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After crashing out of the Women’s T20 World Cup in disappointing style in October, Heather Knight’s England responded with a successful tour of South Africa to ensure they head to January’s Ashes series in Australia on a high.
The first of three Ashes ODIs takes place on 11 January (23:30 GMT), followed by three T20s and culminating in a four-day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
England thrashed an experimental Proteas side 3-0 in the T20s, won the one-day series 2-1 and were victorious in a Test for the first time since 2014 with a 286-run win.
However, England will know Australia present a much tougher challenge as ODI world champions and six-time T20 winners – despite losing their crown to New Zealand this year.
Australia hold the Ashes after the epic drawn series in 2023, so England will have to win the series outright to claim them back – something they have not done in 10 years.
So what exactly have they learned from South Africa in order to do that? And what are the questions they face?
Are England too reliant on Sciver-Brunt?
An in-form Nat Sciver-Brunt will be England’s most important weapon if they are to beat Australia.
The all-rounder capped another sparkling year by scoring the fastest Test century in women’s Tests against South Africa, from just 96 balls.
She fulfils a versatile role in England’s top order, able to attack from ball one if given a strong platform but also regularly digging the side out of tricky positions.
But are England too reliant on her brilliance?
In ODIs, England win 80% of their games when Sciver-Brunt scores at least fifty, which drops to 63.4% when she does not. For the same metric in T20s, they win 81.2% when she raises her bat at 50, which drops to 73.4% when she does not.
While her form will undoubtedly be a huge strength of England’s and she will be Australia’s prized wicket, she cannot rescue them every time.
There were pleasing returns from Maia Bouchier and Knight in the Test against South Africa, but the question surrounding whether Alice Capsey or Sophia Dunkley should bat in the T20 side’s top three remains unsolved.
Amy Jones is the only batter to average more than Sciver-Brunt in ODIs since the end of the last Ashes, but she has a poor record against Australia, averaging 12.41 in T20s and 10.53 in the 50-over format, so will need to prove that she can step up against the world’s best.
Bell, Filer or both?
In the bowling department, Lauren Filer is the most exciting asset England possess.
Against South Africa, she did not take a particularly high volume of wickets (eight across all three formats) but Filer is proof that fast bowling is not defined by numbers alone.
She regularly rattled the batters with her fiery short ball, making them duck and sway or back away from their stumps when it was fired in fuller.
The predicament England have is whether they can fit Filer and Lauren Bell in the same white-ball side. While Bell took eight wickets in her player of the match performance in the Test, both can be inconsistent in the shorter format which leads to a lack of control.
They have not often played together, only in two ODIs where they took three wickets between them with an economy of 5.7 for Filer and 6.4 for Bell.
But in the three T20s they have played, they were more effective with nine wickets between them with Filer averaging 36 and Bell an impressive 10.6.
Kate Cross has had a stellar year in ODIs, with 19 wickets at an average of 18 and best figures of 6-30, and is likely to slot straight back in if she recovers from the back spasms which cut short her South Africa tour.
“The Bell or Filer question could come down to the conditions. If it’s a green seamer then they might have to drop a spinner so they can play them both and Cross,” former England batter Lydia Greenway told the BBC Test Match Special podcast.
“You could see in the first ODI [v South Africa] when they played both Bell and Filer, they did look vulnerable.
“If one of them has a bad day, I don’t think you can rely too much on the other one, certainly not as much as you can with Kate Cross so they always have to play her.
“For me now, as long as she’s fit, they have to go with Filer because she can be the big point of difference, especially in somewhere like Australia.”
What about Australia?
Australia suffered their own T20 World Cup disappointment, losing to South Africa in the semi-final having been thoroughly outplayed.
But, similarly to England, they were back in action quickly and responded with ominous confidence in a 3-0 ODI win over India.
Their astonishing depth in talent was on display as captain Alyssa Healy missed out with injury, only for 21-year-old opener Georgia Voll to strike 101 from 87 balls in just her second international outing.
Almost all of their stars contributed throughout with 5-19 for seamer Megan Schutt in the first ODI, 105 for Ellyse Perry in the second while Annabel Sutherland’s 110 rescued them from 78-4 in the third alongside spinner Ash Gardner’s 5-30.
It is the 50-over format where they are most dominant and will present England a big challenge to compete over a longer period of time.
They have won 15 of the 17 ODIs they have played since the last Ashes and 16 of their 20 T20s.
Beating Australia remains difficult, but beating Australia on their own patch is probably the biggest challenge England could face.
