Key events
Preamble
Jonathan Howcroft
Hello everybody and welcome to live OBO coverage of Australia v England in the women’s Ashes. Day three of the only Test match begins at 2:30pm local time (3:30am GMT).
It is scheduled to be the penultimate day of the series, but considering England’s wretched form it may yet turn out to be the curtain call. Australia will resume at 422/5, a lead of 252, already 30 runs greater than England’s highest total this lopsided summer.
Let’s begin with the positives: Australia’s appetite and conviction; Annabel Sutherland’s ton; Beth Mooney’s likely century; and the record aggregate crowd for a women’s Test. Ordinarily each would be cause for glowing headlines. But England have barely provided any opposition to the challenge offered by their hosts: the two big knocks benefited from multiple dropped catches, and the crowd would doubtless have been greater had this Test carried any jeopardy, instead of the Ashes been done and dusted with only white balls.
Raf Nicholson’s report from day two is superb, if at times harrowing reading, encapsulating England’s collective ineptitude.
Ecclestone, Filer and Ryana MacDonald-Gay beginning a competitive game of “who can produce the most tired misfield?” MacDonald-Gay put down a catch at cover off Ecclestone’s bowling; Ecclestone returned the favour by letting one slide through her hands at slip; Filer reached down to pick up the ball, let it through her legs, and back-kicked it halfway across the field. The winner of the competition? A late entrant, Maia Bouchier, who put down an absolute sitter at gully.
‘It’s not been the tour we wanted,’ Lauren Filer told the BBC. ‘We all know we’re better than this, we don’t need reminding.’
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