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Tammy Beaumont shines with the bat as England claim victory and series lead over West Indies

Tammy Beaumont hits over the top for a boundary - GETTY IMAGES
Tammy Beaumont hits over the top for a boundary - GETTY IMAGES
  • England (163-8) beat West Indies (116-6) by 47 runs

A lot can change in 202 days. So much so that it is easy to forget that it can also stay exactly the same. The same as it once was when these two sides last met, all those many months ago. And so it was here when, on Monday evening in Derby, England comfortably defeated the tourists by 47 runs in a near replay of their 46-run win during the T20 World Cup earlier this year.

Bolstered by a Tammy Beaumont innings of 62, truly 360 degrees in nature, England stuttered and stumbled a bit before ultimately posting an imposing total of 163. It wasn’t always easy, and when the hosts lost four wickets for just 19 runs towards the back of their innings there was hope of a chase yet.

Because that’s what Twenty20, over any other format, has the ability to do. It gives you hope when it has no right. When you pluck a Beaumont scoop running back over your right shoulder, even though she’s already pummelled you for 10 boundaries. When you snaffle Nat Sciver, averaging almost 70 in the World Cup, for single figures, even though the power play has gone against you at eight runs an over. And even when, 10 overs into your reply and with only 42 runs on the board, you still have that hope, because Deandra Dottin is still in and she once scored a century off 38 balls.

We should have known from the start. But as Shamilia Connell charged in for the first ball, the anticipation, the long wait all behind us, that hope shone brightly. And then the ball careered towards first slip. Wide, and it didn’t get much better.

Danni Wyatt looked in form. Operating solely in the traditional 'v', she is a batter who is best at her simplest. Beaumont, playing, missing, and looking a little too clever with a miss-timed reverse sweep there, a miscued ramp here, settled in as junior partner. But when Wyatt fell in the last over of the power play for 17 off 11, it was Beaumont’s adaptability which England will be most heartened by.

In an earlier Beaumont incarnation she may have struggled to change gear, to step up to the senior role. Not here, not today. Heather Knight joined her, looking confident, meticulous at the crease, as though there hadn’t been a day’s pause between this and her last innings, let alone a couple of hundred. But when she went for 25 off 17, it left Beaumont to partner Amy Jones, her rival for the opener’s slot. The competition, the one-upmanship spurred them on, as Jones refused to let Beaumont take all the plaudits, elegantly working her way to 24 at a tidy strike rate of 150.

Sure, it was a bitty end by England, but these are mere details. The West Indies have exceeded 164 runs in a T20I innings on only five occasions, ever. Never against England. That slim hope, spurring us and the West Indies on, rested firmly on the shoulders of the only three West Indies batters to average 20 or more in this format.

Dottin is one of them, and after a hellish World Cup in which she mustered just 12 in three innings, she thrilled us for a time with 69 off 59, including the only two sixes in the West Indies’ innings. The difference, however, is that where England can afford to have just one batter post a hefty total and the others to work around her, the West Indies don’t have those reserves. Neither Hayley Matthews nor Stafanie Taylor, those two others with an average, or strike rate, to write home about, could step into double figures. Nor could anyone else; the West Indies’ second highest scorer was the extras, nobly posting 17.

England’s bowlers, like their batting, spread the load. A couple of wickets apiece to Sophie Ecclestone and Sciver, while Katherine Brunt took care of the economy, going for just eight from her allotted four overs. England are now a team operating collectively, smoothly, and trusting of each other. The West Indies, by contrast, are boom or bust and while this will keep alive the hope that maybe, at one point in this series, they might just pull it off, don’t bet on it.