At yesterday’s freewheelin’ press conference to announce his new captain, Mark Robinson was his usual loquacious self, discussing any number of subjects with thoughtful honesty.

Reflecting on what he said, it is clear that Heather Knight’s appointment is part of a long term strategy which looks way beyond 2017 – a tournament which he readily admitted England might not win.

“This is a new era of cricket – we need to be embracing it… [but] the World Cup might be too soon for this team. We have the ambition to win it but… we had to make some changes… [and] whether that is in time for the next World Cup, to go and win it, I don’t know.”

Although Heather Knight had long been the heir apparent, Robinson was very clear that she was nevertheless very-much his choice – a new, young captain for a new, young era:

“We’ve got an outstanding individual in Heather Knight. She’s stubborn! She’s a bit annoying at times because she’s got her own opinion, which is absolutely as it should be! She’s comfortable in her own skin, she’s comfortable in her own company, and they’re great qualities for a captain… The ability to command a room… They were the qualities that hit me straight away when I met her.”

But he emphasised too that Knight is a player first and foremost, and also still a partly unfulfilled one:

“She’s a great player now but she has the potential to be an outstanding player… We’ve got to help her – make sure she is allowed to work on her own game – that’s the job of the coaches – to allow her space to get her game in order… [because] fundamentally… she is not England captain first, she is a player.”

The emphasis on youth and the long term has, of course, meant some difficult decisions, not least the sacking of Charlotte Edwards, but Robinson was forthright in his defence:

“It’s actually about putting things in place that will allow this team to have the best chance of being successful in the long-term, not the short-term. You’ve got to stop making short-term decisions. This is a long-term decision. You’ve now got a person at the age of 25 who can lead their country for a long time.”

In terms of the teams for this summer, Robinson wanted to emphasise that he is definitely looking beyond the current “contracted” squad:

“Myself and [Assistant Coach] Ali Maiden, we’re trying to integrate the Academy into us… trying to involve them with the main team as much as we can. Likewise with the Under-19s – we’re trying to get it more integrated.”

“Every single girl who’s in the Performance Squad and the Academy are up for selection for the next match.”

And an almost throw-away remark on selection actually spoke volumes in this regard:

“We’ve got 2 left-armers who deserve to play.”

But there is only one left-armer in the contracted squad, so Robinson can only have been referring to an Academy player (presumably Alex Hartley) as the other!

On the wicket keeping situation however, it seems they won’t be looking for any additional coverage in the absence of Sarah Taylor:

“Amy Jones has been on that many tours and not played with the gloves, so she is desperate to have a go. Lauren Winfield keeps for Yorkshire… [so] we’ve got two very able backups.”

Also on the subject of selection, Robinson said that Knight will be a part of the process:

“Heather will have a huge selection voice – trying to shut her up might be the problem. Heather has a huge say in the team that she wants on the pitch.”

Ruminating on the contracts, and indeed the very nature of the current “professionalism”, Robinson hinted that situation too might need to evolve.

“I can’t get enough contact sometimes with the girls. They’ve got other commitments, because they have to. They have to do other things to supplement their income, some of them. They’re all on one-year contracts going forward. Is that right? I don’t know!”

“I don’t know!” seems to be an answer Mark Robinson is honest enough to give quite a lot; but one thing he clearly does know is that he and his new skipper Heather Knight are in this for the long term; and that’s good, because as fans, we are too, and we too are excited to share the ride.

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.

The ECB have officially announced that Heather Knight will succeed Charlotte Edwards as England captain, becoming the 21st woman to skipper the team, with Anya Shrubsole as vice captain.

Knight was always the obvious choice: she was appointed vice captain in 2014, in a move which was described at the time as “succession planning”; of the available candidates (i.e. excluding Sarah Taylor) she is by some way the leading international run scorer in the past 12 months (357 runs at 26); and her record as a domestic captain at Berkshire and Hobart/ Tasmania speaks for itself – both teams having punched considerably above their weight with her at the helm.

With Sarah Taylor effectively having ruled herself out by taking a break from the game, were there any other realistic candidates?

Anya Shrubsole was a possibility, but the conventional wisdom, from which cricket rarely deviates, is that bowlers are unsuited to international captaincy; and whilst Nat Sciver’s name was also mentioned, she has not had any previous serious captaincy experience. The former, of course, has the consolation of the vice captaincy.

The next 12 months are unlikely to be easy for England. Their first task is to finish in the top 4 of the Women’s International Championship, and thus qualify directly for the 2017 World Cup – it ought to be straightforward, but they are currently 6th, albeit with games in hand. Then there is the World Cup itself – at home in England, with a media spotlight upon the team, the like of which they will never have experienced before.

As the (apparently apocryphal) Chinese curse says: May you live in interesting times!

These will certainly be interesting times for Heather Knight.

England batsman Lydia Greenway has announced her retirement from international cricket with immediate effect.

In a statement released by the ECB, Greenway is quoted as saying:

“During recent discussions with Mark Robinson about his focus on developing new players against Pakistan this summer, it became clear that my involvement with the England team might be limited moving forwards.  Whilst in the past I have been in a similar position and have fought for my place, I now feel that at this stage in my life, it’s time to take a step back and retire from international cricket with immediate effect, allowing the next generation of players to develop on the world stage.”

Greenway made her England debut in the 1st Test of the 2003 Women’s Ashes and went on to represent her country on 225 occasions, scoring 4,108 runs at a combined average of 26.

Although her form had perhaps been more erratic of late, she continued to make valuable contributions for England, and was voted Fan’s Player of the Series by CRICKETher readers after the last Women’s Ashes.

As with the retirement of Charlotte Edwards a few weeks ago, it seems pretty clear that Greenway also decided to jump having been told she was likely to be pushed anyway; but with the ongoing Sarah Taylor situation, you have to wonder whether losing another senior player, just weeks before the start of a crucial series against Pakistan, where England really have to be looking to take all 6 Women’s International Championship points, is (to paraphrase Oscar Wilde) a misfortune… or starting to look like carelessness?

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!”

After their shock loss to Surrey last time out, defending county champions Yorkshire got their season back on track with a fairly straightforward win against Berkshire at Finchampstead Cricket Club.

Chasing 155, Yorkshire got off to a strong start, as Lauren Winfield (76) and Hollie Armitage (19) put on 76 for the first wicket. As the scorecard suggests, Winfield was dominant, despite an excellent opening bowling spell from Berkshire’s 15-year-old prodigy Lauren Bell, who attacked the batsmen with pace and movement off the pitch into the right handers.

In the end it was Bell who helped to break the opening partnership, taking a cool catch to dismiss Armitage, as she top-edged Fi Morris to point. Elise Good (19) then joined her skipper to take Yorkshire past the hundred mark.

From 112-1 Yorkshire wobbled slightly, losing 5-12, before Hania Thompson (18*) and Dani Hazell (9*) steadied the ship to carry them home.

Earlier in the day, Berkshire captain Heather Knight had won the toss and elected to bat on what looked like an interesting pitch.

Berkshire made a slow start, with Katherine Brunt causing all sorts of problems steaming in down the hill, making even Heather Knight look foolish on a couple of occasions; so after 10 overs, Berkshire were just 30-1 and Yorkshire looked well on top.

Knight went on to make 65, before chipping Dani Hazell to deep midwicket where she was caught by Hayley Martinus, and Carla Rudd also played nicely for 36 – her highest ever score in senior county cricket; but no other Berkshire batsman made it into double figures, and they were eventually bowled out for a below-par 155 in the 45th over.

Afterwards, Yorkshire captain Lauren Winfield spoke to CRICKETher, reflecting upon her own performance, and then going on to credit her bowlers for doing the hard work up front:

“I feel pretty good at the minute – I’m batting pretty well. It would have been nice to be there not out at the end, and I probably gave it away once I got in; but it’s just nice to get over the line after the loss against Surrey a couple of weeks ago.”

“Katherine [Brunt] bowled really well for us – we wanted her to hit that hard line outside off stump and she did that really well with catchers in. People see Katherine and Spraggy [Laura Spragg] as a threat, so they generally try to play them off in the first 10; but we back our spinners in the middle to dry them out and squeeze pressure on in the next 20 or 30 overs and bring wickets – that’s what we’ve done well in the past and we managed to do it again today.”

Andy Lynch reports on MCC’s recent match against Oxford University.

Lovely venue, perfect weather, idyllic scene – it is easy to imagine that Hugh de Selincourt had days like these in mind when he wrote his classic ‘The Cricket Match’. To complete the picture, all that was needed was a close finish – but MCC Women showed their experience in easing to a 69 run win over a spirited Oxford University side in the Parks.

This long standing fixture has been keenly contested over recent years, at a ground that practically breathes history – from the pavilion nestling within the beautiful Oxford Parks, to the engraved Blues teams on the walls for each season since Victorian times, to toilets that we strongly suspect date back to the Edwardian era.

Unlike some sporting institutions in the news of late, Oxford does welcome females, and this long standing fixture has been keenly contested over recent years. Results have ebbed and flowed – an Evelyn Jones-inspired victory by Oxford in 2013 prompted MCC to return ‘tooled up’ in 2014 via the inclusion of Claire Taylor and Charlotte Edwards. MCC proceeded to rattle up 360, win by 275 runs, photo-bomb Oxford’s team photo and doubtless pin the opposition to the wall and take their pocket money before allowing them home.

It was another strong MCC team who turned out again this year, with Mesdames Taylor and Edwards once again providing a more than solid look to the middle order. MCC won the toss and naturally batted first in perfect sunshine – a serene opening partnership between Genevieve Porter and Amanda Potgieter saw them move to 96-0 at the halfway stage of their 40 over innings.

Oxford’s bowling impressed throughout however, and when the opening partnership was finally broken at 109, wickets started to fall with increasing regularity. Potgieter departed for a belligerent 64 off 83 balls, and steady bowling supported by some impressive fielding (a stunning boundary catch by Laura Down to dismiss Clare Ross being a particular highlight) saw MCC eventually being restricted to 202-9. The dismissal of Charlotte Edwards for just 9 by Sam Moore whilst attempting an extravagant reverse sweep was something of a bonus, although it could have been even better had 43 extras not been conceded (including 27 wides). A special mention to the opening pair of Sam Moore (2-29) and Immy Brown (3-28), who proved a handful for everyone.

203 off 40 overs was not an outrageous ask, especially not after the fireworks of the Varsity T20 match the week before when Oxford achieved a total in excess of this in half the overs.

A lot seemed to depend on the star from the Varsity game, Sian Kelly, and early signs were good as Oxford took 23 off the first 3 overs (with MCC returning the compliment with a few wides of their own). Sian Kelly was unable to repeat her heroics from last week however – driving to mid-off for just 13 – and after 9 overs, Oxford were 42-3.

A collapse would not have been surprising, but to their credit, keeper Ellie Ingram and captain Immy Brown combined to add 68 in 15 overs. At 110-3, the game looked evenly poised, but having missed out with the bat, Charlotte Edwards made up for it with the ball, turning in the impressive figures of 2-6 off 6 overs. Nikhila Ravi also bowled with impressive loop to take 3-34 (or at least we think she did – given that we were convinced that she and her twin sister Neeraja were doing their upmost to be indistinguishable to the scorers). Ingram fell for an excellent 41 off 55 balls, and although Brown continued her lone hand thereafter, she was the last wicket to fall for 39 off 66 balls, to a smart catch by Claire Taylor off a full blooded pull.

So an eventually comfortable win by the MCC – but at a time when cricket participation is under scrutiny at all ages, levels and indeed sexes, the enthusiasm and skill shown by the Oxford team does them credit and provides optimism for the future. I suspect we’ll be hearing more of at least a couple today’s players.