Anya: I dreamt of this at Lord’s aged 10
Anya Shrubsole first visited Lord’s in 2001 when her father, Ian, was playing for Bath in the national club championship. Ian never won a medal at Lord’s in two such attempts but his daughter was player of the final yesterday, taking six wickets for 46 runs.
Ian had posted a tweet of his 10-year-old daughter watching from the boundary at Lord’s when he had played there for Bath. When asked whether her success – they were the best bowling figures in a Women’s World Cup final – had made up for his disappointment, he replied: “Doesn’t it ever?”
“Anya first came down to play at Bath when she was five or six. I didn’t really coach her, because I passed her over to other coaches,” her father said. “She was always determined and single-minded, knowing exactly what she wanted.”
But one thing he passed on to his daughter was powerful shoulders. They kept her bowling against India even after she had rolled her ankle in the qualifying game against Sri Lanka, and enabled her to produce a string of inswingers and slower balls that flummoxed the lower order.
“We could easily have fallen away but to stay in the game and win was really amazing,” said Anya, who had tweeted in 2001 that she wanted to play in a World Cup final at Lord’s. “I’ve never played in a game when you can’t hear the person fielding next to you,” she added, after the crowd had been calculated as 28,000, at least half female.
“I always thought we were in the game,” said England head coach
Mark Robinson, who installed Heather Knight as Charlotte Edwards’s successor after England’s failure in the World T20 last year.
“We were maybe 20 to 30 runs light but we just needed that break every now and then,” added Robinson, who also played a major role in supporting his wicketkeeper, Sarah Taylor, through her anxiety issues. Knight said: “We keep doing it the hard way. We knew if we held our nerve we’d be in with a chance. We’ve had a lot of hurts in previous competitions, but Robbo has pushed us and made us believe.
“What a spectacle it was to get more girls inspired.”
In India, cricket has hitherto been a distinctly men’s game, but captain Mithali Raj said: “Everyone will look up now to women cricketers.”