Heather Knight, England’s captain, has conceded the umpires made the correct call in taking the players off the field for rain with just five balls of the second T20I remaining, even though that denied her the chance to hunt down the 18 runs still needed to keep her side in with a chance of a squared Ashes series.Knight was going strong on 43 not out from 19 balls, having just struck Annabel Sutherland’s first ball of the final over for four, when umpires Ben Treloar and Eloise Sheridan decided the rain in Canberra – which had already caused a 20-minute mid-innings delay – was too heavy to ignore. She was visibly furious as she left the field, but later admitted her reaction was pure “frustration” at being denied the chance to “do something special”.“It was right decision by the umpires,” Knight said. “I was really in the zone to try and win us that game, and obviously frustrated that we were going off, but it wasn’t at the umpires at all. It was pretty wet, even when we were running it felt pretty slippy and it was quite hard to attack those twos. So yeah, it was the right decision, 100%.”The match was called off minutes later to confirm England’s defeat by six runs on Duckworth-Lewis-Stern, and hand the Australians an unassailable 10-0 lead in the Ashes points table, with the third T20I to come in Adelaide on Saturday, followed by next week’s one-off Test at the MCG.“It was brilliant game of cricket,” Knight said, after England had finished on 168 for 4 in reply to Australia’s 185 for 5. “I felt like I could get us over the line. I felt really set, and I had some really good boundary options on a very good cricket wicket. It was an awesome crowd and they deserved a finish, and you could hear the frustration from the fans that that we were going off, and the game wasn’t able to reach its conclusion.”Related
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Despite being England’s fifth consecutive defeat of a dispiriting campaign, Knight said she was proud that her team had showed a “bit of mongrel” in what she identified as their best batting performance of the tour. With Danni Wyatt-Hodge leading the way with 52 from 40 balls, England had been ahead of the DLS rate until a break in play at 69 for 1 allowed Australia to regroup and claim two key wickets in a middle-overs squeeze.“As a batting group, we’ve been disappointed that we haven’t showed off our best cricket, and I think tonight was certainly our best,” Knight said. “We knew it was going to be tough and a lot had to go our way, but I’m really proud of the way we fought in the run-chase. We showed some brilliant skill level, brilliant intent, brilliant fighting spirit, led by Danni in particular, to try and get us over the line.”The “mongrel” comment itself stemmed from a pre-match pep-talk from Courtney Winfield-Hill, England’s assistant coach, and on the face of it, seemed to mark a departure from the team’s familiar mantra of “inspire and entertain”, a notion that has sounded increasingly hollow with each new loss on this tour. Knight, however, insisted that the team’s recognition of their status as role models remained integral to their ethos, even though she acknowledged that professional cricket is ultimately a results business.“It’s still a mantra that is really important to this team,” she said. “We’re always at our best when we’re trying to take the game on and enjoy it, but obviously, there’s more to cricket than that, and we know that it’s not as simple as just saying we want to entertain. We also want to win at the end of the day.“We haven’t done that this trip, and there’s a lot of players frustrated and hurting that we haven’t done that. We all really care about playing for England, and representing a team that’s really special.”Despite the improved performance, and her own contribution with the bat, Knight acknowledged that the confirmation of England’s Ashes loss would heighten the scrutiny on her position as captain after nine years at the helm.“I guess in any leadership position, you always feel the responsibility when the teams aren’t performing well and we haven’t performed as well as we want to, across the board,” she said. “It’s certainly frustrating, but that’s not really a question for now. I’m just focused on what we need to do to try and win the next game, and try and turn things around. Whatever happens at the end of the tour, that’ll be a conversation for later.”