Beth Mooney’s speciality has always been pacing an innings, so one might decide it was a smart example of that to reach stumps on day two on 98 not out. If you make a hundred on the same day as someone else’s bigger one, your effort will be overlooked. Instead of living in the shadow of Annabel Sutherland’s 163, Mooney returned on day three to notch her first Test century all on her own.
It wasn’t an easy hop from 98 to 100, with even the normally cool wicketkeeper-bat fraying as the England spinner Sophie Ecclestone teased at the thread. A ball past the outside edge, a running mix-up narrowly averted, beaten again, then finally a drive to find the two runs she needed, the milestone raised in the first over of the day.
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Given that Mooney is Australia’s most reliable bat, the banker for any situation in any format, it seems strange that it has taken this long for her to complete the set: the first Australian woman to make centuries in all three formats. But that’s what can happen when opportunity doesn’t knock: in nine years playing for Australia, this is her eighth Test. Despite crossing 50 in four of the previous seven, the bad-luck ball has always come along.
It’s a situation that is common in the women’s game. Meg Lanning and Rachael Haynes never made a Test hundred either. Alyssa Healy, Ash Gardner, Tahlia McGrath still haven’t. Back through the years, nor did Alex Blackwell, Shelley Nitschke, Lisa Keightley, Zoe Goss, Lyn Larsen, Sharon Tredrea or Debbie Wilson. Ability cannot always win through when the chance to exercise it is so sporadic.
Briefly after Mooney’s moment, England looked like a team that had remembered how to play. With Australia unsure whether to swing or stay at close to 300 ahead, Ecclestone and Lauren Filer got on line and wickets fell. Five for nine to end the innings, then after Maia Bouchier lost her middle stump to a Darcie Brown beauty, Tammy Beaumont and Heather Knight batted without trouble for 26 overs and made a draw at least enter the mind as a distant possibility.
That late Australian batting didn’t reflect their tenet of ruthlessness, opting not to command the course of the game with a declaration while giving up wickets that would have mildly lifted English spirits. You can understand, given the rarity, wanting to give everyone the experience of walking out to bat. Although sending out an injured Ellyse Perry at No 10 felt like using a broken-down Bentley as a submersible: even if it had been working, it was a waste of class in that job.
Meanwhile Ecclestone finished another modern marathon, into her 45th over across all three days by the time she caught Perry off her own bowling to claim the last. Pure determination saw her finish with five wickets after an effort that created twice that many chances, though five for 143 on the honours board will probably not be an entry that she ever glances at with any fondness. It was a similar story to her five for 129 at Trent Bridge two years back in another huge Australian score.
A very different five-for was to follow for Alana King, the leggie forming half of a spin-twin domination. Gardner opened the door with an off-break to dislodge Knight at short leg, only for King to make herself at home on the sofa for the rest of the afternoon, England never recovered after the straight-break lbw of Nat Sciver-Brunt and a stunning amount of turn to bowl Sophia Dunkley.
King had dropped a five-wicket bag in the first innings, spilling a return catch, but had the chance again in the second, adding Beaumont and Ryana MacDonald-Gay with two wickets yet to fall. Then Gardner too added a fourth, racing King for the last. It felt an appropriate metaphor: with England barely registering a presence, Australians were left to compete with themselves.
Some desperately close chances from the last pair left King at times on hands and knees in her follow-through, only able to laugh, but finally Filer hit a catch to mid on for a win by an innings and 122 runs. King’s five for 53 to seal that win is much more likely to have the bowler seek out a glimpse of gilt-stamped figures on the board in years to come, and she finishes the series across formats with 23 wickets at 11. Gardner took four for 39 here in a contribution as important.
So it ends in an Australian whitewash, the first in this multi-format style, to the vast satisfaction of a home side that didn’t always have everything go right, but always had enough. With another 11,804 spectators coming in for day three, the match total was past 35,000, a record by a mile for women’s Tests. The only sour notes come from imagining what a competitive England and a fourth day might have brought, and realising that this humming Australian team, high on their achievement, have more than a year until their next Test.
That will come with one each against India and West Indies in 2026, then another year until South Africa in 2027. The quality of Australia’s players demands a stage, and even if their opponents did not do so this week, England’s efforts in Nottingham in 2023 and Canberra in 2022 are not washed away by a poor tour. Since the last women’s Test at the MCG in 1949, progress has been unimaginable. But there is always more to do, and cricket’s administrators must be held to the responsibility to do it.
