The Inspiration Generation: Coaching's fresh dawn

Ebony Rainford-Brent has her coaching badges, but she was never going to be a coach. "You need to be quite measured and pokerfaced," she laughs. "That's just not me." Even when she was in leadership positions, her own players would wind up telling her to pipe down.

But Charlotte Edwards was destined for it: the best captain that Sarah Taylor played under, the one with whom Anya Shrubsole really connected.

"Lottie just wanted to play," says Lucy Pearson. "She wanted to think about the game. She loves the technical and tactical."

"Just an incredible leader," says Shrubsole, now her assistant at Southern Vipers but in awe of her boss ever since she was a 16-year-old international seamer under Edwards' captaincy. "I'm pretty confident that at some point in the not-too-distant future she will be the head coach of England."

It's a commonly held view: Charlotte Edwards was always going to be the coach that she has become – seconded to head up Sydney Sixers and Mumbai Indians over the winter, assisting England A in the previous year. With Southern Brave, she has been to consecutive Hundred finals. At Southern Vipers, she has won all there is to win.

Rewind further, and eventually you reach the moment that she knew this was for her: winning the County Championship with Hampshire in 2018. Until then, she hadn't been sure, scarred by the bluntness with which her playing career came to an end. 

Edwards stepped away from the sport once that happened to reassess and give herself time to breathe. But that breathlessness was what she thrived on and what she couldn't do without. So, the early stages of retirement were a challenging paradox: missing it but not missing it, pissed off by the game but besotted with it. Withdrawal symptoms.

"I was hurt, and I was angry that it had all been taken away from me," she says. "But it was the one thing I missed the most: when you play, that's what you thrive on – the next series, the next World Cup." There is a gratitude, too, for her own predecessors: Rachael Heyhoe-Flint was the first person to phone after her retirement. "She shared her own experience and how to deal with it: dignity and keeping her head high."

^{Charlotte Edwards began her winter in the Women's Big Bash with Sydney Sixers (Will Russell/Getty Images)}

With Hampshire, though, she saw her possible influence in real time, watching young players – Charlie Dean among them – improve and succeed. "I knew I could have an impact as a coach, and I then knew I had to do this. When the Vipers role came up in 2020, it was a no-brainer for me.

"I love the game too much."

Everyone agrees: even the jobs that Edwards held down alongside playing were cricket-based, first with Hunts County, then with Chance to Shine. She only got three years as a bona fide professional but is keen not to sell that as a sob story. No one involved in this piece spoke with any resentment or jealousy about what they got from their era. Instead, they revel in the strength of the bonds forged together.

"I remember going to the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh as one of the first things I did," says Beth Barrett-Wild, now heading up The Hundred but then England Women's media manager, "and there wasn't actually any broadcast coverage of the women's competition in the UK, so I was live-tweeting all of those matches. When I was in that role, it was very much about trying to make as much noise as possible, putting in a lot of calls and trying to get that coverage. I'd be the only person, so I was let loose on the Twitter account."

Lydia Greenway, capped 225 times between 2003 and 2016, remembers being put up in three chalets for the 2005 World Cup, a poor campaign at a time when England weren't actually all that good; Edwards recalls sharing a bunkbed with Clare Connor in Utrecht when they travelled with England Under-19s; until that trip, neither Edwards nor Laura MacLeod had ever been on a plane.

Both are involved in the regional system now and share a similar view on how much their players need to know of what life was like then as a female cricketer. "I think it's really important that they understand how fortunate they are and how lucky they are to be in such privileged positions that we could only have dreamt of 25 years ago," says Edwards. Enid Bakewell was at one of Vipers' games recently, and Edwards introduced her to the players as the reason that they can now be where they are.

"But," she adds, "it's not their fault, and that's the balance you need – making sure they understand the past but equally not being held to account if they do have the odd moan. It's about making sure everyone understands – myself included – how lucky we are.

^{England's domestic teams play for Charlotte Edwards' name in silver (George Wood/Getty Images)}

"I've got the best job in the world. I tell everyone that. I'd do it even if I wasn't being paid. That's what you want from the players to think – you want them to say they'd be doing it whether or not they're being paid. That's what I did, that's what we did for years. We did it because we absolutely loved it. We sacrificed a lot to do it.

"You should never take for granted the opportunities you've got within cricket because they are very special. I wouldn't change my career for the world, other than lifting a couple more World Cups."

As Clare Taylor puts it: "History is important, but it shows throughout life that people will take from history what they want, unfortunately. I'm not going to preach to anyone about what I've done. I don't look at this group of players and think they need to know where they've come from."

Edwards returns to the bunkbed example. "This is where I need to step in sometimes: if they don't get a single room, you just need to move on because that's not important. It's not going to make you play any better. Yes, we will absolutely try to get you all what you want, but in a regional setup that's not going to be the end of the world.

"You can room with someone, and that extra money can be spent on coaching to make you better. A player asked me why we're not going on a pre-season tour – well, we're saving that £30,000 to invest in coaches, so you can be better. They trust me now that that's the right thing to do."

MacLeod, director of cricket at Central Sparks, is cut from the same cloth; she calls it "professional prudence", while highlighting how far the sport has to go. "Every tenner that we can save can go to different things," she says, "getting another coach in, a sports psych, a nutritionist, heart-rate monitors." Needless to say, you wouldn't hear the men's county circuit operating so hand-to-mouth.

That, though, is where Sarah Taylor finds herself, full-time with Sussex men as their fielding and wicketkeeping coach, given a new deal as one of Paul Farbrace's first acts as the club's head coach. They have worked together before, when Taylor was blazing another trail as his assistant coach of Team Abu Dhabi in the T10 League. There, she became just the second woman – after Australia's Julia Price, with Brisbane Heat – to coach in a men's franchise tournament.

^{Lydia Greenway has remained in the game in multiple roles since retiring from playing (Jordan Mansfield/Getty Images)}

Now, she is the first woman to hold a full-time coaching position at a county, a post she never chased but rather came upon by accident after impressing Sussex's academy staff while coaching at Bede's School. Until then, by her own admission, she "struggled for years" to work out what to do after cricket. If it wasn't obvious to her, though, others could see it. "Her gift for wicketkeeping was always way bigger than female coaching," is how Rainford-Brent puts it.

Taylor was first brought in by Sussex on a part-time basis in 2021 but reckons her passion "properly kicked in" last summer, by which time she had a secondary role on the staff of Manchester Originals.

"I want to see how far I can go," she says. For that reason, she has trained hard to improve her fielding coaching, which is not a natural forte in the way that working with wicketkeeping is. She spends much of her time in the gym these days, not necessarily to keep fit but so she can "hit the ball hard enough so the guys are satisfied with what I'm delivering". She calls that the "only difference" she's found between the men's and women's games. But that's it, and she insists that others from her generation have what it takes to follow in her accidental footsteps.

"Anya Shrubsole and Dani Hazell have the knowledge of a cricket game like any male coach out there."

"It gives you a sense of pride to know that there are other people on a similar journey with a similar mission. But I also get frustrated at the pace of change as well. If I think of how quickly we're moving with the regional game, I think there is still a long way to go"

Laura MacLeod

Lisa Keightley worked for Paarl Royals as part of South Africa's new men's T20 competition and said similar ahead of the competition, while her replacement as England coach, Jon Lewis, stated at his unveiling that "you don't coach gender, you coach people".

Does Taylor realise her own significance, though, as the face of female coaches within the men's game in England?

"It's weird because when you're in your coaching bubble, you just look at yourself as one of the lads," she says. "I don't feel any different to them, and it's only when I step out and someone asks me that question that I realise. I'm very aware that I'm female. But for me it's just really normal.

"I grew up in the men's game. My personality suits working in the men's game. I like the directness of the guys: if they want more or if it's not good enough, they'll say so. I like knowing where you stand. How I've ended up in the men's game has been pure chance, but I know I want to excel in it, so I've worked really hard."

MacLeod sees Taylor's position as part of what she calls "the next frontier".

"How do we start becoming people that are taken on their own value who don't have to overprove themselves?"

^{Dani Hazell won the Heyhoe Flint Trophy in 2022 as Northern Diamonds' head coach and heads up Northern Superchargers in The Hundred (Harry Trump/Getty Images)}

For Taylor, that is starting to happen: far from the player who came to fear the limelight, she is enjoying being "just one of the coaches", mostly ignored as she walks back up the stairs to the changing rooms at Hove.

"But," she admits, "if I get given a job to do, I feel like my name is attached. I need to be good at it."

When Mark Robinson was appointed as England's coach in 2015, Connor pointed out at his unveiling that there simply wasn't a woman who could match his experience and qualification, and since then changing that has been a priority for English cricket. Jonathan Finch, director of England Women's cricket, admitted last year that the number of female coaches was still below what he wanted but added that he was putting his faith in the Trailblazer Generation to change that.

So, it's one of MacLeod's frustrations that there are so few self-development opportunities for directors of cricket in the women's game. She was quiet as a player but found her voice as a regional growth executive and business support manager for the ECB, engaging with the counties and trying to encourage them to be more equitable with their spending.

She has helped out with Birmingham Phoenix in The Hundred but has otherwise forced her own progression, linking back up with Farbrace – a one-time England Women's coach at the start of the century – when he was local as Warwickshire's director of cricket, falling back on a Masters in biomechanics and surrounding herself with high-performance books and podcasts.

"It gives you a sense of pride to know that there are other people on a similar journey with a similar mission," she says. "But I also get frustrated at the pace of change as well. If I think of how quickly we're moving with the regional game, I think there is still a long way to go.

"I've started to go to other women's sports events – I've been to Manchester United twice now – and I look over and think: 'Is this the model to follow? Is that how we're going to get real traction? Is that how we're going to get to be in a full-time professional team quicker? Is that going to enable us to utilise the ECB investment, as well as commercial investment? We could exceed the ECB's expectations. I know that rugby are on the verge as well; they've had success in New Zealand recently. It's keeping pace with them and using the best-practice examples and applying them to cricket."

Claire Taylor shares those thoughts: "Getting those regional structures fully professional and making sure we have the pipelines and underlying cricket for good club cricketers is the next stage."

^{Sarah Taylor (left) is the first woman to hold a full-time coaching role with a men's county side (Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)}

Between Taylor and MacLeod, the MCC is slowly improving in its own diversity. Connor, replaced by Stephen Fry as president in October but still the ECB's managing director for women's cricket, was added in January to the MCC world cricket committee, Sarah Fane is director of the MCC Foundation and Vicky Griffiths was a recent appointment as chair of membership and general purposes. "There are still ways to go," adds Taylor. "We have three women on the main committee for the first time. It's really important. At clubs like the MCC, change is slow because it's dependent on changing the underlying membership."

She is the perfect pick for her role, though, as head of cricket. At least, that is the view of Clare Taylor, the former seamer and her long-time teammate. "You tell her you want a new Duckworth-Lewis or a new administrator and she is your woman." Aside from her MCC responsibilities, she recently completed six-and-a-half years as vice-chair of the Berkshire Cricket Foundation and is chair of London Spirit in The Hundred.

"You want to get involved in these organisations and seek ways that you can make a significant difference," says Claire, whose consultancy work is focused around helping universities, "and with both the MCC and ECB you are bringing your experiences in the game at all levels, as well as skills from my day-job. With this whole idea of a game for all, I'm really keen on getting involved from the inside.

"It's incredibly important that women with experience across levels of the game do get involved because their experiences are priceless – whether through commentary, umpiring or governance. It's essential."

So, Pearson is on the ECB board, as well as overseeing 140,000 coaches per year as the Football Association's head of education. Her background was in teaching, but that transition into these roles speaks to Taylor's point. "I think what has changed is that the opportunities to get into some spaces was much more limited than now," says Pearson.

"A bit like the move from amateur to professional, we're just seeing that mirrored around the roles that are now available to people who are passionate and want to give back. I think it's that the world is growing up."

Take Laura Marsh, who is making her way in coaching but wasn't always set on that path. She spent January as Chris Guest's assistant at the Under-19 World Cup – when she made her England debut, 16-year-old Davina Perrin wasn't even born – and is part of The Blaze's backroom staff. She has realised that being a 2019 retiree means her recent playing experiences "are probably in some ways more relatable to some of these girls".

^{Anya Shrubsole is Charlotte Edwards' assistant coach at Southern Brave (Harry Trump/Getty Images)}

Marsh and Edwards speak close to daily about coaching, while fellow off-spinner Hazell won the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy with Northern Diamonds in 2022 and has had two years in The Hundred with Northern Superchargers.

Greenway, too, admits that she is keen to do more, having got a taste for it during the FairBreak competition in 2022. Two years earlier, she had been pencilled in to coach Oval Invincibles before opting out. It wasn't even her intention to stay in cricket post-playing – she'd drawn up a business plan after qualifying as a personal trainer – but has since become a jack of all trades for the women's game, with her malleability in demand across the board. That was exemplified by her Women's Premier League appointment at Mumbai Indians as their fielding coach.

Then, there is Heather Knight, who debuted in 2010 and has become a fine orator and champion for the women's game.

"I couldn't do Clare Connor's job," she tells The Cricketer. "She's a very busy lady. But it's a real tipping point at the moment in women's sport, not just in cricket. I can't see me not being part of that journey."

Shrubsole, likewise, won't rule out a move into administration but in the meantime has continued her coaching development over the winter as Edwards' assistant at the Women's Big Bash.

The former seamer, whose international retirement came after the World Cup final, has only been doing this for a year but has earned rave reviews – not least from Edwards herself, who liaised with her former teammate about the possibility of her international retirement, kept the Vipers role vacant for 12 months and waited for Shrubsole to become available to fill it.

"I wanted people like her around the group," says Edwards, justifying that move. "The game looks after good people. That's why I wanted to look after her; she's a good egg and she's been fantastic. I just always had a special bond with Anya because she talked the same language as me."

The WPL has come too late for that generation but represents how far the game has moved. Shrubsole, still playing for Southern Vipers, could have registered for the auction but decided not to. "Absolutely not," she roared, asked by The Cricketer in February if she'd be entering. "Obviously, there is temptation there, but I'm much nearer the end. Essentially, I'd be doing it for money. And I'd like to think I've not really done anything in my life for money."

If that wasn't true, neither she nor any of her teammates would have devoted themselves to playing cricket for England at a time when it was effectively a loss-making venture powered by relentless passion.

Greenway is drawn to England's World Cup final win at Lord's in 2017, 13 months after her international retirement. As the players celebrated the defining wicket on the field, she stood by the sightscreen and had a moment, overcome by emotion at the scene in front of her.

"I never look at it and say I wish I was playing now," she says.

"But I'm more proud of where the women's game is now. I'm just very grateful to still be involved."

Over six sections - available via the links below (and all free to read on March 8, International Women's Day) - this project tells the story of how these women graduated from their careers as international cricketers to become industry leaders following their retirements.

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