Posted by It’s amazing to think that this week brought England’s first Test win since 2014 and even more amazing to think they haven’t beaten South Africa since 2003. The amazement then takes on a slightly different hue when you learn that they’ve also preserved their unbeaten record against the same opposition. Women’s Test statistics sometimes benefit from a bit of context.
The best way of presenting that context would be to say that the Test history between these two nations amounts to one four-match series in 1960, a two-match series in 2003, a one-off Test in 2022 and this one.
Maia Bouchier now stands eighth on the all-time list of English run scorers against South Africa, even though she’s only played one match and made a duck in the second innings. Nat Sciver-Brunt is top with two hundreds from three innings.
Sciver-Brunt and captain Heather Knight also soar up England’s all-time list for most Test victories having both now played a part in two. Molly Hide’s record of seven Test wins between 1934 and 1954 is probably safe for a good while though (although there is actually another England Test scheduled in 2025).
As far as the still-unchanged record for most South Africa Test wins goes, let’s just say that’s shared by 11 players.
(Yet) another Test
It’s not quite the same situation for England’s men, who played 17 Test matches in 2024 – two more than Hide played in her entire career.
Joe Root’s 1,556 runs this year would be enough for fourth place in England women’s list of all-time Test run scorers. Gus Atkinson’s 52 scalps would put him third on the wicket-takers list, ahead of Katherine Sciver-Brunt, whose Test career spanned 18 years.
It’s a different game really. New Zealand didn’t really seem ready to play cricket immediately after their series win over India, shelling an honestly rather unseemly number of chances in the first Test. By the third, they were up and running, at which point England – an unlikely series victory now in the bag – looked like they were already pondering what in-flight meals might be in store for them.
Ben Stokes has been given a mathematical lesson in the dangers of giving 110% within a schedule like this. These days he is only really an all-rounder in fits and starts. A lot of the time it is the mere notion that he could again become one that keeps him in the Test team with his claim for a place as a specialist batter a little questionable based on this year’s returns (602 runs at 28.66).
His team has done well to stand still this year after shedding a new ball bowling attack and a couple of wicketkeepers. Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse and Jamie Smith have all improved the side to our eyes. Stasis has however been maintained by regression in other areas.
Shoaib Bashir doesn’t yet look like the next R Ashwin and a couple of batters – including the captain – aren’t really pulling their weight. To pick the most obvious example, Zak Crawley, with his average of 30.51, is now just one match away from having played twice as many Tests as any woman in the history of the game.
Last orders
At the start of this New Zealand tour, we generously and not-at-all-awkwardly invited you to buy us a pint for covering the series as a new, low commitment way to help fund the site. Being as the tour’s now over, we will soon be calling time.
The Border-Gavaskar bar will of course remain open, but you’ve only got a day or two to secure the two peculiar AI images associated with New Zealand v England pint-buying. The same goes for monthly subscribers, who are also entitled to these great works.
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