NICK FRIEND: After winning the 1993 World Cup, England didn't play international cricket again until 1995. As Heather Knight's side prepare for a first ODI in 14 months, then-captain Karen Smithies reflects on the challenges posed by a 716-day hiatus
When Karen Smithies captained England to World Cup glory in 1993, things were different, almost unrecognisable, from the game the world now sees.
For one, she worked as a manager for Coral, the bookmaker. The players wore whites and skirts, and the final was played out at Lord’s in front of 5,000 people – a ground-breaking achievement then but eclipsed 17-fold last year at the MCG. The tournament planning was far from smooth and, without a last-minute £90,000 donation, it might never even have gone ahead: “We struggled to put in on,” Smithies recalls. Women’s cricket, then under the jurisdiction of the Women’s Cricket Association (WCA), only merged with the ECB five years later.
But England won, beating New Zealand comfortably in the final. A day earlier, the hosts had met Rachael Heyhoe Flint in the changing rooms – by then, 11 years on from her last international appearance – before going through their pre-match preparations. Smithies’ employer sent bottles of champagne – to be consumed whatever the result.
The sense of occasion was real: “I clearly remember on the bus to Lord’s believing that this was our day,” she says. “For some reason, I knew this was going to be our day. I was young, it was really my first assignment as captain. But we had done the legwork through the tournament and to be at Lord’s was something that just had to happen.”
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The showpiece was broadcast on BBC television, with the women providing a heartening antidote to the men’s Test team who won just once across the entire year.
The next morning, Smithies joined Nicholas Witchell on BBC Breakfast. “It was 6am, having got to bed at 5.30am,” she laughs. “All of a sudden, you’re on the back and front pages of the newspapers, you’re invited to Downing Street, you’re invited to Buckingham Palace, you’re invited to the Lord’s Taverners functions. All of a sudden, you’re meeting all these people. Being a shy little one from Leicestershire, it was something that I never expected.”
And then, England didn’t play another ODI for almost two years. For precision’s sake, 716 days separated wins over New Zealand and the Netherlands. Only 10 50-over internationals took place worldwide during that period – as clear a marker as any of the progress made in the intervening decades. For Smithies’ team, however, it meant that the tag of world champions effectively went unused and, consequently, momentum was stifled and continuity lost.
“It wasn’t ideal,” she admits. “It really put back everything that we had built up in that time. When you’ve had success, you want to roll with that success and with the team that you’ve had that success with. Without that, it fell away a little bit after the initial euphoria of winning the thing. That was difficult, I suppose.”
Heather Knight is preparing to lead her own 50-over world champions into their first ODI for 437 days
Their ODI return came in the 1995 European Championship, played out in the less regal surroundings of College Park, Dublin, with further wins over Denmark and Ireland. England handed debuts to Claire Chichcord, Kathryn Leng, Melissa Reynard, Sue Redfern, Clare Connor and Ruth Lupton across the competition.
Did Smithies still feel like a reigning world champion, given the gap between games and the upheaval in personnel?
“We still felt like world champions because we were the current champions,” she insists, “so everyone wanted to beat us. But the two-year gap was tough. As a player, if you’re out of international cricket for a year, you’re not the same.”
To a degree, that is the challenge facing today’s England side, led by Heather Knight and – for the first time in the 50-over format – Lisa Keightley, who came to the helm at the start of 2020.
When the series finally begins, 437 days will have passed since Knight and her teammates last took to the field for an ODI in December 2019, facing Pakistan in Kuala Lumpur. Ali Maiden, Mark Robinson’s assistant, was in interim charge, with Keightley already signed up but only due to take the reins a month later.
Unlike 27 years ago, however, when England played neither an ODI nor a Test between winning the World Cup and hammering the Netherlands, Knight’s side have hardly been “out of international cricket for a year”.
Five September T20Is against West Indies prevented that scenario after India and South Africa pulled out of multiformat tours and the World Cup was pushed back by 12 months, while the Women’s Big Bash, Heyhoe Flint Trophy and Women’s T20 Challenge ensured that the vast majority of the current squad have tasted meaningful action since rain washed out their T20 World Cup semi-final almost 12 months ago.
On the series’ eve, Knight described the transition back into 50-over cricket as “slightly challenging” but played down any concern around rediscovering the knack after a recent T20 diet: “Generally it’s just about doing your skills more consistently for longer, so that’s what we’ve really focused on in our practice and our warmup games out here.”
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But even so, the upcoming ODIs against New Zealand bring to an end an unprecedented period in the era of central contracts: 2020 was the first calendar year since 1994 in which England did not play a 50-over international.
It will also mean that England’s last three ODI series have been played under the stewardship of three different coaches across 19 months: Keightley in New Zealand, Maiden in Malaysia and Robinson in the Ashes.
In fact, the first game in Christchurch will be Keightley’s first involvement in an ODI since March 2008, when she coached Australia for the final time in an eight-wicket win over a New Zealand side including Katey Martin, Sophie Devine and Amy Satterthwaite, all of whom could be involved on Tuesday.
England have played 27 ODIs since beating India to win the World Cup, winning 15. But just as in T20I cricket, where Keightley has implemented a subtle change in approach, she is aware that it will take time for her blueprint to have full effect.
“I haven’t been with the team in 50-over cricket, so I know in general what the good teams do in 50-over cricket,” she told The Cricketer in December. “I think we’re set up really well and we’re currently the world champions, so generally we’ve got a pretty good template to start with.
“I suppose it’s about building on that because four years is a long time in cricket. There’s no way you can do exactly the same as what you did four years ago. The style and the brand is moving forward really quickly.”
Knight added: “A big mantra of [Lisa’s] is trying to improve individuals and really maximising individual potential. I think she’s been really good at that. I think lockdown and the period of training that we had has really helped certain individuals to home in on what they need to do to keep improving and keep pushing their case forward and keep being world-class performers.
“I think she has really improved individuals in that way and hopefully the work we’ve done in terms of looking at our game as cricketers and the stats and depth we’ve gone into will really help us as an ODI team push forward.”
Karen Smithies tosses up with Australia captain Belinda Clark in 1998
There are marked differences, of course, between now under Knight and then under Smithies – not least in the fact that today’s protagonists are professional athletes, who spent much of the time between June and September in a bio-secure setting, perfecting their skills and working at their game.
But several parallels exist: both sides were world champions when they began their prolonged breaks, both had won home World Cups under immense pressure with relatively new captains and both would undertake dress rehearsal, recce missions in the countries where they would seek to retain their titles.
Just as England are doing so by touring New Zealand, albeit in this case courtesy of an unwanted gap opened up by the World Cup’s postponement, Smithies’ team toured India in 1995 “to get some idea of conditions”.
But by the time the 1997 tournament came around, only six of the victorious squad remained, with Connor and Charlotte Edwards among those helping to bring in a new era. It was New Zealand, ironically, who exacted their revenge by knocking England out at the semi-final stage in Chennai. “Expectations were very high, and we knew it was a game we should have won but we didn’t,” says Smithies. “How times change over four years.”
Looking back now, she believes the manner of her leadership had changed by then as well, influenced by the increased scrutiny that came with the prominence of what her side had accomplished.
She admits that she enjoyed it less in the aftermath of 1993, believing that people “wanted to knock you down as a World Cup-winning captain”.
Smithies adds: “I suppose you get that in all walks of life: if you’re successful in something, there’s always somebody there that wants to ruin it.”
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At her best as a captain, she was impulsive and trusted her instinct rather than overanalysing the game. “When you’re in the zone and in an intense moment, I was doing things on a feel,” she remembers.
“I didn’t necessarily have to think when I was captaining, whereas after that I was thinking about the stupidest little things. I didn’t really enjoy it that much.
“I remember all of a sudden being invited to all these functions – something we were not used to,” she says. “You do lose it a little bit; you feel like you’re on top of the world and your head goes a little bit, I think. For a while, I didn’t want to play club cricket again. You were at that level and living that hype, so coming back to a cold, mizzly day in Nottinghamshire really didn’t appeal to me anymore. That was kind of wrong because it was where I began.
“We weren’t really ready for that level of spotlight. It certainly affected me for quite some time, I think.”
She had received the captaincy call that February from Cathy Mowat, then-chair of the WCA. Smithies was just 24, surrounded by figures whom she had grown up idolising: Jan Brittin and Carole Hodges, to name two.
“When I took over, I was very raw, very young, no inhibitions,” she explains. “I just went out there and I was a gut-feel kind of captain, which set me right. For me, that type of captaincy was perfect. There was no baggage at all.
“When the success came, then the questions followed. Dr Steve Bull worked with us before the next World Cup in 1997 and he worked a lot with me on learning to deal with characters and disappointment. But the minute you start overthinking or you question yourself, then you get in trouble a little bit.
“I also remember that I was very unfit initially. But because I became a leader, I had to really up my fitness in about six months, which I did. Leading from the front is also quite an important ingredient.”
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Perhaps that is where Knight has been most impressive, thriving as the pressure has swelled and improving her own game while directing her troops. Having replaced Edwards, an icon of the sport, she was only a year into her tenure when she led England in front of a full house at Lord’s in 2017.
But Knight has now grown into the role to such an extent that it is difficult to imagine the side without her guidance. With the bat, she averages 45.47 as captain, compared to 31.35 beforehand. Until last year, she had only passed fifty once in T20Is but then posted three half centuries and a hundred between January and March.
Then came Covid, from which point she became an important voice, speaking out about the need for support across the women’s game, as well as in promoting equality of opportunity. Back in March, she signed up to the NHS volunteer scheme.
“It has been very different,” she said on Sunday, reflecting on the challenges of the year from a leadership perspective. “What I love about captaincy is, obviously, the on-field stuff and the performance stuff and I guess the last year there's been a lot of other little bits to sort out, things like discussions about pay.
“Being adaptable as well has been huge. I think I've definitely learned to go with the flow a little bit more and accept that you're not always going to get perfect preparation because that's what we've had the last year: we haven't been able to get perfect preparation living in bubbles, it has been very strange.
“You have to be quite adaptable to that and find ways to cope and also keep the team ready and things like that. I definitely feel like I've learned quite a lot over the last year and I'm certainly looking forward to homing in on just playing cricket and captaining in terms of the cricket side of stuff.”
Robinson, who installed her as captain, told The Cricketer last year: “To see where she was at the beginning and where she is now, I’m proud of her like she’s my daughter.
“That probably sounds patronising, but tactically and as a leader, she has proven herself to be very comfortable in her own skin and wanting to be the best version of herself.”
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“She’s a fantastic leader; the players love playing for her and walking out with her,” said Keightley. “She gives them a lot of confidence and she’s been captain now for four years. She’s really clear on how she wants to be as a leader and working on her strengths and weaknesses all the time.”
Smithies doesn’t know Knight well enough to add any personal praise, but she learnt more than enough from her own experience to recognise success when she sees it.
Along with her former teammates, she was handed a special invitation to the 2017 final, where she watched from the MCC president’s box as Knight became the fourth England captain to lift the 50-over trophy.
“It brought back a lot of memories, even walking into the ground,” says Smithies. “I remember seeing Clare Connor; she looked at me and said: ‘All those years ago, could you ever have imagined seeing a full house at Lord’s?’ No chance. It was a very proud day. I was proud that we’d done it before in 1993, but I also loved knowing what those girls were feeling. That was awesome, watching them realise what they’d just achieved.”
Those celebrations are one of the factors behind Smithies’ desire to return to the women’s game. For the last 15 years, she has worked in South African first-class cricket for the Titans franchise as team administrator.
“I think women’s sport in general is getting bigger and bigger,” she says, adding that she coached Mignon du Preez during her early teenage years. “But I don’t really want to be part of it for that. It’s just the history of how it began – we were selling chocolate to make ends meet at club cricket and you’d bring tea for two.
“From where it was then to where it is now – and with the knowledge that you’ve gained over all that time – to give back to the game would be good.”
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As part of that wish, she provided commentary for South Africa’s recent white-ball series against Pakistan – a return to international cricket for both teams following last year’s T20 World Cup. Even that brief stint has had a personal impact on her.
“I thought it was fantastic,” she says. “Both teams hadn’t played for a year. I read up on Pakistan – I played against them for the first time in 1997 in the World Cup. We beat them by 230 runs but for them to get there was a mission, and I didn’t realise that at the time.
“They had to travel from separate airports to get there; they went to huge sacrifice to even put out a team. And look at where they are now. I think it’s just unbelievable. Yes, they have to qualify for the next World Cup, but I think they’ve got a very good chance of progressing, and deservedly so. In 20-odd years, I think they’ve made huge strides. And that’s good for cricket.”
It brings Smithies to a final thought that first came during a recent speech to a group of female players, in which she told the story of her career.
“I’m proud to have done what I’ve done and to have achieved what I achieved,” she reflects. “But also, it’s not just about that World Cup – I played in three.
“When I told the guys last week, they went: ‘Wow.’ They probably didn’t even know how many World Cups have taken place, which I think is wrong in the scheme of things and in the history of the game – and for its future. The two are there for each other and I think women’s cricket has moved on so far.”
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