Tammy Beaumont and Danni Wyatt: Two peas in a pod

NICK FRIEND: Having first met as juniors, international cricket hasn't always come easily for England's white-ball openers. In a joint interview, the pair discuss the battle to belong, the quest for self-belief and what they've learnt along the way

“I still have doubts now that I feel like I’ve been found out,” admits Tammy Beaumont.

Beside her, Danni Wyatt nods along, well aware of the vulnerability that lingers even a decade into an international career.

“You always have that man on your shoulder,” she continues. “Almost the more success you have, the worse it is. I went through a stage two years ago where I went out expecting to get a hundred in every game. And if I got anything less than that, I would go: ‘You’re not good enough, you’re not doing your job.’”

During that period, Beaumont recorded three consecutive centuries against South Africa – the first two in ODIs and the third in a T20I the following week. “Instead of being absolutely elated, I was like: ‘I did my job today.’ That was how I saw it.”

You can tell that Beaumont and Wyatt go way back from their chemistry: they bounce off one another, finishing each other’s sentences as if they were calling through a quick single. “I think you’re selling yourself short,” Beaumont insists at one point when her long-time teammate offers a self-deprecating assessment of her early days on the world stage.

“I would never have met Tammy if it wasn’t for cricket. You just make friends for life,” Wyatt says. “I’ve learned so much. I don’t know what I’d be doing if I wasn’t playing cricket for England.”

Together, they are fascinating in conversation, mixing effervescence and candour, opening up on what they’ve learnt from representing their country.

“I still pinch myself that I’m touring the world playing for England, living the dream,” Wyatt smiles, pondering a journey that has not been without its bumps. “I just play for myself and my family and the team. I don’t like to think too much about cricket. I just go out there and enjoy it, having fun with all the girls.”

^{Beaumont and Wyatt have opened the batting for England 28 times}

The same question, but to Beaumont: how much has the game taught her about life? She pauses. “I think the big one is putting yourself out there and being outside of your comfort zone. I think where I was brought up, it would be more than acceptable to work at the school you went to and live down the road from your parents and never leave deepest, darkest Kent.

“I think it’s made me dip a toe in the water, see what else is out there, consider new things, challenge yourself and really stretch yourself. I’ve gone through a lot of tough times in my career, but I always felt like I didn’t want to walk away from the game because I wanted to really reach my potential. I always felt like there was something holding me back at times. I always decided that I was going to keep going until I felt like I’d exhausted every avenue.”

They are appearing via Zoom from New Zealand as England’s opening pair, chatting ahead of a year that will inform the national team’s plans for a thrillingly hectic schedule.

But this discussion focuses only up to the present, and mainly on the past, walking back through the challenges faced to this point: the battle to belong, the quest for self-belief and how two of the most dynamic cricketers in the women’s game have adapted to become the players they are today.

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Even what it means to win has changed with the passing of time. Beaumont returns to the aftermath of the World T20 in 2012, in the final of which England were narrowly beaten by Australia.

“We didn’t win and you’re gutted,” she recalls. “You got your runners-up medal and it pained me to bring it home. I threw it in my kitbag, and I left it there. I was like: ‘Eugh, I don’t want it. It’s the wrong colour. We should have won.’

“I’ve still got it and I found it during lockdown, and it was someone who didn’t play cricket in my household who said it. They were like: ‘That’s amazing, you know. Anyone would love to have that.’ I look back at it now and I am proud. Yes, we didn’t come away with the trophy, but you still got to a World Cup final.

“I think you grow up a bit – you don’t want to look back on your career and have regrets that you didn’t enjoy it or didn’t appreciate it at the time. I think when I finish, I’ll be able to say that I was a runner-up three times.”

Wyatt interjects with a question of her own: “As you get older, you appreciate it a bit more, don’t you?”

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Perhaps that is why the pair are able to talk like this; both turn 30 this year, within 42 days of one another, and are at the heart of a national side in which they did not always feel so comfortable. There are no clichés, but rather the opposite, even as it is comes up to 10pm in Queenstown.

“You realise that we’re the ones who are probably responsible for the team culture and really leading off the pitch and having that experience that some of the other players haven’t got yet,” says Beaumont, pondering a seniority that has crept up on her.

What stands out is the two women's camaraderie and mutual respect. Beaumont leads the majority of the conversation, but Wyatt adds her own observations. Once upon a time, they toured the Netherlands together as 16-year-olds, part of a development squad that also included Anya Shrubsole, Kate Cross and Georgia Elwiss, with whom Wyatt used to open the batting for Staffordshire at age-group level. “It’s like another life ago,” she laughs.

“We could never get her out, so I knew Danni could bat when we were about 15 or 16,” Beaumont retorts.

Wyatt was only 18 when she made her debut in India as a middle-order batsman and part-time off-spinner. “I don’t know how I got in the England team,” she confesses.

“I look back and I was so bad: I used to open the bowling, so I was more of a bowler, but I knew I was a batter. I used to have no confidence, I used to think the coach didn’t believe in me. So, I just used to throw up some pies and get some wickets for England.”

These days, of course, Wyatt is a hard-hitting counter-attacker, but the roots of the “massive belief” she now holds in her batting were born in the decline of her off-spin after an encounter with New Zealand during the World T20 in 2012.

“I was bowling against Sophie Devine and I just felt like I couldn’t bowl,” she says. “I ended up getting her out caught at cow, but I’d never felt it before. I just froze. Then, my lower back started hurting and I was really grumpy and moody. I managed to somehow get through [three] overs and from then on, it was really downhill.”

^{Tammy Beaumont celebrates her maiden international hundred}

She has bowled in just 14 international appearances since the start of 2014, having done so in 39 of her first 50 T20Is.

But the notion of self-belief is central in what both Beaumont and Wyatt have become. There was a period when they were bit-part players, struggling to make game-changing contributions: “I think both of us were quite talented youngsters but didn’t necessarily understand our own games,” says Beaumont, who was initially picked by England as a reserve wicketkeeper on her first two tours, batting – as Wyatt cannot help but point out – at No.10.

“I had always seen myself as a batter who kept wicket. But at the time, coaches often said: ‘Just go out and do what you do,’ and at 18 I didn’t actually understand what I did. I just did it. And it didn’t quite work at international level – it certainly didn’t work batting at No.8 when I had opened all my life for Kent. It didn’t work. And when it didn’t work, I didn’t understand.”

So, both highlight the arrival of Mark Robinson in 2015 as a turning point: Beaumont had never passed fifty in international cricket until he began to challenge her mindset. By the time he left his role four years later – with Ali Maiden as his assistant, she was third on her country’s all-time list of ODI century-makers.

Beaumont and Wyatt were fundamental in a bold strategy – impulsive and willing to learn, with an instinctive flair, and the mirror image of what their head coach was looking to create. In the first two years of Robinson’s tenure, England hit more ODI sixes than in the previous 290 matches combined. As two naturally aggressive young players with their best cricket ahead of them, the relationship was a perfect fit.

“I think we both owe them a lot,” says Wyatt, turning to her opening partner simultaneously. “We still get on with them now even though they’re not with us. Ali and Robbo were amazing with both of us.

“Personally, it was just amazing to have the belief from your coaches. It’s amazing what that can do to your brain when you go out there and bat, knowing that you’ve got the backing from your teammates and your coach.

“I’d always played that pinch-hitter role for a few years and I’d get flashy 20s or 30s, but that never made a career.”

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It was Robinson’s maxim, in fact, that ‘thirties kill careers’ – and his protégées repeat the phrase in unison, if only to further highlight his impact on their cricketing lives.

And it is no surprise, therefore, that Beaumont and Wyatt both reached three figures for the first time almost immediately after posting their maiden half-centuries.

For Wyatt, the moment came in Australia during the 2017 Ashes, 49 innings and seven years after her T20I debut. Four days later, she smashed 100 off 57 balls. The consequence? A sense of belonging. “I don’t think I settled in the England squad until probably around 2017. I was always thinking: ‘If I fail on this tour, that will be it.’ I just didn’t feel backed by the captain or the coaches – I thought they just thought I was there for a flashy 20, so it probably wasn’t until 2017.”

Likewise, Beaumont. She had made her international bow in 2009, taking the daunting step into an England squad already holding the Women’s Ashes, 50-over World Cup and World T20 crown. Quite frankly, they were hardly in need of reinforcements. So much so, in fact, that there were 14 months between Anya Shrubsole, ODI debutante No. 108, and Beaumont, No.109.

“It was incredibly tough to go into that team with some absolute legends who had just won the World Cup and try to feel like you actually belonged there,” she remembers. “I don’t think I felt like I belonged there for a long time.”

And so, there is no underplaying the value of the three-day period in 2016 that kickstarted her international career. Beaumont had last faced a delivery in ODI cricket in August 2014, falling first ball against India at Scarborough. But two years later, after making 70 against Pakistan on June 22, she followed it up with two centuries in the next five days.

She was off and running: prior to 2016, her ODI average had never exceeded 19.85. Since that breakthrough, she has averaged 48.4.

“I do think that the moment you get an international hundred, no one can take that away from you no matter what,” she says. “Even if you don’t play again ever, no one can take that away from you. That is a really special moment because it is an elite club.”

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Until then, Beaumont admits, the pressure of the international arena, exaggerated by the expectation of having come through so young, was difficult to manage. It was the clarity of Robinson’s message that flicked the switch; his transparency resonated and her game was transformed.

“You don’t quite understand yourself,” she reflects. “You don’t understand how you work or how you play, but I think it took Robbo coming in and being really explicit with me and what he expected of me.

“He would say: ‘If you fail, as long as you fail doing this, then I don’t care and I’ll give you another go. But if you fail doing the opposite, then I’ll come and tell you off.’”

Wyatt adds: “They were both very harsh on me and Tammy, but it worked. They knew how to get the best out of us.”

For Beaumont, that included focusing on the mental side of her game rather than simply how she was hitting the ball. Now, when her father asks whether her batting is in healthy order, she knows that the answer is more nuanced than it might once have been.

She explains: “He’s like: ‘Oh, are you in form?’ I have a problem with the word ‘form’. For me, quite often I find that my technique is good, so I’m not really working on anything technical anymore. Occasionally, a few things might crop in and that is maybe why I don’t do as well for a little period. But actually, for me, I see my ‘form’ as a big mental thing.

“Quite often I’ll be playing well, but it’s whether I’m mentally sharp enough that in a game I’m not going to give my wicket away. That’s where I’m at now. Where I am with my mental skills is probably more important for me than how my technique is working. Particularly in 50-over cricket, if you’re not playing that well, you can just about get away with it if you get past the new ball. Whereas actually, if you’re mentally switched on, that’s when you don’t get 20, but you get 50 or 100.”

^{Danni Wyatt's breakthrough moment: a T20I hundred against Australia}

Needless to say, that thought process comes with experience. Wyatt, on the other hand, has learned that she is at her best when running well between the wickets early on and hitting over cover.

Across the last decade, they have taken to the field together in 125 international matches, partnering at the top of the innings in 28 of those. And those numbers will rise in the next fortnight.

Yet, both know that the way they play – with a sense of freedom encouraged first by Robinson and now by Lisa Keightley – has been enabled by a feeling of security, even if runs were in short supply during 2020.

Wyatt averaged just 11.25 in 12 T20Is last year and England need more from her as they approach a huge chapter, so it was somewhat typical of her recent fortune that she should record a maiden ODI century, 14 months ago in Kuala Lumpur, England’s last 50-over series before Covid-19 ground the game to a halt.

“That's the reason we moved her up the order for that trip to Malaysia,” captain Heather Knight explained on the eve of this series, “because we felt like she could be really aggressive and get us off to great starts.”

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That sort of backing has been key; they are braver England cricketers in their stroke-play than when they first came into the setup, where it is only natural to feel restricted by a fear of failure.

“I think once you know what your role is and what your team expects of you and how you can actually do it, then it’s so much easier to actually go out and not care about getting out,” says Beaumont.

“If you’re always thinking: ‘If I don’t score runs, I’m going to get dropped for the next game,’ then you can never perform to your potential because you’re just thinking that you can’t get out.

“When you’re an established player, you can have four failures in a row and get that fifth chance. When you’re trying to establish yourself in the team, unless you’re extremely talented and you have a unique skillset to the team, you do only get a couple of goes in a row and then you’re dropped or it’s the next series and someone else is in form, so they give them a go.

“I think quite often the hardest thing is to establish yourself and to have the coach go: ‘Actually you’re going to get a run of four games in a row. It doesn’t matter what you do – I want you to go out there and do it.’ It gives you that belief in yourself.”

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They talk now with 350 caps between them – grateful for the highs, wiser for the lows, certain that they can be a better opening pair for their friendship.

“You don’t have the best day on the pitch every time,” Beaumont knows, “but because Danni knows me really well and I know Danni really, we can work each other round and be like: ‘Come on, you’ve only got to get through the new ball’ or ‘it won’t swing for long’ or ‘get me on strike, I fancy it.’”

“Or, if we don’t want to talk about cricket,” adds Wyatt, “we know what to talk about.”

Beaumont explains: “We actually don’t really talk about cricket that much, to be honest. Neither of us likes to take things too seriously, so most of the time we’re talking utter nonsense.”

“While we’re waiting to go out to bat, we’re just standing there laughing,” says Wyatt, jumping back in.

“But we both know that’s the best way to relax each other,” Beaumont smiles. “I think that’s why we bat well together, because we do get on so well.”

BT Sport will show the England Women’s tour of New Zealand, starting with the 1st ODI on BT Sport 2 on 23rd February at 00.30am.