England’s captain Heather Knight says England face a “tough” battle to win the Ashes but urged her team to “keep believing” after Australia won a clean sweep of the ODIs with an 86-run victory at Hobart which leaves the hosts 6-0 up on points.
England now need to win all three of the T20s (worth two points apiece), and the one-off Test (worth four points), to win back the Ashes. However, Knight said they would take inspiration from their performance at home in 2023, when they fought back from losing the Test and the first T20 to draw the series 8-8.
“It’s going to be tough,” Knight said. “But we’ve been here before – the last Ashes series was 6-0 and we were able to turn things around. We’re still alive, we’re still in it and we’ve got to keep believing.”
England pulled out their best performance of the series, reducing Australia to 59 for four and reaching parity at the halfway stage of the run-chase, but were unable to deliver the killer blow with ball or bat.
“We need to keep our composure,” Knight said. “Those key moments when the game has been on the line, they’ve seemed to be able to cope with them really well. We haven’t been able to seize the moment and hammer down any advantage.”
Ash Gardner, who scored her first international century on Friday, said that the win had put Australia “in the box seat” to retain the Ashes. “We can take a lot of confidence with what we’ve done,” she added. “I’d imagine England don’t have as much confidence as we do. We should relish that.”
Knight, meanwhile, revealed that Kate Cross had been “really close” to playing in the Hobart match, but that the England management had decided not to risk a flare-up of her back injury, instead opting to prioritise her fitness for the MCG Test which begins on 30 January.
Cross will now take part in a Test match training camp alongside Tammy Beaumont and Ryana MacDonald-Gay, while the rest of the squad move to Sydney for the T20s. “Having a change of format will be really good for us,” Knight said. “T20 cricket is one of our best formats and that little reset will do us some good.”
