Make no mistake, however, England got away with one.<\/p>\n
Their spinners were superb again – claiming 9-116 in 37.4 overs – but familiar frailties emerged with the bat and the sight of coach Charlotte Edwards laughing and celebrating Knight’s third reprieve with a double fist pump in the changing room was a curious one.<\/p>\n
Had England lost, it is likely we would have seen quite a few more replays of it, particularly considering the gulf between these two teams and the sticky situation that her side were in.<\/p>\n
England’s batting weakness against spin has been well documented, but in ODIs they had started to make promising progress since the Alana King-dominated Ashes.<\/p>\n
They are averaging a fraction under 35 per wicket against spin in the format this year, an improvement from 31.19 in 2024 and 25.59 the year before.<\/p>\n
Other important factors include that this particular game saw the most deliveries of spin bowled in a Women’s World Cup match, and the pitch offered the most turn of any game in the tournament so far. Batting was difficult, but it is a 50-over World Cup in India – it was always going to be tough, and England will need to adapt quickly.<\/p>\n
Amy Jones and Tammy Beaumont were exposed by Marufa’s swing, both trapped lbw playing across the line. Nat Sciver-Brunt miscued a full toss, Sophia Dunkley got a marginal lbw decision but was trapped on the crease and Emma Lamb – batting outside of the top three for the first time in her professional 50-over career – chipped to mid-on.<\/p>\n
But again Knight led the way, putting her favoured sweeps away as she scratched around to begin with, but with confidence came a little more flair, a use of the feet and the ball started to find the middle of the bat.<\/p>\n
“We’ll learn a lot from the experience. It was really tough conditions out there and they bowled brilliantly,” Knight said.<\/p>\n
“I haven’t had a huge amount of time in the middle with the injury, so I am just finding my feet.<\/p>\n
“But I know playing spin is a real strength of mine, I know I’ve got different options based on the conditions, and for me it was about being really precise on what ball I was going to attack and which I would defend.<\/p>\n
“When I did get into that rhythm, I was just really precise with my footwork and had a really clear gameplan, trying to sweep on line and use my feet to different bowlers to hit hard down the ground.”<\/p>\n
This time, England did overcome the pressure, with Knight’s luck and heroics to thank.<\/p>\n
Back in the ranks, and back in the runs. No longer the captain, but always a leader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Make no mistake, however, England got away with one. Their spinners were superb again – claiming 9-116 in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-184027","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}