The Twelfth Man 2015

8 Charlotte Edwards was the baby of the cricket world when, at the age of 16, she became the youngest player ever to represent England, a record subsequently broken by her team- mate Holly Colvin when she turned out for England at the even more tender age of 15 in the first 2005 Ashes Test. Teenage angst was never a problem for Edwards and in 1997, in the season following her debut, she smashed a ton off only 118 balls against the touring South Africans. On the eve of her 18th birthday she hit a then record ODI score of 173 in the 1997 World Cup against Ireland. She was scoring prolifically in all formats of the game and by 1999 she had nailed her maiden Test hundred against India. After sporadic periods out of the game with a nagging injury, Edwards re-entered the fold to take part in the 2005 World Cup in South Africa. Showing no signs of rustiness, she breezed past Jan Brittin’s record of 2,121 ODI runs for England and, soon after, scooped the highly coveted Vodafone Player of the Year award for the second consecutive year. The best of 2005 was yet to come, however, when England won back the Ashes after a 20-year drought. When England’s captain, Clare Connor, suffered a foot injury, Charlotte was handed the captaincy for the 2005 tour of Sri Lanka and India. She took over permanently when Connor retired in 2006, and led her team through possibly its most triumphant period in the history of the women’s game. England comprehensively beat Australia in the solitary Test at Bowral in 2008 to retain the Ashes, and their steamroller of victories continued into the ODI series against New Zealand, West Indies, South Africa and India. In the same year, Edwards picked up the ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year award to add to her other gongs. A glorious 2009 saw Edwards and her girls sitting on top of the world. First they disposed of New Zealand in the World Cup final in Australia and then lifted the silver at Lord’s to win the World Twenty20 Championship. A well-earned MBE came her way that summer and, soon after, she hit an unbeaten half-century against the Aussies in a one-off Test to help England to a draw, and to hold onto the Ashes. Another landmark on her map of success came when she won her 142nd ODI cap for England in 2010 (she is currently up to 185), making her the most capped female cricketer in the world. Two months later she hit her first Ashes century, 114 not out in England’s first innings of 207 all out. Unfortunately, on this occasion her fine performance could not prevent an Australian win. Charlotte and the England team sweated it out in India at the 2013 Women’s World Cup. England could not hold on to the number one spot this time around as Australia overcame the West Indies in the final. Edwards’ services to cricket are immeasur- able and in 2012 she became the first woman to join the MCC World Cricket Committee, where she will mix with the likes of Michael Atherton and Kumar Sangakkara. She also took a seat around the ICC Committee table. She captains Kent when she is not busy on the international A DREAM CAREER Author, coach, commentator and cricketer Isabelle Duncan pays tribute to England’s Charlotte Edwards, winner of the Society’s Denzil Batchelor Award for Services to English Cricket 2014