New Zealand women complete series win

I made it down to Hove today to watch most of the New Zealand v England Twenty20 decider and sadly England were never really in with a shout after a stodgy start to their innings. Sarah Taylor's wicket - bowled from a short ball that looked like it should have got higher than it did - really set England back as she'd taken 20 balls to make 7, and Claire Taylor looked out of form. Charlotte Edwards played a couple of nice on drives but she fell for 19 (which turned out to be top score) and England just couldn't get any momentum into their chase.

I can't claim to know each player's game inside out, but they seemed to be crying out for someone to come in and look to strike boundaries as the required scoring rate increased and on the evidence of today Katherine Brunt was wasted down at number 9. Only when she came in did they look capable of scoring at more than one a ball - the likes of Lydia Greenaway and Danielle Wyatt helped to bring some urgency into the faltering innings, but they didn't appear capable of hitting their way out of trouble and were a bit reverse-sweep obsessed.

Brunt also performed well with the ball on her 25th birthday, taking 1 for 11 from her 4 overs, and Danielle Hazell got 3 for 16 from her four, but New Zealand got away when Nicola Browne came in at 6 and scored 22 off 14 balls when she came in at the end of the 14th over. And although 124 should have been within reach, it proved to be too much for England to chase down and they ended up losing by 9 runs.

England will be determined to prove that their batting isn't as brittle as it appeared today in the 5 match ODI series that starts a week on Saturday at Taunton.