New Zealand v Australia: third women’s ODI – live!

That is one of the remarkable things about that winning streak. In cricket, you don’t just have to keep beating the teams you play. You have to get lucky enough not to have any non-results during your period of dominance.

Starting to sound like we might get started soon. But here’s an interesting consideration. If we get part of a match today and then it gets called off… that will end Australia’s winning streak at 23 ODIs. Sure, the sports pages can start going to some technicality like “24 matches unbeaten”, but as far as the record books go with a pure winning streak, that would be it.

Right now, that’s not yet the case, because the toss hasn’t been held so the match hasn’t officially started. If it were called off now, there would be no match entry in the record books or on player profiles. But if they hold the toss, then it’s officially a match, meaning Australia then has to win that match in the time available to keep the record alive.

New Zealand of course is where the Women’s World Cup was supposed to be held this year, for the 50-over format. It’s been postponed until February and March next year. But that’s not all that far away now, so every ODI match and series at the moment has a particular significance as teams work out how to tackle that tournament.

Just seeing a clip from the second match, where Leigh Kasperek tried a big dive to save some runs off her own bowling, and ended up more or less faceplanted in the rough turf on the next pitch across. The texture didn’t make for sliding. Her teammate Katey Martin behind the stumps first of all burst out laughing, then asked if she was ok, then very kindly said loud enough for the stump mic to pick up, “Beached as, bro.”

Quite the internet callback, for those of us who remember this.

Anyway, what did I just say about third matches being rained off? Today’s game might suffer the same fate. The toss has been delayed at Mount Maunganui due to rain. The covers are still on, there are a few ground staff wandering around the surface, and the umpires are keeping an eye on things. There’s more rain forecast for later in the day as well. So the question will be whether we can actually get on for long enough to get a semblance of a match in.