Tammy Beaumont stars to leave women’s Ashes Test hanging in the balance

• Tammy Beaumont scored England’s highest ever score in a women’s Test match
• She hit 208 as England finished 10 runs short of Australia’s first innings total
• Australia made a strong start to their second innings in the day’s final session

It is a record that has stood since 1935 but Tammy Beaumont effortlessly went past it on her way to the first double hundred by an England woman on an historic day at Trent Bridge.

England were playing New Zealand at Christchurch in only the fourth ever women’s Test when Betty Snowball made 189 in 222 minutes in victory by a mere innings and 337 runs.

That was a world record individual score which stood for 50 years and an English best for 88 until Beaumont hit Australia for a majestic 208 on Saturday in a marathon display that has given her side an outside hope of an unlikely victory in this Ashes Test.

What an effort from Beaumont and what a day for English women’s cricket at the start of this multi-format Ashes series on this famous old ground.

When the 32-year-old opener guided Annabel Sutherland to third man for four just before tea she had gone past a mark set by a keeper-batter in Burnley-born Snowball who also played squash and lacrosse for Scotland, her father’s country.

And when she steered Sutherland to fine leg for a single after the interval Beaumont had made just the eighth double hundred in women’s Test cricket and the first in an Ashes since Ellyse Perry at Sydney in 2017. It was also the fifth highest score by any woman.

She greeted it with a roar and a punch in the air as a 7,000 strong crowd at Trent Bridge, many of them wearing red in support of the Ruth Strauss Foundation, acclaimed one of the most significant moments in English women’s Test history.

It was Beaumont’s second double hundred in a week, too, after she flayed Australia A for 201 off 238 balls as England made 510 in a day in a productive warm-up performance.

‘I didn’t know about the record at all,’ said Beaumont afterwards. ‘When I heard it announced to the crowd Sophie Ecclestone wanted to give me a hug and I was like ‘no, we’re not done yet’. I guess I was just in the zone and thinking about the game situation.

‘But if you’re going to get a double hundred you might as well celebrate properly. I’ve tried to stay calm and not show any emotion for two days but when I got that single to get to 200 it all came out.’

By the time Beaumont become the last English batter to fall, missing a weary sweep at Ash Gardner, she had faced 331 balls, all but carried her bat and been on the field for every ball to that point of the first three days of this first five-day women’s Test in England.

More importantly, she had taken England to within 10 of Australia’s formidable 473 to make this effectively a one-innings match on a flat Trent Bridge pitch with four points for victory up for grabs over the last two days.

Australia took advantage of a tired England seam attack to race to 82 without loss by the close, Kate Cross damaging her finger in spilling a low return catch from Phoebe Litchfield, and it may come down to whether they will declare on Sunday to try to set up a positive result or settle for a draw ahead of six white-ball matches.

Beaumont insisted England, channelling their inner-Bazball, will be up for a chase. ‘I can’t see why we won’t go for a target,’ she added. ‘The pitch is still good to bat on. There are runs out there to get and we want to push ourselves to get a result. Nobody came here for a draw so if they set us a target I think we’ll be giving it a fair old crack.’

This was not quite a flawless exhibition from Beaumont. She hit Alana King into her boot and into the hands of short leg on 61 on day two but Anna Harris thought the ball had struck the ground and neither Australia nor the umpires felt the need for a review.

Then Sue Redfearn gave Beaumont out yesterday on 152, lbw missing a sweep off King, but technology found that just enough of the ball, barely more than half of it, had pitched outside leg-stump to reprieve the England opener.

No matter. This was a sublime display from Beaumont, who found willing accomplices in Nat Sciver-Brunt and Test debutant Danni Wyatt in her mission to take England as close to first innings parity as possible to this machine of an Australian team.

Sciver-Brunt was also wrongly given out lbw, this time by Harris off the first ball of the third day from Darcie Brown, but survived on review and went on to make 78 with 12 fours in a partnership of 137 with Beaumont.

Then after Sophia Dunkley had struggled in making just nine off 51 balls before being bowled by Gardner, Wyatt showed why she had been given a red-ball debut 13 years after the first of her 245 white-ball appearances for England.

Wyatt was chosen here to play her natural attacking game, with England coach Jon Lewis a big Bazball advocate, and responded by hitting an enterprising 44 in a stand of 72 with a batter in Beaumont who has not played T20 cricket for her country since being left out of last year’s Commonwealth Games.

That might change for the three T20 Ashes games that follow but for now Beaumont can be content with the dominate role in England’s biggest Ashes score against Australia.

Whether it brings victory remains to be seen and England will be heavily reliant on the spin of Sophie Ecclestone today if they are to bowl Australia out, take the declaration out of the equation and give themselves enough time to win on Monday.

For now it is all to play for thanks to Beaumont’s moment of history.