"There is no point in hanging around anymore," says the England World Cup winner ahead of a summer during which the Women's Ashes will grace Test match ground
"It was the first question I asked Richard Thompson," says Ebony Rainford-Brent.
"Can I wear my high-top trainers to a meeting, because I don't know if I now need to be super-polished?"
Thompson, the ECB's newish chairman, was speaking to Rainford-Brent, the ECB's newest board member. The pair were colleagues at Surrey, along with ECB chief executive Richard Gould, and the band is very much now back together.
His answer to the question was effectively that her authenticity was key.
"I'm there for my perspective," she tells The Cricketer from the Kia Oval, "which has a view on the game maybe from three major lenses: lower socio-economic background, gender, ethnicity and diversity."
Those are core themes close to Rainford-Brent's heart, and her work with the ACE Programme since the start of 2020 has begun to address some of English cricket's major issues. But it's easily forgotten amid those projects that Rainford-Brent was an international cricketer not long ago and more recently the director of women's cricket at Surrey, having also worked for Lord's Taverners and played a key role in establishing the Wicketz and Super 1s programmes.
"What I'm aware of is that I bring a perspective that not everyone will necessarily have," she says. "I wouldn't be doing my role if I'm not bringing everything I know and see to the party. I think I'm there for that: to bring myself and my perspective. Luckily, I get on really well with people, so if I feel there is something that needs to be solved, then I can work with people to collaborate."
Rainford-Brent is gearing up for an exciting summer (Kia)
An immediate takeaway from her new role as a non-executive director of the ECB, which has forced her to leave Surrey's equivalent board, is that the time management of one of the game's busiest people will need looking at.
"One of the things I'm proud of is being accessible, chatting to everyone when I'm around. But I need more time to process and think about what's going on. I'm realising that I'll have to be a bit sharper with how I spend my time and energy."
Rainford-Brent spent part of last Friday, ahead of this interview in partnership with Kia, talking to chief executives, and she spent the last two weeks of March in India, taking in the surroundings of the inaugural Women's Premier League, speaking to players and watching on in awe at the "game-changing" impact of the competition on the landscape of women's cricket.
"I think for everyone the step-change was quite a big shock," she says. "Yes, we've had the Big Bash and The Hundred, but what India showed was that if you fully commit – the broadcast numbers, the auction, the salaries, just walking around India and all the buildings were filled with billboards of women's players – they just went all in because they believe and see that what they've done with the men's IPL can be replicated with the women.
"What they've done is maximise the brand that they already had, but they've also genuinely given it a platform that it can stand on its own, and they believe on its own that it has high value and high potential. What it will do is accelerate things: we have to move fast because India could just break away and leave us behind."
The upshot – and on the back of The Hundred's doubleheaders at major venues over the last two years – is a women's cricket summer to look forward to at Test grounds, with more than 70,000 tickets sold for the Women's Ashes, which begins with a Test at Trent Bridge, and a pressure on The Hundred to catch up with India's enormous step forward.
"Young players see this as the future," she says. "There is no point in hanging around anymore: we have to go all in – major stadiums, major marketing campaigns, double down."
Australia renew hostilities with England this summer in the women's Ashes (Mike Owen/Getty Images)
There are no regrets from Rainford-Brent at these developments are coming now and not 15 years ago, when she was an England international, railing against back problems but still finding the time to play 29 times for her country.
Katherine Sciver-Brunt, the last survivor of her age group, ended her international career last month, which has brought some perspective to the situation.
"I don't have envy as such," she says, "but there is a little bit of you that wonders what could have been. There were days when you were doing 40-hour work weeks on top of training. But I was also thinking about the mounting debts that came from university and chasing your cricket dream; if you were able to have the level of funding they have, the physio team and money in your pocket, I would have stuck at it for longer.
"I don't regret it, but equally there is no doubt it would have been amazing to be part of the professional era. I talk to a lot of the players about it: soak it up, live it, enjoy it.
"The No.1 thing for me is that I want the current crop of players to know that it's possible that if they are the best athlete they can be, then they can be at a major stadium. History, though, is always valuable in a story: I still remember how valuable it was when we went down to Taunton as the home of women's cricket – we knew we were valued there, we knew they cared about international women's cricket. That is part of our story, and it always will be.
"I don't think the history is lost, and I think that is the beauty of women's cricket and women's sport: because it is growing so fast, there is so much generational crossover that there isn't that major gap. Charlotte Edwards' story was starting by having to pay for her blazer, we weren't professional; then came this crossover, but now there is a crop of players who just start as professional and will finish their careers only knowing professionalism."
Rainford-Brent was part of the England side that won the 2009 World Cup in Australia (Matt King/Getty Images)
That is a far cry from her days as Surrey's director of women's cricket, but she can also recall the similar effect of Kia's investment in the women's game when they became the first brand to sign in a stand-alone sponsorship for a women's team in 2014. This paved the way for the Kia Super League, which in turn gave exposure to the women's domestic game.
Ebony has seen the benefit of these investments in the past 10 years which included televised coverage, previously almost exclusively reserved for the international stage.
"Players who we wanted to be able to dedicate their summer to playing but didn't have the finances, we were able to offer them a contract to become a professional and dedicate themselves to that," says Rainford-Brent. "In terms of the performance structure, it created a best-v-best – it was a forerunner to our franchise system. It set a bit of a precedent for trying to get more city-based teams even though it was still around the county structure.
"We got a meaningful budget that meant we could go all-in with a head coach, assistant coach, physios, strength and conditioning – we could build the whole structure.
"What was really fascinating for me was the first training session – we had Marizanne Kapp, and our youngest domestic players, who were completely amateur, playing alongside the international superstars, and they just stood in awe. They saw what professionalism looked like and where they needed to be, and that gap over the summer – I've never seen a performance environment develop so quickly. We then saw players like Mady Villiers quite quickly go into the England team; without that platform, I'm not sure she'd have developed so quickly. It really made a difference."
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