England v Sri Lanka: Women’s World Twenty20 cricket — live! | Sport

For two precious minutes it stopped raining. They had enough time to get the ground staff out there to remove the first layer of covers and for me to tweet about it. Soon as this happened? You guessed it: it hosed down again. We are five minutes away from the formalities.

Cracking day yesterday to begin the comp. In case you missed it, Indian captain Harmanpreet Kaur walked in with her side 40-3 at the end of the power play and smashed a ton that included eight sixes. No team struck eight sixes in the entirety of this tournament in 2016, she did so in about 45 minutes. Her last 100 runs were tallied in 36 balls. Phwoar. New Zealand fell well short in the chase and now will require results to really go their way in order to make the semi-finals.

Australia picked apart Pakistan in the middle game, racking up 165 and defending it without so much as breaking a sweat. That’s the tenth T20 win on the trot for the top-ranked side in the tournament. They’re feeling good and looking ominous.

Then we had a crazy old match to finish where Bangladesh, for a moment, looked set to knock off the West Indies. The hosts and defending champs were 50-5 in the 13th over and going nowhere fast but managed to scrap 106 together. It was a different story with the ball, routing the Tigers for 46 – the lowest ever score in Women’s World T20s. On that historic note, Deandra Dottin took the best figures in the competition’s history too, hitting the stumps time and again in a spell of 5/5. As you do.

Nothing further to add here other than to note that the post-game concert appears to be taking place now. In reality, we are 20 minutes away from the captains shaking hands.

To begin, and given the ridiculous storm I’m seeing in front of me now, take this in the spirit that it is relayed. Rain would need to completely stop by 3:57pm (45 minutes from now) and not begin again in order to give the ground staff enough time to clean it up for that aforementioned 6:27pm start. So, we might not be waiting around so long after all.

This is far more important: if there are no games in St Lucia between now and the 18th when the final pair of matches are scheduled… ENGLAND WILL GO THROUGH! As the second seed in this pool (West Indies are top as defending champs), they would get out of the group. Get that ticker tape ready, book Trafalgar Square, etc.

It may sounds ridiculous to suggest such a thing before one not-yet washed out game but rain is on the forecast until the 19th, would you believe. If that happens, I suspect there will be far tougher scheduling questions to answer than this for administrators.

Welcome to St Lucia for start of England’s Women’s World T20 campaign against Sri Lanka! Well, in theory. In practice, the first of nine games to be played on the island nation in the group stage is battling against the sort of rain that just won’t quit.

Given this is an ICC tournament, there are deadlines that will need meeting before they can officially call this off, so I’ll keep you company. The hard cut off, I’m advised by the ICC, is 6:27pm (10:27pm GMT). That’s the last moment that a five-over slog could begin. It remains unclear if the captain’s can shake hands before then. Cricket, ay?

They also have a concert to consider having flown out the band to sing the official anthem of the competition, a catchy little number called Watch This. Worth a blast.

England announced yesterday that they plan to name two players on debut, 23-year-old left-arm spinner Linsey Smith and Middlesex all-rounder, 20-year-old Sophia Dunkley. Heather Knight also confirmed that in order to replace Katherine Brunt in the starting XI (who has flying home with a back injury) they will play an extra batter and make up the overs with Nat Sciver’s medium pace and her own tweakers.

The loss of Brunt is a massive one, which I’m sure we will discuss further while we watch the rain and work out what is happening here. I should note that it has rained, almost without stop, since England arrived three nights ago. That’s meant no bats and balls since their last warm-up game on Monday. None of this is ideal.

As for Sri Lanka, they’ve had a dreadful 2018 in this format of the game. They rely heavily on their captain, top-order bat Chamari Atapatti. Indeed, she is the only player to post three-figures for the country in white-ball cricket (I think the stat goes). The obvious point here is that a washout is a terrible result for England, who are trying to add the World T20 title to the World Cup that they won at Lord’s in 2017.