18:13
Teams: England drop their best player!
Nooooo! Mady Villiers has been left out, presumably for failing to take four catches and two run-outs on Saturday. The good news is that Katherine Brunt returns, to add depth to the batting as well as fury to the bowling. The New Zealanders aren’t messing around: they retain all of their winning team.
England 1 Tammy Beaumont, 2 Danni Wyatt, 3 Heather Knight (capt), 4 Nat Sciver, 5 Amy Jones (wkt), 6 Sophia Dunkley, 7 Katherine Brunt, 8 Maia Bouchier, 9 Sophie Ecclestone, 10 Sarah Glenn, 11 Tash Farrant.
New Zealand 1 Suzie Bates, 2 Sophie Devine (capt), 3 Amy Satterthwaite, 4 Maddy Green, 5 Brooke Halliday, 6 Katey Martin (wkt), 7 Hayley Jensen, 8 Thamsyn Newton, 9 Hannah Rowe, 10 Jess Kerr, 11 Leigh Kasperek.
Updated
18:07
Toss: England win and bowl first
Heather Knight is back, back, back. Not only has she won the toss and opted to have a bowl – she’s also been presented with a special cap to mark her 200th England appearance. The speech was made by Lydia Greenaway, who, according to her Sky colleague Charlie Dagnall, had her notes written on her hand.
Updated
17:44
Preamble: the joy of one-all
Evening everyone and welcome to the third and final T20 between England and New Zealand. Douglas Adams said the answer to life, the universe and everything was 42. If he’d been a sportswriter, he might have been tempted to scrap that and say the answer was 1-1. All the best cricket series, like all the best football matches, go by way of 1-1: the team that’s gone behind comes bouncing back. That’s what New Zealand did at Hove on Saturday, propelled by Sophie Devine, who showed that in T20 you can play a captain’s innings and endanger the windows at the same time. She starred with the bat, the ball and her comments afterwards, in which she said that “we need to normalise the conversation around [athletes and] mental health”.
The other star of that game was Mady Villiers, with her phenomenal fielding. Can she please give the England men’s team some tips? At Hove she took three catches and a run-out and yet ended up empty-handed. Tonight, at Taunton, she has the chance to get her hands on a trophy – and so does everyone else, thanks to the magic of 1-1.
Play begins at 6.30pm local time, so I’ll be back around 6.05 with the toss and the teams.
Updated