After a complicated build-up, England's mammoth winter can finally begin

NICK FRIEND: For all their positivity, Heather Knight's side are undercooked – as well they might be – and the impact of such a tumultuous, restricted build-up will only become clear once the action begins at the Adelaide Oval

Organised chaos.

Organised, because England pride themselves on their resourcefulness, even in situations like this.

Chaos, because the last month – through no fault of their own – has been chaos.

When England flew home from Oman, where they practised on pitches that were hardly similar to what they will face over the next two months, there was at least a sense that a warm-weather training camp at a base likely to become a repeat destination had provided valuable preparation for a tilt at the Women's Ashes.

England focused on their red-ball cricket, with four points on offer for a win in the one-off Test – a format they do not play domestically but in which they drew with India back in June. They didn't worry so much about the shortest format. That could wait. After all, Lisa Keightley's side have played 22 T20Is in the two years since her arrival as head coach.

Only, a day before jetting off to Australia, everything changed: the schedule was turned on its head and the start of the series brought forward to allow for safe travel into New Zealand for the World Cup in March, complete with pre-tournament Covid confinement.

The T20 leg of the multiformat series is now the curtain-raiser, with the Test shunted into the middle as the meat in a white-ball sandwich. They will have three days to get up to speed – literally, in the case of the bowlers, who have the unenviable task of perfecting their short-format skills while simultaneously building up their loads for a four-day game – between the third T20I and the red-ball centrepiece.

And that wasn't the end of the surprises. England landed in Australia expecting similar conditions to those faced by the men. Only, the restrictions changed while in international airspace.

^{Heather Knight's side have endured a complicated build-up due to Covid restrictions and changes beyond their control (Mark Brake/Getty Images)}

The message was always to disembark the plane, collect belongings, take a PCR test and wait in hotel-room isolation until results had come through. Only, those results took slightly longer than expected and the players were then informed by the squad's science and medicine team that the rules weren't quite as anticipated.

For the first nine days, players couldn't receive hands-on massage or physio treatment, an important part of preparations, especially after a lengthy flight.

"On arrival we weren't allowed to eat out, and we weren't sure we were going to be able to for the whole trip," Tammy Beaumont told The Cricketer. "It was a very flat team meeting when they told us the restrictions had changed while we were in the air. Now that the group is secure, we have been allowed to eat outside in small groups of three to four and that was an important change for us."

Players' families and partners haven't been exempt from this: they spent far more time in hotel rooms at the start than was initially thought, although they are able to roam around Adelaide's beaches and botanical gardens. When England faced England A in two warmup T20s, their loyal supporters couldn't hitch a lift and instead walked almost two hours to the ground. They have since been helped out with cars.

And before that was Christmas, a time to celebrate that has perhaps never felt so risky. Players and staff were advised to lie low, with caution acting as the exercise of the winter. Training was cobbled together: loved ones fed bowling machines, threw balls and batted both ways so that bowlers could practise against left-handers as well as right-handers.

"It's been pretty comical and not ideal preparation for a series of this magnitude," said Heather Knight. "But it's been completely unavoidable for us to do that."

An honest assessment, though not an excuse: "What we've got to do is try and make the most of it. We're absolutely going to do that. It's out of our control what has happened in the build-up.

"The strategy we've found is to make jokes and try to laugh about it, to be honest, and try to keep everyone as relaxed as possible and try to find the funny side of it because that definitely helps in terms of trying to get your head around it."

^{Australia won the return series in England at a canter (Michael Steele/Getty Images)}

Family and guests were asked to take regular lateral flow tests over the holiday period and PCRs were requested for those staying with a household on a longer-term basis. One player had to hotfoot it on Christmas morning after someone in the same home tested positive, spending the day elsewhere instead.

Piece all this together and it's a miracle that every single player – England and England A – has made it this far. For that, it is credit to their sense of discipline at a time of year when being so careful – especially after last winter's festive lockdown – is not easy.

Even more remarkably, England haven't recorded a positive test among the playing staff while together since the outbreak of the virus. "We've got a very good record, and we're desperate to keep it," said one source close to the squad.

The Novak Djokovic situation has dominated world news for the last fortnight, but there was never any question of England running into similar issues upon entering Australia. Indeed, Knight and Sophia Dunkley both volunteered with the NHS two years ago at the start of the pandemic. After returning from Oman, the squad "pretty much straight away" signed up for boosters.

"Our doctor said he's never seen a team so committed to getting that done," said Knight, "so I'm proud of the girls that that was the case.

"We've adhered by pretty much every rule you can imagine, and I think this one was super unlucky," she added, speaking after a member of support staff tested positive shortly after arriving in Australia, remaining in Canberra while the rest of the group made the journey to Adelaide.

"It was probably inevitable that it was going to happen at some point, so hopefully we've managed to limit the damage a little bit and we can crack on with the series."

And they need desperately to keep it that way, given the proximity of England's World Cup defence and the strict rules in place.

As it stands, no one who tests positive in the week leading up to departure for New Zealand will be allowed to enter the country. For everyone else, a 10-day hard quarantine awaits. That is the price to be paid, though, for a part in this enormous year.

^{Charlie Dean has enjoyed a terrific start to her international career (Mark Brake/Getty Images)}

Because, underneath the Covid carnage in the build-up, there is an Ashes series to play for – a trophy not won by an England captain since Charlotte Edwards in 2014, four months before the first tranche of central contracts even existed.

And despite recent events – from the aborted tour of Pakistan which means England haven't played competitively since September to two warmup defeats against England A that match up with Keightley's admission that her players were "rusty" after preparations were further hampered by poor weather – there is a justifiable air of confidence around Team England.

"It does feel different," said Nat Sciver, speaking to The Cricketer ahead of the trip. "A lot has happened since the last Ashes in Australia. I think we're in a better place now than the last time we were going."

That doesn't mean England will win; Australia go into every series as favourites. They have earned that right through the infrastructure constructed in recent years and the results – and players – it has produced.

But Knight now has a domestic system behind her side that, going forward, gives English cricket the chance to compete sustainably. She has already stressed that we are too early in the process to evaluate the success of the regional setup and The Hundred based on these next months. After all, they have only had a single full summer to assert themselves on the women's game.

When these teams last faced off for the Ashes, England were handed an absolute shellacking, served up on a plate in their own backyard. They needed all seven games to finally record a win, and the subsequent inquest saw the departure of Mark Robinson as head coach.

There are similarities, ironically, between that summer and the pasting that England's men have just received: a world-leading system versus one working less well. And just as talk has now turned to the need for a shake-up of county cricket, months after that heavy defeat – founded on the runs and wickets of Ellyse Perry – the seeds were planted for the restructuring that has since taken place.

^{England faced England A in two warmup T20s (Image credit: ECB)}

England are certainly stronger than in 2019, with several players timing the trajectory of their peaks perfectly ahead of an enormous year. Beaumont is a serial run-scorer, Sciver an irrefutably world-class allrounder, Sophie Ecclestone – only 22 – the world's best spinner, Knight now such a good captain that the quality of her batsmanship sometimes slips beneath the radar. Whether they can make serious inroads against such a well-oiled winning machine is less certain: for all the positivity, they are undercooked – as well they might be – and the impact of such a tumultuous build-up will only become clear once the action begins at the Adelaide Oval.

Once this winter reaches its conclusion, they will fly home in time for the start of a season illuminated by the presence of a Commonwealth Games debut for women's cricket in the height of summer, before The Hundred takes over. And for all the controversy around the new competition, even the greatest sceptics have been able to appreciate its enormous impact on the women's game.

Charlotte Edwards coached Southern Brave to the inaugural final, and the country's all-time leading run-scorer is accompanying England A. She has seen its impact first-hand, watching Maia Bouchier and Charlie Dean – both uncapped at the start of 2021 and part of Edwards' squad at Southern Vipers, where she is also head coach – thriving under the scrutiny of a high-profile tournament played out at Test venues in front of bumper crowds.

"That transition from playing in The Hundred to playing for England was very small," she explains. "In previous years, that would have been huge. That transition from playing for Hampshire to playing for England is massive. Now it's tiny, and they're better prepared. They know they’re good enough because they've played in that competition."

Bouchier played in the Lord's final for Southern Brave before making her England debut at Hove. The difference between atmospheres could hardly be greater. International cricket will always be the pinnacle and never a comedown, but it is difficult to argue with the idea that The Hundred has taken much of the weight off the step-up.

^{Alana King could make her international debut after being preferred to Amanda-Jade Wellington as a replacement for Georgia Wareham (Mark Brake/Getty Images)}

"Speaking to those two, they just felt ready," says Edwards. "Maia played in a Hundred final and made her debut in front of 5,000 people at Hove – arguably The Hundred final was bigger in many ways."

Australian cricket has had this for years, since the introduction of the Women's Big Bash, which was first mooted early in 2014 – a year before the ECB announced plans for the Kia Super League. And so, while English cricket was improving its best players through the announcement of central contracts, Australian cricket was giving rise to a production line.

Since 2017, players in Cricket Australia's domestic structure have been semi-professional, with a £19,000 minimum retainer for anyone holding a deal in the WBBL and in state cricket. In England, the equivalent arrived in 2020 for a select group, which has since risen so that there are now 67 professional women's cricketers in England and Wales, albeit on low salaries that must increase.

The creation of that player pool has been crucial though: it is no coincidence that the emergence of a new generation has coincided with this shift. Sophia Dunkley arrived on the international scene in 2018 but established herself in 2021 – for which she credits the regional system – while Dean has made one of the more assured starts to an England career in recent memory. Emma Lamb was thrust in for her T20I debut on the strength of her form in regional competitions, even if she had long-since been on the radar.

Perhaps, though, it was the example of Emily Arlott – called up out of the blue to England's squad for the Test against India – that best highlighted this new reality. Ultimately, she didn't play, but that is hardly the point.

"The players are so much better prepared now to play cricket for England, and I think you know now that they're ready rather than thinking that they're ready," explains Edwards, a former captain who is better versed than most on what it was like in the past to gamble on a youngster from beyond the centrally contracted list.

"In my day, it was always a bit like: 'They might be ready, let's give them a go.' You had nothing to compare it to. But now, the England team are more confident that whoever they bring in, they can deliver what they want them to deliver because they've seen them do it under pressure."

^{Beth Mooney has suffered a fractured jaw in a huge blow to Australia's top order (Paul Kane/Getty Images)}

Indeed, they have seen it first-hand in the last few days as well, beaten by England A in a pair of T20s. In the short-term, that is hardly ideal, though knowing what to decipher from warmup friendlies has proven before to be one of sport's most futile thought experiments.

With the longer-term in mind, however, it is evidence of the closing gap between the established national talent pool and the rest. The likes of Eve Jones and Lauren Bell – an experienced left-handed batter and a young, talented seamer – are pounding at the door, and that should excite those in charge.

They will also be quietly buoyed by Australia's injury issues, the news of Beth Mooney's jaw fracture adding to the twin-loss of both Georgia Wareham and Sophie Molineux that will test the hosts' depth in the spin department.

But England will be envious of the replacement, and even more so of the alternative they can afford to leave out: Alana King, a key part of the Perth Scorchers side that won the Women's Big Bash, has been picked at the expense of Amanda-Jade Wellington, the leading wicket-taker in this year's WBBL. There might be no greater example of the squad depth cultivated by Australia that England are so keen to match.

Wellington has not played international cricket since 2018, but English cricket knows all about her: only three players claimed more wickets in The Hundred last summer.

They will have been encouraged, too, by the recent records of Perry, Meg Lanning, Alyssa Healy and Ashleigh Gardner. All four endured abnormally mediocre campaigns in the Women's Big Bash, and Gardner was eventually left out by Sydney Sixers after a fourth successive duck. Perry's strike rate dipped below a run a ball, while she only picked up five wickets as she continues to search for her best form in light of a spate of injuries. Lanning scored fewer than half the runs of Mooney, the highest run-scorer in the competition.

^{What they're playing for... (Mark Brake/Getty Images)}

Class is permanent, though. And so, hoping that four of the world's best are unable to regather their best form ahead of a flagship contest on home soil seems like wishful thinking, especially now that they have reconvened as a national squad.

Lanning took a break after the WBBL, ruling herself out of two WNCL fixtures for Victoria in preparation for all that is to come. "The thing that says it was a good move is that I've come back and I've really enjoyed my training," she said, somewhat ominously.

She was in the runs in a warmup match against Australia A, making 55 in her first innings since November. Gardner and Healy also found rhythm. Perry missed out due to a Covid scare, and the admission from chair of selectors Shawn Flegler that she is not necessarily a shoo-in for the T20 side was an alpha move, a sign of quite how much strength exists in Australian cricket.

That is what England are up against, once the chaos gives way to the cricket.