Nottinghamshire’s Jenny Gunn became England Women’s all-time leading wicket taker in the first of three NatWest Women’s International matches at Lord’s yesterday.
Despite Gunn reaching this milestone, Australia claimed a 27-run victory after impressing with both bat and ball. The tourists posted 203-8, Meg Lanning top-scoring with 56. Katherine Brunt took 3-29 and Laura Marsh 2-27.
Charlotte Edwards led the chase, scoring 61 before nicking a delivery from spinner Erin Osborne to keeper Jodie Fields, leaving England on 142-4. Heather Knight’s 25 and Sarah Taylor’s 22 were the only other England scores above ten, as Jess Jonassen returned limited-overs best figures of 4-38, and Osborne finished with 3-39.
The victory means that Australia lead the series with 4 points to England’s 2, with ten available from the remaining ODIs and T20s in the Women’s Ashes Series.
Laura Marsh said: “At the half way mark we were very confident with the run chase and set a good platform at the start, but unfortunately lost some key wickets at crucial times.
“We need to step up and take responsibility, there were some good contributions at the top of the order but I think we can all hold our hands up and say we can do much better than that.
“Katherine Brunt led the attack well and everyone contributed with the ball which was great. We would back ourselves to chase that total and everyone is very disappointed. We will assess what went wrong but we will also take the positives, we bowled really well and we’ll be looking to move on to Hove and perform much better there on Friday.”