Heather Knight walks of the field after getting out in the second ODI against Australia 2025

Charlie Dean faced up to Alana King’s last over in Melbourne on Tuesday (January 14), with England needing less than five runs an over to reach their 180-run target.

England were six wickets down, with Amy Jones at the other end, and the game in the balance. It’s the kind of situation Dean has shown skill in before. When England were 91-6 in the second ODI in South Africa two months ago, Dean played an innings that was the difference between England being bowled out for just over a hundred, and getting up to what could have been a defendable total. She finished unbeaten on 47, her highest score in the format.

In Melbourne, however, having blocked out three overs, she attempted to scoop King’s first delivery, getting a top-edge which ballooned to Beth Mooney running around from slip. It was the defining shot of England’s defeat. Sophie Ecclestone was out to King’s next ball and the innings ended in dismal circumstances when Jones failed to take a single off the final ball of the 48th over, leaving Lauren Bell to be cleaned up by the following delivery.

However, judging by Heather Knight’s post-match comments, it was what preceded Dean’s dismissal which was more concerning to the England hierarchy.

The 36-run partnership between Jones and Alice Capsey for England’s sixth wicket came at a strike rate of less than 50. At the point they came together, England needed 97 more runs to win with 27 overs to get them, two wickets having gone down in the previous six overs. To the watcher, that stand looked like the point in the innings at which England were most likely to win the match. At no point did the required run rate creep up to more than 4.5 an over, while all the time Australia’s most potent threat, their spinners, were ticking down their overs.

Speaking to BBC TMS after the defeat, however, Knight had a different perspective. “I feel like it was there for the taking,” she said. “We need to be braver with the bat. Amy [Jones] was great at keeping us in the game. She was trying to face the majority of the balls and picking up boundaries when she could. Amy got us close but unfortunately just not close enough. We’re really close. We just need to do a few things better in a few areas, and we need to be braver with the bat.”

To identify a lack of bravery as the defining factor in England’s defeat is striking, but in keeping with England’s philosophy since Jon Lewis took over. In an interview at the start of his tenure as head coach in 2022, Lewis set out his philosophy. “My perception from the outside was that sometimes the team plays a little safe,” Lewis said in an interview with ESPNcricinfo. “Sometimes there’s a little caution, especially in pressure moments of big games. I’ll be encouraging the team to walk towards the danger, so to speak, and actually say, ‘okay, in those moments, who’s brave enough and who’s courageous enough to take the game on?’”

Leaving aside whether that approach is right in general, it feels redundant in this instance. This wasn’t a pitch which rewarded risk-taking, or a situation which required it. Several of the England top order’s dismissals demonstrated how hard it was to take on the bowling. Maia Bouchier was caught looking to go over the leg side, and Nat Sciver-Brunt was out backing away from her stumps and giving a catch to cover. Equally, Australia had shown before England that attacking was going to be difficult on a surface giving ample assistance to the spinners.

Rather than taking the run-rate out of the equation by attempting to score faster, the actual target should have been the salient factor in England’s decision-making. When Capsey was dismissed, England needed 61 runs from 90 balls - a required run rate of just over four an over. That run rate only became a factor in the result of the game once England had lost so many wickets that Jones was forced to turn down singles in order to face as many balls as possible. Had there been more wickets to play with, Jones would have been able to rotate the strike and stay with the required rate without trying to deal in boundaries for the majority of each over.

Further, the point in the innings when England looked most secure was when Capsey and Jones were together. They picked up singles at the most challenging time to bat, while the pitch was ragging and Australia’s spinners had plenty of overs in hand. Another few overs, and the equation would have become an overwhelmingly simple one for England, and a dire one for Australia.

The question is then, what prompted Dean’s shot? Given Knight’s post-match comments, it’s easy to imagine England’s players sitting in the dressing room, frustrated at how those in the middle were approaching it. Perhaps they would have preferred the match be over and done with quickly, particularly with a player like Capsey at the crease. It’s not unfeasible in that environment, that Dean would’ve looked to counter-attack when she came into bat, instead of continuing to chip away, and tick the runs off one by one.

Capsey gave a different assessment than Knight in her post-match press conference. “We could have put the bowlers off their lines and lengths a little bit more,” said Capsey. “But in that situation, how we thought best to play the situation was to play the ball on merit. We knew that we were going to get balls to rotate the strike, and we knew that we were going to get some bad balls as well to punish… So I didn’t think that we needed to over complicate things.”

Knight’s assertion of a lack of bravery complicates things in itself. It shows an inability to adapt to the situation above committing to the style England want to embody on the field. Capsey’s role at No.7 is usually viewed as a player who will come in to either finish an innings or counter-attack, similar to her role at No.3 in the T20I side. In Melbourne, she played outside of her usual character to build a counter-attack of a different kind. The value of that kind of innings should have been felt more when it was over, but instead, it’s been hinted to as the reason England lost.

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