England has beaten New Zealand by 30 runs in the opening women's One Day International in Bristol.
Photo: PHOTOSPORT
After being asked to bat first England made 241 with captain Heather Knight top scoring with 89, while Tammy Beaumont scored 44.
Pace bowler Jess Kerr took three wickets for 42 runs, while Sophie Devine and Lea Tahuhu took two wickets each.
The White Ferns batter Amy Satterthwaite thought the hosts' total was gettable.
"We talked about it at halftime that it was about par [England's total].
"The way that Heather Knight and Katherine Brunt formed a partnership there, we were probably a little bit disappointed with letting that drift a little bit and they probably put on a few too many more than we would have liked.
"Outside of that, I'm really proud of the way that we fought back after their start and took a few regular wickets that meant that we stemmed the flow of runs and kept them to what we thought was a par score on that wicket."
In reply the White Ferns got off to a poor start losing both openers, Suzie Bates and Lauren Down, in the first ten overs for just one and five respectively.
Amy Satterthwaite and captain Devine gave the tourists some hope as they put on 78 for the fourth wicket before Devine was dismissed for 34.
Satterthwaite then carried her bat through the rest of the innings finishing unbeaten on 79.
Lea Tahuhu with 25 and Leigh Kasperek with 15 gave New Zealand some hope late in their innings, but it wasn't enough as they were all out for 211.
Satterthwaite believes the White Ferns inability to build meaningful partnerships was their downfall.
"A goal of ours is to get bigger partnerships. They [England] had a couple of big partnerships and we weren't able to replicate that.
"Sophie and I started to get one going. But, if want to win games like that we have to take them [partnerships] bigger and get them over three figures if we can."
The second match in the five-match series is Worcester on Sunday night.
