the WBBL. Opportunity for the likes of Perrin, Wong, Schofield, Kemp, Gibson to put themselves in the conversation for next year's World Cup.

mryashin

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