Despite her enduring worth as a leader and batter, captain is collateral in overdue regime-change
Andrew Miller22-Mar-2025A selective list of England’s longest-reigning monarchs. Elizabeth, Victoria, Elizabeth … Clare, Charlotte, Heather.The language of sport and monarchy can often be intertwined, with talk of reigns, dynasties and eras. But the office of England women’s cricket captain takes such metaphors to the nth degree. The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen… whoever she may turn out to be.For in the space of a quarter of a century, there have been precisely three full-time England women’s captains, which is less than a third of the number that the men have appointed across formats in that same period.And it’s a measure of the lasting power, prestige and influence that each has wielded that the first of these – Clare Connor – is to this day the most powerful woman in the ECB boardroom, and was instrumental in sealing the fate of each of her successors – the first of whom, Charlotte Edwards, could, by very dint of Heather Knight’s removal, be on the verge of becoming the most powerful head coach the ECB has ever appointed.Related
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As for Knight, where she goes from here – in a purely playing capacity – only her own drive and ambition can say. But in terms of her lasting influence within English cricket circles, her impact should not, and frankly cannot, be diminished by the fact that she’s been pushed out of the job she made her own for nine proud years.The parallels with Edwards’ departure are, however, extraordinary. Just as was the case back in 2016, England looked to be going places under a powerful and in-form leader, until the precise moment – in Delhi in the World T20 [now T20 World Cup] semi-final – that the gulf between them and Australia (it’s always Australia …) was once again revealed to be a chasm.Heather Knight gives the England team talk•Getty ImagesBack then, it was England’s new head coach Mark Robinson who made the killer call. Despite Edwards having been her team’s leading run-scorer (and at the highest average) across the preceding 12 months, the subtext of his intervention was that she was simply too overbearing – in terms of stature rather than personality – for a team that was unable to evolve with her at the helm.Within months of Edwards’ removal, England had unlocked a new generation of players – not least a new opening pair in Lauren Winfield-Hill and Tammy Beaumont – whose lights had hitherto been hidden under a bushel by the previous regime, and whose march to triumph (under Knight) at the 2017 World Cup was the exact moment at which the ECB twigged that women’s cricket wasn’t simply a sideshow but a complementary means for 50% of the population to feel a part of the nation’s summer sport.It is to Knight’s eternal credit that she has shouldered such weighty matters as part of her dynastic duty throughout the past eight years – it’s worth remembering that, in 2018, she was one of just three professional cricketers, alongside her male counterpart Eoin Morgan and the PCA chairman Daryl Mitchell, to be given the inside-track on the creation of the Hundred, which epitomises the speed at which those light-bulbs had just blinked into life in the ECB boardroom.And yet, the extent to which Knight was obliged to shield her players from the enormity of their new-found status has inadvertently contributed to a repetition of Edwards’ dilemma, whereby the players beneath her were simply unable to front up without her firm hand on the tiller.Never was this more gallingly demonstrated than in their group-stage loss to West Indies at the T20 World Cup 2024 in October. Given how the draw opened up for England in that tournament, with India and Australia also faltering early, Knight’s match-ending injury, and her team’s headless-chicken response to her absence, was quite possibly the difference between their group-stage elimination and a second world title. And how different the narrative would be right now.Heather Knight’s record as captain•ESPNcricinfo LtdOr not, because even another major trophy would not have changed the underlying fragility that has contributed to Knight’s downfall. Just like Edwards before her, she has not ceased to be in the side on merit – the ‘what-if’ of her unbeaten 21 from 13 balls in that West Indies loss deserves to be one of the biggest asterisks of her career, but she also finished England’s ghastly Ashes tour as their leading run-scorer across formats.But her removal is more about literal regime-change than any sense that she is no longer worthy. As Jon Lewis discovered in his own sacking on Friday, there is only so much that can be done within the women’s nascent professional set-up, with the exponential growth of the format’s stature as yet unmatched by the requisite breadth to ensure genuine competition for places.As such, the day-to-day dynamics within the England women’s team are barely removed from the days of Rachael Heyhoe-Flint and Karen Smithies (yet more grand dames of yesteryear). Irrespective of the political machinations that Knight, as captain, has been required to factor into her role, the basic formula for on-field success is unchanged – pride in the badge, loyalty, faith in your team-mates … and ultimately a continuity of selection that, as in 2016, locks out hungry young challengers.Hence Knight’s insistence, in November, that England would not be “ripping up trees” in their bid to battle back from that T20 World Cup humiliation. Whether or not that could or should have made a difference is immaterial. In the court of Queen Heather, as with each of her predecessors, there were always invisible limits on the extent to which the selectors could get radical.And now, the deed is done. Wherever the ECB turn at this genuinely seismic moment for women’s cricket, history suggests that they won’t go in for a short-term fix … which arguably draws the spotlight away from the list of underwhelming deputies whose professional standards were called into question in the course of an ill-fated winter, and onto the pointedly forward-facing England A tour that, as timing would have it, gets underway in Sydney on Wednesday.Perhaps it’s no coincidence that no captain has yet been named for that trip. It’s never been an honour that can be conferred lightly, and especially not now.
