In today’s newsletter: a tree that has provided for the game over hundreds of years is now protecting it for the futureIn those dog days of late June, when it was too hot to do anything but count down the hours until the sun went down, sport frazzled as well. Horse races were cancelled, a guest village provided shade at the Wimbledon qualifiers, and all around the UK school activities were wiped out, from sports days to the national rounders tournament.At the third Test at Trent Bridge, where England’s men were playing New Zealand in what turned out to be Ben Stokes’s last hurrah, the England and Wales Cricket Board pressed the button on their extreme heat policy and did what they could to protect players and crowd from temperatures that an open ground in the Midlands was not built to deal with. Continue reading...
[Cricket | The Guardian : Mon, 06 Jul 2026 10:03:51 GMT]
Sophie Molineux was a left-field pick as captain and the transition has not been seamless but nothing shuts down criticism like a World Cup winPlayers in the Australian women’s cricket team are not accustomed to being without at least one of the two global trophies. Many moons ago, there was a gap of 11 months after they bombed in the semi-finals of both tournaments in 2009, but they fixed that with the next edition of the T20 competition in 2010. Their longest wait was 16 months between the semi-final ambush by Harmanpreet Kaur in 2017 and the T20 win in Antigua the following year. The third and final gap ended on Sunday at Lord’s, eight whole months since Australia lost their one-day title in India last November.This is what passes for scarcity in Australian terms: a lost semi-final in the T20 tournament in 2024, and another in the one-day version in 2025. Beth Mooney, a player who before this victory had already won four World Cups and Commonwealth Games gold, said of her build-up that she “just woke up in the morning pretty grateful we made it this far.” Having presumably filled in her gratitude journal, she proceeded to make 64 from 49 balls to wrap up the voting on player of the match and player of the tournament. Continue reading...
[Cricket | The Guardian : Sun, 05 Jul 2026 21:38:25 GMT]
Captain broke down in tears after Australia defeat‘I tried to do everything I could … I’m really proud’England’s captain, Nat Sciver-Brunt, said she hoped this would not be her last World Cup, after England lost the T20 final by seven wickets at Lord’s on Sunday.England were outplayed by a classy Australia side, led by a half-century from Beth Mooney, and an emotional Sciver-Brunt broke down in tears as she reflected on the match. Continue reading...
[Cricket | The Guardian : Sun, 05 Jul 2026 21:30:52 GMT]
The Lord’s final turned into a green and gold procession but the Women’s T20 World Cup has been a resounding successThe DJ sensed the writing on the wall by the end of Australia’s power play. The melancholy strains of Adele warbled around Lord’s as Phoebe Litchfield and Beth Mooney swigged their drinks. Sixty-two for one read the scoreboard. Only yesterday was the time of our lives.English cricket had wanted to go where the Red Roses and the Lionesses rampaged in 2025. And they did nearly everything right in the buildup. It’s just that no one told the ruthless opposition, who won the toss and said “have a bat”. Continue reading...
[Cricket | The Guardian : Sun, 05 Jul 2026 19:42:48 GMT]