Cricket: England secure women's Twenty20 series win

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Led by Rochdale-born captain Heather Knight, England won the series with a match to spare

England women have secured a series win over Pakistan in the Twenty20 International in Kuala Lumpur.

Led by Rochdale-born captain Heather Knight, England won the series with a match to spare, after an 84-run victory on 19 December.

Knight’s side won the first match by 29 runs on 17 December, following a win in the preceding One Day International series against Pakistan earlier this month.

In the ODI series, England won their first two games by 75 and 127 runs. Heywood cricketer and Lancashire Thunder captain, Kate Cross formed part of the team, taking five wickets and making 61 runs over the two games.

Rain stopped play in the final match on 14 December.

The three ODIs form part of the ICC Women's Championship, representing six points towards qualification for the 2021 ICC Women's World Cup – a tournament for which England have already guaranteed qualification.

The final match of the T20 series took place on Friday 20 December, which say England won by 26 runs. 

Between them, Knight and Cross secured 57 runs in the final T20 game.

The three IT20s represent a chance for England to prepare for February's ICC Women's T20 World Cup in Australia.

In 2015, Cross became the first woman to play in the Central Lancashire League in its 123-year history. Cross made her Lancashire debut at the age of just 13 and became the first girl to be accepted into the Lancashire Academy at 15.

She won her first England cap in 2013 and has played for Thunder in every edition of the Women's Cricket Super League

Knight, 28, began playing cricket in boys’ and men’s teams when she was eight after moving to Plymouth.

Knight received an OBE on the 2018 New Year’s honour list and was named among Wisden Almanack’s Five Cricketers of the Year for 2017 after she led the women’s team to a triumphant World Cup victory that summer.