Heather Knight has challenged her side to play their own “entertaining” brand of cricket having been inspired by England men’s ‘Bazball’ approach.
England get their women’s Ashes campaign under way on Thursday and will have to be at their best if they are to wrestle back the trophy for the first time in a decade from a formidable Australian team that has reigned supreme in all formats of the game.
Knight’s side will open the multi-format series – which includes three T20s and three one-day internationals – with a rare Test at Trent Bridge in what is set to be a historic moment for female cricket. Deviating from the usual four-day length, it will be only the second five-day Test match that women’s cricket has witnessed and the first since 1992.
Knight admitted the group had been spurred on by the finale to the men’s first Test on Tuesday evening, but was equally conscious of using the occasion to show that women can thrive in red-ball cricket.
“It was pretty epic stuff, wasn’t it? We hung around here for an hour to watch the back end of it,” Knight said of the men’s pulsating loss to Australia. “It was a brilliant Test match to watch. We’re a different team, but we want to play to our strengths as much as we can. There are some parallels in that we want to play entertaining cricket.
“When we do play red-ball cricket, as women’s cricketers we do feel sometimes we’re fighting for the format a little bit. We’ve talked about how important it is that we do play red-ball cricket more because we want future generations [of young girls] to be able to play Test cricket. If there is a slower period in women’s Test matches, there is a debate that starts about whether women should play the game. Ultimately as players, we want to make it as entertaining and exciting to watch.”
It is a sentiment shared by Clare Connor, the ECB’s managing director of women’s cricket. “England women have got the opportunity to play a positive style of cricket alongside the approach we’re used to with England men now – exciting and dramatic and hopefully inspiring,” Connor told Telegraph Sport.
“With that approach comes higher risk; it’s the risk-reward ratio as it has the ability to inspire and entertain. I’m pretty sure Heather Knight and the team would have been gripped and inspired by the men’s Ashes Test, and now want to get under way and write their own stories.”
The inclusion of debutants Lauren Filer and Danni Wyatt – who after 245 white ball games has been rewarded with a Test debut at the age of 32 – indicate that England will look to deploy an aggressive game plan against Australia for the Test.
“We’ve gone for Lauren because she’s a real impact bowler,” explained Knight. “I guess she’s a bit of an unknown, but she’s one of the quickest in the country and she gets bounce. She can move the ball both ways and ultimately we need a team that is going to take some wickets.”
Having made her red-ball debut in 2011, Knight is one of the more seasoned Test players in England’s squad, but in an indication of how much of a rarity the longer format is in the female game, the 32-year-old has chalked up only 10 Tests since. There is a sense this one could rank amongst the most important of her career and, as a result, she has tapped Stuart Broad up for some advice about the pitch.
“I’ve spoken to Stuart about the conditions,” said Knight. “He’s played a lot of cricket here and this is my first ever game at Trent Bridge. I got lost on the way to lunch earlier, I’m not used to not knowing my way around a cricket ground. But yeah, [he’s told me] lots of useful stuff on how to bowl on this pitch, how the pitch changes. We’ve had a lot of interactions with the guys just because of how the Ashes has been marketed. It’s nice that the guys have been really supportive and it’s been helpful for us as a group.”
Both the men’s and women’s Ashes series run concurrently this summer and the ECB’s ‘Ashes, Two Ashes’ campaign has sparked record-breaking ticket sales.
More than 15,000 are expected for the opening day at Trent Bridge, while 80,000 have been sold across the series, with that number expected to climb.
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