England slumped from 68 for 2 and 120 for 5 to be bowled out 21 short of Australia’s 180. Their shot selection and execution was so woeful that Australia could afford to drop four catches and still win.
Jones had a free-hit off the final ball of the 48th over, which had to be bowled by Tahlia McGrath because Annabel Sutherland was removed from the attack for bowling two high full tosses in the over. Jones skied a ball to deep square and did not run, either forgetting it was the last ball of the over or forgetting it was a free-hit.
That left No.11 Lauren Bell on strike at the start of the 49th over. Bell had survived 15 balls for one run but could not keep out her 16th as Megan Schutt rattled her off stump to seal Australia’s victory.
But Knight was supportive of Jones in the aftermath, suggesting the rest of the batting needed to be braver.
“It’s frustrating,” Knight told BBC TMS. “I feel like it was there for the taking. The wickets cost us. We need to be braver with the bat.
“Amy 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 need to be braver with the bat.”
Capsey was asked whether she and Jones could have taken calculated risks to spread the field more as Australia kept extra fielders in the ring to apply pressure.
“Potentially, we could have put the bowlers off their lines and lengths a little bit more,” Capesy said. “That’s something that we’ll have to reflect on. 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. The difference between balls and runs required were big enough that, especially for me and Jonesy anyway, when we’re reacting to the ball instinctively and just playing the ball on merit, that’s us at our best.
“So I didn’t think that we needed to over complicate things. In that situation, if we lost an extra wicket or too early, then maybe we get criticised for taking an extra shot too early. So in that situation, it’s kind of a no-win.”
Capsey believes England can bounce back despite only having two days to prepare before Friday’s third ODI in Hobart.
“There’ll be a lot of reflection, there’ll be a lot of disappointment tonight,” Capsey said. “But as soon as we kind of get back into our plans and reflecting and seeing what we could have done better, analysing it all … once we get to Hobart it’s a new day and we go again and we go at them, go at them just as hard as we can, and just keep trying to focus on ourselves. We can’t control what they do, but what we can do is we can control how we plan, how we prepare and what we want to do when we go on to the pitch.”
Alex Malcolm is an associate editor at ESPNcricinfo
