Katherine Brunt Is Sitting On A Low Sofa At The Home She Shares With Some Of Her England Team-mates In Loughborough
Katherine Brunt is sitting on a low sofa at the home she shares with some of her England team-mates in Loughborough.
She has a reputation as a fearsome competitor. She is a hard and unbending fast bowler, one-eyed and determined. She is perched next to her friend and team-mate, Nat Sciver, but she is the one doing all the talking.
Brunt is the personification of the battle that England's women cricketers have fought and are winning.
She is also the epitome of indomitability. But when I mention what happened at a sold-out Lord's last Sunday and how far she has travelled in the struggle against injury and the quest for recognition for her sport, she bows her head and begins to cry.
Brunt is the oldest member of England's World Cup winning squad, a woman who prides herself on being a no-nonsense product of Yorkshire.
She has a single tattoo in elegant script on the outside of her right forearm that says ‘Grands yeux fermes'. It is a reminder, she says, never to make the same mistake twice. If someone crosses her, or hurts her, she will not forget.
Katherine Brunt (right) and Natalie Sciver hold up their Women's World Cup winners' medals
Their World Cup win at Lord's could be the before-and-after moment for the women's game
She curses me for touching a nerve and utters a few profanities under her breath.
‘I'm fuming you mentioned that,' she says, managing a smile but hating her vulnerability. The enormity of what happened in the World Cup final is still beautiful and raw.
Brunt and England all-rounder Sciver look around the cramped kitchen of the house, which is known affectionately as ‘Alan' among the rest of the squad because of the name of the road it is on, and sense the change that is coming.
Women only began to be able to play professional cricket in this country in 2014 but perceptions of the women's game and the economics that surround it are altering and the hope is that players will be swept along by the tide.
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Brunt and Sciver, who have formed a property partnership, own ‘Alan' and have been charging a couple of other members of the England squad ‘mates' rates' to stay with them because their friends were finding it hard to pay the charges for staying in student accommodation.
In the wake of England's victory over India last Sunday, there is a realisation that that kind of financial hardship should soon be a thing of the past for the country's leading women cricketers.
The England players earned an estimated £34,000 each for https://travelzee.pageride.com/most-beautiful-cricket-stadium-in-india winning the World Cup on top of the reported £50,000 a year that comes with an ECB central contract.
That kind of money is still only accessible to a very few but it was about time they were rewarded.
Sportsmail's Chief Sports Writer Oliver Holt talked with the two England heroes this week
Now there is an undeniable sense of relief that the generation of players that comes after this one ought not have to suffer the same hardships the current crop experienced when they were making their way in the sport.
Opportunities are increasing.
Brunt and Sciver will play in the English Kia Super League (KSL), which begins next month and have taken part in the Women's Big Bash League. There is also talk of new competitions in other countries.
Yes, this has sparked something...
but it will take time to rise to the surface There is a feeling that the World Cup final victory should mark a before-and-after moment for women's cricket and perhaps for women's sport in England too. England's women footballers play France in a European Championship quarter-final in Holland on Sunday amid growing awareness and excitement about their prospects.
But let's not get too ahead of ourselves.
Mention women's sport on social media and you are still met with a barrage of derision.
There is also a temptation for men, in particular, to view women's sport through the prism of men's sport and praise its best elements as things Premier League footballers, for instance, should aspire to.
Some male journalists, like me, are still guilty of that kind of lazy stereotyping.
More and more, though, there is a feeling that, both in English cricket and English football, these girls can, that women's sport is beginning to get some of the respect it deserves and that, from a low base, the interest in it is rising.
Brunt's hope is that she is part of the last generation of pathfinders in women's cricket.
Players like her and Charlotte Edwards have put in the hard yards in relative obscurity but now a bold new generation represented by players like Sciver are about to inherit the earth.
Sciver hopes the next generation of cricketers will not have to bare their financial hardships
Brunt believes girls playing cricket at youth level could be earning triple what she enjoys
When the World Cup was held in England, in 1993, women were still banned from the pavilion
‘If you are a girl playing cricket now and you are up-and-coming and you want to play for England in five years, you could be earning double or triple what I am earning now,' says Brunt.
‘I'm 32 so I'm not going to be part of the era that earned loads of money but I want to be the person that paved the way for them.
<div class="art-ins mol-factbox floatRHS sport" data-version="2" id="mol-45888cb0-7497-11e7-a71e-b77ae9f66da1" website Women proved 'These Girls Can' with World Cup win
