The day Heather Knight secured her position as successor to Charlotte Edwards came just under three years ago, beneath sunny skies at Wormsley Cricket Ground.

It was that most challenging of tasks, an Ashes Test match, and England were failing spectacularly to rise to the occasion. Australia had declared on 331-6 and Knight, opening, stood at the other end and watched her teammates come in and depart with steady regularity, until England were 6 down with only 113 on the board, and looking in danger of being made to follow on.

It is easy to forget a number of things: that this was only Knight’s second Test; that despite having made her England debut in 2010, she had yet to really cement her place in the squad, not even being initially selected for the T20 side to face Australia that summer.

Her captain, Edwards, had gone for 3, lbw to Holly Ferling; Sarah Taylor had also fallen by the wayside, again to Ferling.

All the while Knight, with straight bat, defended and defended and defended.

It took her 263 balls and 328 minutes to reach her maiden international hundred. And by the time she was out, soon after lunch on the third day of the Test, she had faced 338 balls and made 157. It was the kind of gritty Test match innings which is not necessarily pretty, or fluent, or spectacular – but that does the job it is meant to do.

England were eventually bowled out for 314, drew the Test, and went on to win the series. Meanwhile Knight, 12 months later, was named as England’s new vice-captain.

Since that series, Knight has made other contributions with both bat and ball, having taken up the art of spin bowling in late 2013: she has 36 international wickets currently to her name. Yet nothing has quite matched up to that performance at Wormsley. It was a brave, obdurate innings, one that England – in a supremely precarious position – desperately needed.

It is exactly what England need of her now.

Once again, as they were on that morning at Wormsley three years ago, England look to be facing a difficult period, to say the least. Once again, the outside world are looking on, wondering where on earth they go from here. Knight is the first captain of the professional era – the first whose captaincy will be under scrutiny from the first day until the last.

Once again England need runs: Knight has to step up, now as England’s senior batsman, and ensure that her side firstly qualify for the 2017 World Cup – the so-called “easy” series against Pakistan and Sri Lanka may be crucial from that perspective – and then that they do all that they can to reach a home final at Lord’s.

Once again, she has to do all this without Edwards – and some of it, almost certainly, without Taylor.

Those at Berkshire speak highly of Knight, as leader and role model. She led a team which was widely considered the weakest in the Women’s Big Bash League – Hobart Hurricanes – to the tournament semi-finals. But there is no doubt that this will be an uphill struggle. And while she may have been Edwards’ only natural successor – it was no great surprise when the news broke that she was to be named leader of Robinson’s New Regime – nobody, least of all Knight herself, expected that her moment in the sun would come so soon.

Today, in the press conference, Mark Robinson used one word to sum up Heather Knight: stubborn. It is a quality that has served her well for England thus far: tell Trev that something can’t be done, and she will want to prove you wrong; give her the best bowling attack in the world, and she will patiently see it off. Stubbornness was the watchword that day at Wormsley. If England are to succeed under her leadership, it it this stubbornness – this ability to get the job done, even when it looks impossible to the outside world – that her captaincy will need to embody.

Despite a valiant rearguard action by Berkshire’s Lissy MacLeod and Fi Morris, it was Somerset who finished on top of today’s fifth-round Championship contest, gaining their first victory of the season thanks to early inroads into Berkshire’s top order by Moira Comfort (3-21).

With Berkshire chasing just 139, Somerset needed to strike early, and they did, with Comfort’s dippy medium-pace proving difficult to negotiate. Linsey Smith (3) was first to go, caught by Cassie Coombes at mid-on in the fourth over. Four overs later she was followed back to the pavilion by Heather Knight, bowled off her pads for 8. By the time Comfort took her third wicket, having bowled unchanged for 10 overs, Berkshire had slid to 38-5 and their target looked of Everest proportions.

Nonetheless they got within tantalising reach, thanks to a 46-run eighth-wicket partnership between MacLeod and Morris (24). While MacLeod batted in her usual carefree fashion for a well-deserved 54*, Morris’s effort was particularly brave given that an injury sustained earlier in the day was restricting her movement considerably.

Sadly she could not quite see her team over the line, falling to Anya Shrubsole’s penultimate ball of the day. Berkshire were eventually all out for 124, just 16 runs short of their target.

It transpired, then, that Somerset’s 139 – made on a stodgy Midsomer Norton pitch, which three days earlier had been entirely under water due to a flash flood – was just enough to see them home. While Berkshire, despite the absence of leading strike bowler Lauren Bell from the attack, did not bowl badly – two wickets in two balls from the ferocious-looking Rachel Hardy being a particular highlight – they will no doubt be ruing their performance in the field. Georgina Adcock (25), Sophie Luff and Anya Shrubsole all survived early chances, and while Luff did not make hay – trapped lbw to Immie Brown for 9 – the other two most certainly did, with Shrubsole finishing unbeaten on 60.

Speaking to CRICKETher after the game, Anya Shrubsole said that she was confident at the halfway mark that 139 was a good score on this pitch: “It was a really difficult pitch to bat on. It spun, it was slow and the bounce wasn’t that consistent. We always knew it was one of those games where if we got runs on the board and then took a couple of early wickets we’d put them under pressure, and it showed.”

She was also pleased at being able to contribute with the bat: “I rode my luck a little bit, getting dropped a couple of times early on, but I owe the team some runs…I’m pleased to be able to grind out probably the ugliest 60 I’ve ever scored!”

The ECB have today confirmed to CRICKETher that Sarah Taylor is currently “taking a break from cricket, having decided to take some personal time away from the game.”

Taylor has already missed the first three fixtures of the county season for Sussex, and it now appears likely that she will remain absent from domestic cricket for the foreseeable future. It is as yet unclear whether she will return before England’s series against Pakistan, due to commence on 20 June.

An ECB spokesperson told CRICKETher that they were continuing to monitor the situation and that the ECB would: “support her, keep in touch and talk with her prior to selection for the Pakistan series and the start of the Kia Super League.”

Following on from the announcement of Charlotte Edwards’ retirement last week, this will come as a particular blow to an England team who are already without their best batsman and may now be facing losing their second best one as well.

It also effectively rules Sarah Taylor out of becoming the next England captain, in response to speculation in various media outlets that she was a likely candidate to succeed Edwards.

Taylor took a break from cricket six years ago, missing an Ashes tour in the process, but returned to the sport four months later to become the leading wicketkeeper batsman in the world.

Driving through Eastbourne on Monday on the way to see Sussex play Kent, I remembered the last time I had been there, almost two years ago. I remembered knocking on a door in a sunny street, and my knock being answered by a white-haired old lady.

Her name was Ruth Prideaux.

I was there to interview her as part of my PhD – to hear her memories of her time playing and coaching England. Of the many interviews I conducted, they sometimes went well, sometimes not quite so well. And some stick in the memory more than others.

This one? One of the most enjoyable, most memorable, of all. It was impossible not to warm to Ruth in the two hours or so that I spent with her, drinking tea and listening to her memories of playing and coaching the sport she loved. It was also impossible – even at the age of 83 – not to feel slightly in awe of her; and to get a sense of why the players she coached were in awe of her, too.

Ruth sadly passed away last month. I am thankful I was able to meet her before she died. She deserves all the plaudits in the world.

———

Ruth Prideaux (nee Westbrook) was a formidable lady because she had had to be. Born in Greenhithe, Kent in 1930, she learned cricket at Gravesend Grammar School, before attending Anstey College of Physical Education to train as a PE teacher. All this came after an early battle of wills with her father about the sport she loved. “My father was not pleased,” she told me. “I had three brothers at that time, and he thought they should be playing cricket and not me. He didn’t like the idea of his daughter playing cricket. And I was the only one that really wanted to!” What happened in the end? “He had to put up with it,” she recalled, her blue eyes twinkling.

By the time she was selected for England, to tour Australia and New Zealand in 1957/8, he had come round to her way of thinking! She described that tour as “wonderful” – but it was yet another struggle, both to gain leave from her teaching job, and then suffering the financial burden of having to forfeit six months of her salary (the length of Australasian tours in those days, thanks partly to the month-long boat ride there and back).

Then there was her coaching career. In 1962 – as the Times reported in their obituary – Ruth and Mary Duggan became the first women to attend an MCC coaching course, passing the advanced certificate with ease. Several male first-class county players failed. And yet when she was interviewed for the England Women coaching job in 1988 – the first time such an appointment had ever taken place – she told one of her daughters, in full knowledge that she was the best qualified candidate: “I’ll never get the job, because men always do.”

Contrary to her own expectations, she did indeed get the job.

———

That was not the end of the battle, though. By the time of her appointment, Ruth was working as a lecturer in the Sports Science department of Chelsea College of Physical Education, with radical new ideas about the way she wanted the England team to progress. She secured funding from the National Coaching Foundation for a five-year intensive training programme from 1989 to 1993, which incorporated both sport psychology and physiological testing.

Steve Bull, a colleague at Chelsea, became the team’s official sport psychologist, and worked closely with Ruth to plan the programme, which aimed to increase confidence, develop positive thinking skills, and provide team cohesiveness. There was also an intensive focus on both nutrition and physical fitness.

Ruth recalled in our interview:

“I was quite determined that the whole squad, they wouldn’t be a member of the squad if they weren’t fit. And we worked a lot on fitness. They used to run up and down the beach [at  Eastbourne], on the shingle, which was tough…And then we started to introduce the importance of diet. That particular aspect was not popular, because they were very fish-and-chip girls!”

Ruth’s coaching programme was years ahead of its time; no other sport, including men’s cricket, had utilised sports psychology before. And much of Ruth’s work in these years now serves as the foundation for the elite coaching techniques which are used within both men’s and women’s cricket.

Yet it did not initially sit well with the traditionalists within the Women’s Cricket Association. It was reported in The Cricketer in 1988 that “the decision to appoint Prideaux…did not meet with universal approval within the WCA fraternity”. She recalled that:

“the [England] selectors were not a bit supportive. They thought it was all wrong. They expected them always to be doing something on the cricket line as it were, with the activities of batting, or bowling, or fielding. But they were not in any way supportive of that type of [fitness] work. So that was quite difficult.”

Yet Ruth persisted.

———

Fast forward five years to Lord’s, August 1st 1993. Jan Brittin takes the winning catch, New Zealand are all out for 128, and Karen Smithies and her team lift the World Cup, hugging each other and shedding tears of joy.

That white-haired figure looks on from the balcony, quietly satisfied at what she has achieved with her team. She knew they could do it before they could.

“We were in Australia for the semi-finals of the World Cup in 1988,” she recalled in our interview, “and we lost to Australia. And I said to the players, ‘we will NOT lose the next World Cup. We’ll beat everybody, and we’ll win it.’ They all felt, ‘oh, she’s off again!’ But actually, we did.”

It was a win that would never have been possible without Ruth’s confidence in both her innovative new coaching techniques, and in her squad of players – a confidence she instilled in a variety of ways. One of my favourite stories was about the team’s arrival at Wellington College, where the teams were put up for the duration of the tournament:

“When we arrived we arrived as a squad before anybody else, and they’d put us on the ground floor and the Australians were upstairs, above us. And I said, ‘well we’re not having that’. So before the Australians came, we settled ourselves above them, and I said, ‘remember we’re on the top here!’ 

So that was another thing that, although it sounds little, was a great contribution to their belief in themselves.”

Sure enough, England were actually left needing to beat their old enemy, Australia, in order to reach the final – and they did so in spectacular fashion, thanks to a wonderful innings from Carole Hodges, who finished on 105*.

Ultimately, England’s World Cup victory in August 1993 was largely the fruit of Ruth’s labour. Steve Bull reported that, by the time he concluded his work with the squad, “a feeling existed [among players] that success would not have been achieved without the provision of sport psychology support”.

Her pride at the achievement was still evident in our interview, 20 years after the event, as she recalled the tournament, eyes shining. It is an achievement made all the more impressive by the fact that in all her years working with the England team, she was never paid a penny.

———

Ruth retired as coach in the wake of the World Cup, but remained involved in women’s cricket, going on to become the Chairman of Sussex Women’s Cricket Association. What of her legacy? Certainly that 1993 victory helped begin to change attitudes to the women’s game in England. A few days afterward the final, then President of MCC, Dennis Silk, wrote to the Chairman of the Women’s Cricket Association: “It was the best day’s cricket at Lord’s this year and between you all, you created a magical atmosphere. You have done the whole of English cricket a great service.”

There were awards, of course – the National Coaching Foundation’s England Coach of the Year in 1993 being just one – and yet somehow I wonder if Ruth ever quite got the recognition she so deserved. Had she been a man – had she won a men’s World Cup – the whole world would know her name. Did anyone realise, I wondered as I left her house after our interview, that one of cricket’s greatest ever coaches was at that moment living in a little corner of sunny Eastbourne?

It is just one more reflection of the battle Ruth fought her whole life – the battle against being told she couldn’t do it because she was a woman.

———

The battle continues – and the impact of Ruth’s approach is still being felt within women’s cricket. I put it to her in our interview that what she had really been trying to do was bring professionalisation to an amateur game. “Yes,” she concurred. “But you wouldn’t put it like that.”

Why wouldn’t you put it like that? “Well, it would be far removed from anybody’s expectation. I mean, to become a professional was unheard of.”

Not any longer. And as Ruth herself recognised, she is partly responsible for that transformation.

“I think we supplied a good grounding for women’s cricket to develop,” she told me. “And set an example of what can be achieved. Which was all good, because it meant everything moved forward.”

That is quite some legacy, I told her. “Yes,” she agreed.

“I’d rather leave that legacy than any other.”

On a day in which “Sunshine Capital of England” Eastbourne distinctly failed to live up to its name, Sussex were left celebrating a 42-run win over old rivals Kent, after an entertaining cameo from their number 7 batsman Izzy Noakes allowed them to set a competitive total of 173.

The match – delayed by the kind of mizzly, freezing rain which is more generally found in the Highlands of Scotland – did not start until 2.10pm, with the overs reduced to 30 a side. With the sky overcast and the pitch damp, Kent chose to put Sussex in to bat. While they started well, with a stylish half-century from Georgia Adams helping them reach 99-3 at the halfway stage, a mini-collapse ensued, as Hannah Phelps (4), Izi Collis (14), Ellen Burt (7) and Abbie Freeborn (1) all fell cheaply.

Cue the entrance of Noakes, and an innings which combined scrappy inelegance with middle-of-the-bat power-hitting, including two spectacular sixes in the penultimate over, which sailed over a 10-foot fence into the next door football ground. Perhaps on another day, one with a sharper Kent fielding performance, it might not have come off – but come off it did, and it was met with delight by the watching crowd, which included England coach Mark Robinson.

Noakes’ dismissal in the 30th over, bowled by Charlotte Pape for 38, saw Sussex all out for 173. She had enabled her side to add 40 runs for the 9th and 10th wickets – ultimately the difference between the two sides.

Kent’s innings began with the cheap dismissal of Charlotte Edwards, bowled by Tara Norris for 1, but Tammy Beaumont (49) and Lydia Greenway (33) then shared an 82-run partnership. For Kent, however, with rain clouds hovering ominously overhead, the issue was always keeping up with the required run rate, which they rapidly fell behind. After the dismissal of Beaumont, caught by Sally Clarke off Burt in the 19th over, the pressure told; and a combined effort from the Sussex bowlers saw them bowled out for 131.

Sussex were visibly delighted with the result, in a match which clearly had added spice after last year’s encounter between the two sides, which controversially ended in a tie after Sussex snatched a run off the last ball. Captain Georgia Elwiss, speaking to CRICKETher after the game, said that she was happy about the way her team responded after their 6-wicket loss to Warwickshire on Sunday:

“We had to turn up today and completely write yesterday off, and draw a line under it and learn from it. I’m really proud of the way the girls played today. It was a real team effort to get us over the line.”

“We knew [173] would be a decent score. With the short boundary and the players that they’ve got it was never going to be plain sailing, but we kept it tight and kept the pressure on, and as soon as wickets started to fall that’s when we really got into the game.”

“It’s a massive fixture for us…it’s the best winning’s felt for a while!”

The ECB have confirmed to CRICKETher that the BCCI were contacted in advance of the selection of overseas players for the Kia Super League, but that no Indians expressed an interest in playing in the tournament.

This contradicts the BCCI’s claims in an article by Snehal Pradhan on Firstpost that “they had not received any…communication from the ECB and that they could only consider allowing Indian players [to participate] after they did.”

An ECB spokesperson states that they “made contact with the overseas boards for all seven of the [other] teams involved with the ICC Women’s Championship, asking them to invite their players to express an interest in playing in the Kia Super League…None of the 65 players who expressed an interest in playing in the Kia Super League were from India.”

While Indian fans have been disappointed at the lack of inclusion of the likes of Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami in KSL, this suggests that it was the BCCI’s own reluctance (or that of their players?) which has prevented any Indians from being involved.

When I meet Loughborough Lightning coach Salliann Briggs on her home turf at Loughborough University, it is the day after Kia Super League England player allocations have been announced, and her excitement about the competition is palpable – and infectious. While Briggs has already worked at Loughborough for nearly 7 years, as MCCU Cricket Performance Manager and coach of the England Women U15 and U19 squads, Super League presents a new challenge:

“[Previously my role] has been a lot about developing individual cricketers…this is going to be a fairly new experience because results matter. It puts me under completely different pressures, but having access to probably the best domestic [women’s] competition in the world now is a great job for me. I’m really looking forward to it!”

Part of Briggs’s excitement comes from the recent England player allocations. She will have Becky Grundy, Georgia Elwiss, Amy Jones and Beth Langston at her disposal during the competition, and while there have been some suggestions that Loughborough have drawn the short straw in having no “marquee” England player on their team, Briggs says that all four were at the top of her list when making player requests to the ECB. She stresses the importance of having 4 players who are graduates of or current students at the university:

“The university are a standalone organisation, [unlike] some of the other hosts. So it’s a big investment for Loughborough University, and we wanted to make sure that we had players that are linked to Loughborough that have actually enabled us to achieve this host status.”

“It was also important that [they] were living in Loughborough. Because part of this process for me is not just a 3-week competition, or a trophy, it’s about making sure we provide the right support for these girls on a year-round basis. So assigning an England player that has to travel 2 hours for a training session, just wouldn’t make sense.”

She also points out that her 4 allocated players provide the core of a well-balanced side:

“With Beth [Langston] I’ve got an opening bowler. With Grundy I’ve got a left-arm spinner, and [there are] stats about how important left-arm spinners are at the highest level. A keeper and top-order bat, Amy Jones. And then Georgia Elwiss, who’s a genuine batting all-rounder. It’s made my life a lot easier trying to piece everyone else around them.”

Each KSL team will also have 3 overseas players allocated to them – to be announced in due course – and Briggs says she is “looking forward to the challenges [as coach] of working with someone from a different country”. She refuses to be drawn on the persistent rumours linking Aussie superstar Ellyse Perry – whose husband Matt Toomua will be nearby, playing for Leicester Tigers – to the Loughborough franchise, though she does acknowledge that it would be a coup for her side were the rumours to be proved true:  “I only wish that we have someone like her!”

She also quashes the suggestion that Loughborough have not yet announced their captain because Perry is to be given the job, saying that it is almost certain that one of the 4 allocated England players – Langston, Jones, Elwiss or Grundy – will be handed the captaincy reins, but that she wanted to wait until the squad returned from the World Twenty20 in order to “have a good discussion with no distractions” with each of the players, and then “make an informed decision” based on those conversations.

Why was Loughborough’s bid successful where others based at first-class counties – notably Edgbaston – failed? Briggs emphasises their history of a strong commitment to the women’s game:

“A legacy of the Graham Dilley era is that we made a commitment that we were going to treat female cricketers exactly the same as male cricketers, and we have always done that…I’d like to say that any female cricketer who’s gone through [Loughborough University] would say, ‘I had everything I needed to fulfil my potential’.”

“The location on campus of the National Cricket Performance Centre and the access the girls will get to that, and the additional conditioning facilities and expertise there, was central to our bid.”

While there’s suddenly a lot more interest in women’s cricket around the country now the ECB have invested £3.5 million in the KSL, the awarding of the franchise to Loughborough is, according to Briggs, an acknowledgement by the ECB of the investment that Loughborough have long made in the women’s game – with at times half of the England team having graduated from the University and her MCCU programme.

Briggs is clearly driven partly by the desire to win the inaugural Super League, which would surely be a feather in her coaching cap. However, she stresses that to her, the competition is about more than just results on the pitch:

“It’s about making sure we provide the right support for these girls on a year-round basis. I want to feel that all 15 players have got access to everything they need…Also, we want to make sure that we’re doing our bit in this local area, in the Midlands, in getting a new wave of spectators and young players that really enjoy women’s cricket.”

Loughborough’s aim, according to Briggs, is to attract between 300 and 700 people at each of their 3 home matches, and they are beginning their games at 4.30pm in order to encourage as many people as possible to come along. While Briggs recognises the criticism Loughborough – as the only host without a first-class county ground – have received, she is quick to point out that their smaller venue size will actually be more conducive to a good atmosphere than some of the other host stadiums. She also emphasises that they are working hard behind the scenes to make the spectator experience as friendly as possible:

“Not playing in a stadium offers us (and ECB) some unique opportunities to try some development initiatives with girl cricketers, and we’ve already talked to the local County Boards about this. We have another large playing area adjacent to the match ground where we can host some small games and coaching clinics/ ‘have a go sessions’ etc for girls, and then they can come across to the matches. It can be a great experience – which is what we’re looking at for the girls.”

“One of our games is on the same day as the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics so we’re doing a Brazilian theme – there’s going to be a carnival outside, and inflatables – as well as the cricket experiences.. I’ve been involved in some of the planning meetings and what I’m hearing is very exciting.”

“I guess the biggest message is, that [compared with] what people have experienced before when coming to watch cricket games at Loughborough, it will be completely different.”

Loughborough Lightning’s aim, in the words of Briggs, is “to be the leading Kia super League host”. If her own sense of purpose and vision can translate into results on and off the pitch, it’s hard to see them failing.

The pay rises for Australian women cricketers, announced yesterday, have been quite rightly much-lauded: top players will now be able to earn in excess of $100,000, with CA overall increasing its female player payment pool from $2.36 million to $4.23 million, with maximum retainers for the Southern Stars rising from $49,000 to $65,000.

However, many of the articles on this subject also mentioned that an updated “pregnancy policy” was now in place, but failed to elaborate on this. So what are the details?

CRICKETher talked with a Cricket Australia spokesperson, who confirmed that the new policy is as follows:

“If a pregnant player advises her team (WBBL, WNCL or Commonwealth Bank Southern Stars) that she does not wish to continue playing cricket in accordance with her Player Contract due to her pregnancy, the player may elect to:

1. Terminate her Player Contract by mutual agreement, or

2. Amend her Player Contract by mutual agreement to suspend the Player’s obligations to render skilled services as a cricket player during the Term until the earlier of:

a) Expiry of the term, or

b) Date from which the player notifies her WBBL team she wishes to continue playing cricket.”

CA also confirmed that it is entirely down to the player herself whether she continues to play while pregnant. As CA puts it, “The overriding objective is to make sure no player feels disadvantaged due to pregnancy.”

While the pay rises in themselves are clearly important, it’s great to know that CA are also working with players to be as accommodating as possible in other areas, too.

As CRICKETher reported several weeks ago, the ICC’s current inequitable flights policy means that all women’s teams travelled to the World Twenty20 in Economy class, while their male counterparts flew in Business.

All teams, that is, bar Australia. Cricket Australia have confirmed to CRICKETher that the Southern Stars were upgraded to Business class, with CA footing the bill.

Why? A CA spokesman told CRICKETher: “We have been working on a number of ways to further professionalise the women’s game, including increasing pay for elite cricketers and providing greater on and off-field opportunities for our players through initiatives such as the Women’s Big Bash League. Addressing discrepancies between the class of air travel for male and female cricketers is another important issue that we have been committed to resolving.”

Interestingly, CRICKETher has also ascertained that an equitable flights policy does apply while teams are in India, with both men and women flying in Economy in order to travel between tournament fixtures.  This is the same policy used during the Australian domestic season, when both male and female state teams fly to away matches in Economy class.

As in most other areas, then, it appears that CA are leading the way in terms of parity for their female cricketers. The question is, will other cricket boards – and of course the ICC – now follow suit?