England secure first win over India in nail-biting finish at the Oval

The scene at the Oval felt familiar. Flashing minds back to the summer of 2023, The Oval was the last hope if England wanted any chance at all of keeping the Ashes alive. The steaks albeit much lower this time around, with India’s eyes confidently (and rightly so) on a series win, perhaps a clean sweep. The pressure was firmly on England.

Credit: England Cricket

Batting has been the obvious weakness for England with scores of scores 157/7 and 113 all out so far this series. This makes it even more remarkable that the XI included five front line bowlers, especially when Maia Bouchier had joined up with the squad as Nat Sciver-Brunt was ruled out. Paige Scholfield was the ‘replacement’ with Issy Wong also coming into the side.  In this case, you just have to trust Charlotte Edwards.

England’s tagline to advertise the series: ‘Wack it like Wyatt Hodge’ a cricket version of the infamous ‘Bend it like Beckham’ film hadn’t quite worked out with the 34-yrar-old scoring 0 and 1 respectively. At her home ground she did ‘ wack it’ but she also found plenty of luck, a consequence of some contagious fielding errors from India. On 17, Wyatt-Hodge was dropped by Jemimah Rodrigues, then inside the ring on 24; not to mention the close chance of a run out at the start of her innings.

However, the partnership between Dunkley and the aforementioned Wyatt-Hodge at the top of the order looked unrecognisable from the par that have barely survived an over in the first two matches. The pair mustered an 137-run partnership before Dunkley was caught and bowled by Deepti Sharma.

From a Surrey perfective, it was a decent advert for their batting department, England’s top four donning the Three Feathers at county level. They will perhaps want to ignore the quick dismissal of Surrey product Alice Capsey.

Arundhati Reddy proved instrumental in her final over taking three quick wickets to stem England’s runs. Momentum was crushed. It was quite the definition of collapse as England’s wickets fell within the final 5 overs of the game, losing 8 wickets for just 33 runs after Dunkley departed.

Chasing 172, India came out with the typical flair they’ve shown throughout the series. Shafali Verma’s 47 from 24 was indicative of the fashion in which this India team wants to play. Ironically, this style of cricket is the ‘fearless cricket’ former England head coach Jon Lewis had envisioned under his tenure.

England just about kept themselves in the game managing to dismiss the dangerous Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues. Agonisingly, dropped catches were the most dominant theme of the night (although Lauren Bell has to be credited for her spectacular one-handed take…as she dived over the boundary and it went for 6. Charlie Dean was quite literally England’s superhero, diving to her right on the boundary to dismiss Richa Gosh – in the penultimate over.

In the field, with the ball and the bat it was below England’s ‘standard’ but somehow it was enough. Dealing with pressure has been a stumbling block for England but when India needed 12 from the final over, the side led by Tammy Beaumont got the job done.

Mirroring that day at the Oval in the summer of 2023, England won. They kept the series alive once more. The celebrations from England showed a team who were hungry for a win, desperate to forget the ghosts of their pasts in Nottingham and Bristol.