England will resume on today’s second day of play at 8-278, with three batsmen – captain Joe Root (58), opener Mark Stoneham (61) and Dawid Malan (63) posting half-centuries.

First-drop James Vince and allrounder Chris Woakes both made 33 but the tourists are lamenting that no batsman went on to bank an imposing score.

“Some of the dismissals we had were on the sloppy side,” Stoneman said.

“It’s a little bit frustrating more than anything that we didn’t kick on and have a couple of hundreds scored.

“Everybody got a bit of time in the middle but we also need to score hundreds and big hundreds.”

Veteran opener Alastair Cook made just 15, following his second-ball duck in England’s tour opener against a Western Australian XI last weekend.

“He has got a couple of decent balls early up front… that is the nature of opening the batting,” Stoneman said of his opening partner.

“His record speaks for itself. Obviously the longer he spends in the middle from a personal point of view, he will be a lot happier.”

Stoneman’s half-century followed 85 against the WA XI but he was far from satisfied.

“It was pretty disappointing, there was a chance to go on and get a real big score and really get myself into the tour from that point of view,” he said.

“The rhythm is there, the timing has been pretty good so I’m happy with how things are progressing. It just would have been nice to give it a bit of a further lift and get a hundred.”

CA XI legspinner Daniel Fallins took 4-71 on his first-class debut to restrict England in the day-night pink-ball fixture.

Meanwhile, England’s women claim their last-start one-day international Ashes win has given them the momentum heading into a crucial pink-ball Test.

Under the points system, used to determine the winner of the series, Australia can wrap up the Ashes with a win in the one-off Test which begins today at North Sydney Oval.

After they claimed the first two one-dayers of the series – each worth two points – Australia faltered to drop their first game of the summer. They went from 1-159 to 9-257, chasing 278 in the last 50-over match.

It let England back into the series. The tourists must win the Test (worth four points) and at least two of the three Twenty20s (two points each) to reclaim the urn.

And captain Heather Knight said her team had the momentum to do that.

“We were under quite a lot of pressure going into that game,” Knight said. 

“If we had’ve lost that, we would have been in a very tough position.

“We felt we got a bit of the momentum back and we’ll be taking that into (this week).”

However, according to Australia’s captain Rachael Haynes, that momentum doesn’t even exist.

Both teams drew tour matches against invitational teams between the one-day and Test matches, as they prepare for the historic first international women’s game with a pink ball.

“I think there’s been quite a long break between the last ODI and this Test match,” Haynes said.“If anything, it would have been really hard to roll on and get some momentum out of that because there was a break and then we played a tour match and now we’ve got a Test match.

“From our point of view, we’ve been really focused on what we’re trying to do going into this match. We haven’t thought too much about England and what they’re trying to do.”

-AAP