Inside the mind of Heather Knight, the batter

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. Tap.

"It sounds mad when I say it like that," but England's captain is locked in, finished with marking her guard. "I just do it to get me into my innings," she explains. "It means I'm ready to go a little bit. It's nothing too major but a little routine. And I just tell myself to watch the ball."

Whenever Heather Knight has spoken in the past two years, it seems to have been in the capacity of a spokesperson for the women's game, steering the sport through crisis upon crisis with an intelligent, thoughtful perspective that has come to carry plenty of weight.

So, from her hotel room in Oman, where England’s women are on a warm-weather training trip, a request to chat about her primary job is greeted with a relieved enthusiasm.

"I'd love to talk about batting, Nick," she laughs. "Yes, please."

Because, before anything else, Knight is a world-class batter and one of her country's best-ever players, facts that too often go under-acknowledged: the first English cricketer to make international centuries in all three formats. You wonder whether those who have yet to clock her greatness have been fooled by her relentless composure, by how straightforward she makes it look at her best.

"I think I'm generally quite good when I've got to do something because the team needs me," she says. "If I need to knuckle down because we've lost a few wickets and I know I need to be the one to bat long, then I'm better than when it's a flat one."

Captaincy has helped in that regard. The statistics show how Knight has thrived in the face of its additional burden: across formats, she averages 39.19 since taking over in 2016, compared to 24.53 beforehand. "You have to get your head around dealing with that responsibility, because sometimes it can be a bit consuming." Instead, she has established a line of separation: in the nets, she is there to work at her game. Conversations relating to her wider duties can wait: "I make sure that this is my batting time, I try to be strict with it."

That's important, and it's almost certainly one of the reasons why the last five years have passed almost entirely without criticism or speculation around her future in the role. She had never averaged more than 38 across an ODI calendar year before replacing Charlotte Edwards in charge. She hasn't averaged less than 42 since. Ultimately, you could ask any leader in any walk of life, and they would give you the same answer: the job is far less stressful when you're contributing to success.

Typically, Knight puts it best: "It's so hard to captain when you're doing shit. Honestly, it's rubbish. When you're not in form and you're not scoring runs, then it's really hard. Obviously, you want to score runs, and it just makes life easier if I do."

^{Heather Knight batting against India, en route to 95 in the summer's one-off Test match (Ashley Allen/Getty Images)}

That she took over early on in Mark Robinson’s tenure as head coach only added to that challenge: he saw plenty in a young batting line-up, championing and challenging them to become the world's best top six. "He talked about wanting to break records," says Knight. "That aspirational thing was good for us." The upshot was England had a new, overtly aggressive way of playing, and she was its face. "I think when I came into the captaincy, I was very clear that I wanted players to play in a certain way, and I think I had to model that and show that."

Easier said than done, of course. And for Knight, even more so. Arguably, no England player has progressed their game further since the World Cup triumph in 2017. By her own admission, learning to excel in T20 cricket wasn't necessarily a natural shift. "It probably was something I had to force," she says. The same player whose breakthrough innings in international cricket was a 338-ball vigil during the 2013 Ashes to clinch a Test draw, instead attempting to crack the opposite code.

"As a kid, it was always drummed into me by my dad to value my wicket. That was a good thing for my game, but I think it meant that it was something I probably had to subconsciously get over in T20."

Looking back, she pinpoints the summer of 2018 as the setting for her eureka moment – not in international cricket, where she had only ever made one T20 fifty before 2020, but in the Kia Super League, which gave her the confidence to come out of her shell in the shortest format.

HEATHER KNIGHT CAREER AVERAGES

Since replacing Charlotte Edwards as captain: 39.19

Before replacing Charlotte Edwards as captain: 24.53

One innings stands out: 97 off 62 balls for Western Storm at Taunton against Yorkshire Diamonds. "That was the match where it felt like it all clicked together." She followed it with a successful Big Bash stint, coming home as its ninth-highest run-scorer.

A reverse-sweep was developed, and she felt herself hitting the ball more cleanly.

"I was just so confident. That was probably the year where I was like: 'Right, I've got the game to be a really good, world-class T20 player.'

"I became really clear on how I was going to go about my T20 game. If you have doubt or trepidation about losing your wicket, that's the worst thing you can do in T20. I was just able to switch that around and get rid of the fear of getting out.

"If I was going to get out, then I didn't want to get out being conservative, poking and looking for singles. I wanted to get out hopefully taking the right option but executing it wrongly and being positive and aggressive."

^{Heather Knight walks off after being dismissed against Yorkshire Diamonds in the Kia Super League for 97 - a knock she considers a turning point (Harry Trump/Getty Images)}

She was run out without facing a ball at one stage during the summer, via a deflection off the shin of Deepti Sharma. Knight walked off frustrated, as animated as you're likely to find her. "It sucks," she says of falling to that particular law. "But I do actually think that I'm most annoyed when it's a stupid dismissal." Stupid, as in avoidable and, more pertinently, as in tepid.

Against New Zealand at Leicester, she wafted carelessly at Lea Tahuhu to be caught behind. "It was a way that I used to get out four or five years ago, pushing outside off-stump. It was a nothing shot. I'd get angrier at that or if I'm batting really well and I've got myself out.

"I'm always at peace if a bowler’s got me out or if I feel like I've made a good decision but haven't quite executed. If I've made a poor decision in the context of the game, that's the worst."

Which brings us to her conversion rate – "one of my biggest frustrations over the last five or six years". Knight has four international centuries and 29 fifties. It is a surprising record to a degree, though also partially a consequence of her position in the middle order.

There was even a time in the early days when she was stationed at No.6. "That role is really tough," she says. "You have to make sure you know what you're judging yourself on, I think." By that, she means keeping its volatility in perspective: 10 off five balls might be match-winning, or you might be the final rearguard in a dramatic collapse. In short, it requires a unique mindset.

"Often, previously I wouldn't go for those big shots because I'd think there was a lower-risk option which was potentially going to get me just as much reward"

Either way, Knight knows she should have more than four tons for England. "I probably haven't cracked it," she admits. This year alone, she believes she "should have got a hundred against India at Bristol in the Test, and should have got a hundred at Bristol against New Zealand as well". That second knock was a fabulous, match-winning effort on a slow pitch when England were under the pump.

Regardless, how to correct that imbalance is the million-dollar question.

One theory is this: "I've turned myself into a much better T20 player than I was previously. I've got that attacking instinct. Generally, when I get to fifty I want to kick on and I want to score fast. I want to push the team on and set a platform for those lower-order hitters. Sometimes, that's led to me getting out earlier.

"But it's also about getting my head around the fact that if I'm in and I've got a hundred, we're going to be in a good position anyway. So, I think it’s probably a case of realising a little bit more how much time you actually have in one-day cricket."

She tested that hypothesis against New Zealand in Derby last summer, making 101 in a three-wicket win to clinch the series.

"Having bottled quite a few hundreds, it was a nice feeling," she says.

^{Knight celebrates after reaching her T20I hundred against Thailand, a milestone that made her the first England cricketer - female or male - with international centuries in all formats (Cameron Spener/Getty Images)}

It was her first ODI ton in four years – "far too long" – having reached three figures against Thailand at the T20 World Cup in 2020. It is an intriguing idea, though, that her remarkable T20 transformation has made her both more dangerous as an all-round player but also more susceptible to losing her wicket once set.

Only Beth Mooney and Sophie Devine scored more T20I runs last year than Knight, whose average, strike rate, run tally, high score and boundary count were all greater than ever over a 12-month period. That the fruits of her T20 makeover began to emerge at international level just after Lisa Keightley's arrival as head coach is slightly misleading, though. She certainly had a role to play, pushing her captain up to No.4 after conversations about where she could do the most damage – and Knight was keen to face more deliveries.

But the more comprehensive truth is that this had been coming, even if she insists that learning to loosen up is a never-ending process for someone more naturally attuned to protecting her wicket than gambling it away. "It probably took me a bit of time, and it's still not a thing that you can turn on and off," she explains. "It's a thing you're constantly battling with. You're always in a different context to what's gone on in the last innings: where you're playing, who you're playing against."

To the naked eye, the shift has been most visible in Knight’s ball-striking. One of her greatest skills is in sieving through analysis and opinions to retain the most useful and ignore the remainder, so she happily admits to having spent time observing the game's leading power-hitters for inspiration. She hasn't had to look far: Nat Sciver, her vice-captain, crops up on several occasions.

HEATHER KNIGHT INTERNATIONAL SIXES

2010-2015: 2

2016-2021: 37

"I've tried to watch them, just in terms of how they generate ball-speed. Is it hand-speed? Is it the toe of the bat going higher?

"I'm always trying to pick up little things, but I think it's also important to stay true to your game and how you do things. I want to be the one who owns my own game."

In the first nine years of her T20I career, Knight hit a six once every 67.5 balls. Since 2019, that rate has shrunk to one every 41.8. Likewise, she cleared the boundary once in her first 1,781 ODI deliveries but 15 times in her last 2,684. The foundation of that change? "A little bit of technique," she says, "but it’s about having the confidence." A confidence to clear fielders and to replicate what you train for. And we will come to that nuance – of technique versus feel – later.

"Often, previously I wouldn't go for those big shots because I'd think there was a lower-risk option which was potentially going to get me just as much reward. I think it's trusting that you have the ability – if the bowler misses – to make good contact and hit it over the ropes."

She adds: "It's the balls that you're nowhere near that you hit for six and aren't in the textbook at all." Cricketers at every level know what she's talking about: the one that beats you in the flight but you nonetheless follow through, more in hope than expectation. Often, they go the furthest. "It's about trusting that your eyes and hands will enable you to come down to a spinner when you're nowhere near it, but that you'll get yourself out of trouble and actually hit it better."

^{Knight reverse-sweeps - a stroke she developed in 2018 - against New Zealand earlier this summer; later in the series, she would end her four-year wait for an ODI hundred (Michael Steele/Getty Images)}

Knight reckons she's fitter now than she used to be as well, even if her hamstrings have proven troublesome. "As you get older, I think you need to look after yourself a bit better." As part of that, she wonders whether her upper body has become stronger. But mainly, she insists, these developments are a legacy of a specially honed technique.

"That's something I'm still working on now," she says. "Trying to get that power off the back foot as well – because I'm naturally a sweeper and more down the ground – has been a key for me, trying to get into good positions to make sure I have a good base for that power.

"Sometimes, I come off the ball towards the legside when I'm trying to hit hard through the off-side, which you tend to get away with more on a good pitch in Australia, for example. On a slow one at Derby, though, it's harder to get that power if your technique isn't perfect."

It is in those situations where Knight used to feel most stuck, especially against the circuit's slower spinners – like Poonam Yadav. She recalls a particular game against India at the start of the World Cup four years ago: "I just couldn't get enough power to hit the ball through the field against spin or seam."

It is one of the reasons why she is looking to learn about hitting spin off the back foot from Sciver, who has perfected a stroke somewhere between a pull and a flat-batted slap to dispatch the drag-down.

"It's so hard to captain when you're doing shit. Honestly, it's rubbish"

Practising with heavy balls has helped, too: "If you get it wrong, it doesn't go anywhere."

But technique is overrated. Or perhaps that's too strongly put. Rather, Knight considers it secondary to feel. It is why she reckons she has taken ideas from other batters in terms of how they go about their work, but rarely "super-technical things".

Take Tammy Beaumont, whose eight centuries – in just 82 games – are the fourth-most in women's ODI history. "She's outstanding with the way she goes from fifty to a hundred," says Knight. "Sometimes, if someone at the other end is attacking, she wants to attack as well, match them and have that competitiveness, but I think she has developed that really well where she wants to go on and reach her hundred, take her helmet off and have that special memory. I think I could learn a lot from that."

On the broader point, she clarifies: "I've fiddled with my technique a little bit but it's all about how I feel, how my rhythm is, how my feet are moving and if my hands, shoulders and feet are all working in time."

Midway through a KSL innings, she introduced a trigger, for example. "I felt like it gave me more power and more dynamism, so I brought that into my game."

It's still a major aspect of her setup today: "It allows me to move better. I'm someone who needs movement to generate movement. Going from stationary to 100 miles per hour, if I'm moving more I find that a lot easier."

^{Knight poses with Tammy Beaumont and Nat Sciver, both of whom she admits to being keen to learn from: Beaumont for her conversion rate, Sciver for her power against spin (Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)}

In 2017, between the World Cup win and the subsequent Ashes series, she changed her backlift – part of a conscious effort to hit the ball harder on slower wickets. "It was probably seen as a weird time for me to do that, between two massive competitions," she says. "There wasn't a huge amount of time, but that was one change that has really helped me, actually."

However, neither alteration was for technical reasons, even if they resulted in a change in technique. Or, in Knight's words: "I was like: 'Right, how do I make this feel right? How do I make this technical change but get the rhythm of it?'"

The answer, as often, came in alliance with Ali Maiden, who was then England's batting coach but now works as Leicestershire's head of talent pathway. Former Durham coach Jon Lewis has spent the last few months with the national side, while it is easy to forget that Keightley was a fine player in her own right. Knight uses her more to talk about batting's mental side, but she still returns to Maiden if there is something more technical on her mind.

Pre-game, though, she shifts her focus back to feel: a scrap with Tammy Beaumont to be the first into the nets, and then a few throwdowns – but "nothing too technical". Instead, an awareness that you go through little patches as a batter where you don’t feel at your best, yet also an appreciation that you're only a single shot away from rediscovering your mojo. "I generally just hit to feel good," she says of her gameday routine.

"You definitely know when you're moving well, but I think the biggest thing that I've learnt is that it doesn't actually matter that much.

"It's a lot nicer when you're moving well and you're feeling like you're picking up length really early and making precise movements with your feet forward and back. But I think when you're not feeling quite right, you're battling yourself a little bit, and it's quite good to fight through those little moments because something will click."

Her mind casts back to the one-off Test against India earlier this year, when Knight came to the crease shortly before lunch on the first morning. "I felt quite dreadful actually," she laughs. "I wasn't really moving my feet to the spinners, and I felt like I was just plonking." One ball looped straight to short leg, only there wasn't one. Knight made 95. What changed?

"Just after lunch, something clicked – I think it was probably more of a mental thing, where before lunch, my mindset was more aimed at survival. For me, it's really key to always be looking to score.

"That was a very good learning for me if I get into that situation again in the Test matches we have to come. If you're struggling at the start, you can lean back on that experience and you can get out of it quite easily. Something will click, you'll get one away and it becomes easier as you go on with your innings."

^{Knight practising in the nets last summer (Harry Trump/Getty Images)}

The trouble for female Test cricketers, though, is that these opportunities come around so rarely. In recent years, England’s regular cycle has effectively featured a single game every two years. So, it's one thing to remind yourself not to overhype each innings but another entirely to remain focused on the task at hand when you know your next time in whites might be so far beyond the horizon.

And as Knight points out, England's last two Tests have been rain-affected draws on dire, lifeless pitches – in both, they only batted once.

"You have to try to avoid getting into that negative train of thought and putting too much on it.

"It is a hard thing mentally to get your head around – because batting's rubbish, isn’t it? You snick one and you're gone – that's your day over. And in a Test match, it's even worse: you sit and watch all day or even longer, and you're just stewing on this one mistake you've made. You're seeing commentators dissect your wicket in even more detail than they would in a one-dayer, so it's tough.”

On that last remark: England often have the coverage on in the dressing room, albeit with the sound turned off. Does it affect her? Not really.

"I'm my own biggest critic," she says, "and I know what my strengths and weaknesses are. I think that's one of my strengths."

Knight is far too experienced to concern herself with that kind of conjecture, but a confidence to ignore the outside noise comes, too, with a sense of belonging. Every successful international cricketer has their moment when suddenly the highest level makes sense. Knight's was in the 2013 Ashes series, where she saved a Test at Wormsley with a hundred ground out over 111.1 overs. She had gone 18 innings without passing 38 in its build-up.

"I'm always looking to pick up little things, but I think it's also important to stay true to your game and how you do things. I want to be the one who owns my own game"

"That series gave me the confidence to feel like I belonged, to feel like I was good enough, to feel like I could consistently put in performances for the team.

"You're always up and down, with the ebbs and flows of sport. You're always trying to search for perfection. I think cricket's quite a perfectionist-tendency game. I think that was the point where I really gained confidence and felt like my place was in that top four for England."

She would end the summer as the leading run-scorer on either side, making 31 off 26 balls and 69 off 65 in successive ODI wins at Hove at the top of the innings – her first as an opener for two years – having been dropped down the order in 2011 after a pair of ducks during a quadrangular series. 

It's interesting: Knight remembers those knocks at Hove as her best for England, at least in terms of fluency and feel. "I was desperate to take my chance because I wanted my opening spot back," she recalls. "I scored really quickly – and I scored a lot slower back then."

So, that summer paved the way. "I think that's served me quite well in my career," she reflects. "A confidence that you know you can get yourself out of it when you're experiencing a low point."

Not that there have been many of those for Heather Knight, a terrific batter first and foremost. Perhaps England’s greatest of all time.