England captain believes her players have become ‘smarter’ while sticking to aggressive mantra
Valkerie Baynes18-Jun-2024For some 18 months, England Women have committed to playing a harder, faster, more aggressive style of cricket but, according to Heather Knight, they are also becoming smarter.Since Jon Lewis took over as head coach at the end of the 2022 English summer, the team vision has been clear, expressed in mantras such as “attacking mindset”, “walk towards the danger” and the even more ubiquitous “inspire and entertain”.It has worked in so far as it has transformed a team which was comprehensively beaten 12 points to four by Australia in the 2019 Ashes and 6-4 in a rain-hit 2021-22 series into a side which drew last year’s series on points, winning four matches to Australia’s three.But it is very much a work in progress. In their recent home series against Pakistan, England lacked ruthlessness and polish, despite being a far stronger side.Knight, England’s captain, believes that in hosting New Zealand in three ODIs starting next week followed by five T20Is, they have an opportunity to build on knowledge gained against the White Ferns in New Zealand earlier this year.”We became a bit of a smarter team,” Knight told ESPNcricinfo, looking back on England’s tour of New Zealand in March and April. “We played on bigger boundaries, wickets that did a little bit more in the powerplay, so it wasn’t really easy to attack then. We learned how to be a bit smarter and how to adapt a little bit to different conditions.”Sometimes it’s going to be hard to attack in the powerplay, the idea was to sort of go from ball one and keep the foot down, but that isn’t always going to be possible and sometimes there’s going to be little bumps along the road, but I think we learned a lot from that tour.”Heather Knight speaks at a Chance to Shine event at Lord’s•Chance to Shine
England defeated New Zealand in their ODIs earlier this year 2-1 and won the T20I series 4-1.England have lost only two of their 13 completed ODIs since the start of December 2022 and they have won 21 of their 27 T20Is in that time. Crucially, with a T20 World Cup fast approaching in Bangladesh in October, one of those defeats was to hosts and underdogs South Africa in the semi-final of last year’s T20 World Cup and two more to a visiting Sri Lanka side who had never beaten them in a series before.There were also learnings against Pakistan, including playing on slower wickets. At Edgbaston, England recovered from 11 for 4 to win the first T20I, then secured a 37-run ODI victory in Derby which Knight described at the time as “scrappy”.”Our job is just to keep getting better, keep playing cricket that we want to play and also winning those games when it’s tough,” Knight said.”You look at that Derby game, it wasn’t probably the most exciting to watch sometimes,” she added, recalling how England failed to claim the final wicket of a match that they had otherwise dominated. “I guess in that case it is just about punching out results and trying to say, look, it wasn’t quite the perfect wicket to be able to play how we wanted to, but being smart with it and adapting to what’s in front of us.”Because ultimately our biggest chance to inspire as well is winning big competitions and performing in big events, and trying to win in the way that we want to do, which is exciting and attacking.”The balance is much finer in T20 cricket, where the margins for error are far smaller and understanding that is becoming a key part of England’s narrative.Danni Wyatt’s 48-ball 87 in the third T20I against Pakistan was by far the standout performance for England, while Nat Sciver-Brunt produced a corresponding innings in the ODIs with an unbeaten century in the last match of the tour.”T20 is so hard to be consistent, it’s really a tough thing to do,” Knight said. “A top opening batter in world cricket maybe might come off one in three, one in four, and someone like Danni is one of the best openers in the world. She doesn’t come off every game and she’s brilliant at being able to manage that.”It can be quite mentally tough, honestly. Her super-strength has been able to say: ‘Right, I didn’t get any runs, I’m completely fine. That’s how I want to play and I’m going to go and try and play exactly the same way in the next game’.”It’s about being really clear going into that T20 World Cup in particular, how we want to do things. It’s all well and good saying, ‘oh, we’re going to be attacking, we’re going to be aggressive,’ but being really clear on individually the ‘how’ of that.”But it is not only a World Cup victory, or how it is achieved, that has the potential to inspire, as Knight well knows. On Monday, she joined Chance to Shine, the children’s cricket charity with whom she has held a long association, in welcoming hundreds of state school pupils to Lord’s for a day of cricket coaching and other activities.Related
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Knight has worked with the organisation since finishing university, when she coached state-school children – often alongside Charlotte Edwards – two days a week while juggling a burgeoning playing career that, for her, didn’t become fully professional until three years later, in 2013.”It enabled us to pay the bills basically whilst we were still playing cricket for England and enabled us to live before everything became professional,” Knight said. “It’s really important to try to get cricket into state schools and there’s a lot of barriers there, like facilities. At my old school there, people used to smoke on the rubbish astro turf that we had and there was stains on it and things like that.”Here today there’s state-school children from all over the place, from all backgrounds, coming in and having an amazing day at Lord’s. It’s all about giving them a good first experience of cricket really, and trying to get them interested in the game and more involved.”Chance to Shine deliver cricket to over 600,000 young people each year, working in state schools and underserved communities. Until midday on 18th June donations made to Chance to Shine will be doubled by the Big Give campaign. Support the charity today and help inspire more young people through cricket.