Emily Arlott thought her chance at an international career was gone, having not been picked in an England squad for almost three years. However, with a change in management heralding a new dawn for the side, she now has the opportunity to vanquish the ‘what ifs’.
In between the demands of a busy start to the new domestic season, Emily Arlott has spent the last month adjusting to a new addition at home, who has been causing chaos during her midweek evenings off.
“We’ve just got a new puppy, and he was being a bit of a handful, so I was a bit flustered” Arlott says of a Tuesday evening between One Day Cup fixtures for Warwickshire. Puppy training on that particular night, however, had to take a backseat when she saw the new England head coach’s name pop up on her phone.
“It was quite late so I wasn’t expecting a call at all,” says Arlott. “It sounds a bit stupid but I thought she might have accidentally called me. So I let it ring a bit because I thought maybe it was a mistake, and then I picked up because she hadn’t hung up yet.”
There could only be one reason why Charlotte Edwards was calling days before announcing the squads for England’s first series under her leadership, however, especially for a player who’s had a start to the season like Arlott’s. Over her first seven matches of the One Day Cup, Arlott has taken 14 wickets for Warwickshire and, in conditions which have yielded record numbers of runs, she’s returned an impressive economy rate of 4.63.
Those numbers are a continuation of consistent performances over the last year. In the 2024 Hundred, Arlott was one of two uncapped bowlers to break into double figures of wickets and also took 14 wickets at 16.14 in the Charlotte Edwards Cup.
The performance which sticks out, however, came not with ball, but with bat against Essex in the second round of the One Day Cup last month. Having come out at No.7 during the seventh over of the match with Warwickshire 22-5, Arlott batted for 40 overs, scoring her maiden professional century and taking her side to a match-winning total.
“I never thought, at No.7, I would be walking out to the crease, at the sixth or seventh over – that was a first for me,” Arlott says. “People have always just treated me as a bowler who could hit a big ball but could not apply myself and win games when it came to it… I probably sold myself a little bit short over the last few years with my batting. I would go ‘block, block, block, ah I’m just going to sky one’ and then get out for 3. That innings was more of getting the point out there to everyone that I’m no longer just a bowler.”
Perhaps that was what pulled Arlott’s selection over the line for Charlotte Edwards. With Nat Sciver-Brunt unable to bowl against the West Indies, and both Dani Gibson and Freya Kemp out injured, a seam-bowling all-rounder capable of scoring centuries and taking five-fors would have been high on her agenda. Arlott will likely have to bat in the top seven if she breaks into England’s XI, and performances like her hundred against Essex will give confidence that it’s a role she’s capable of filling.
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If Arlott is selected in a final England XI against West Indies, it will put to bed previous painful memories of failing to win England selection.
In 2021, she was selected in a Test squad to face India having taken four wickets in one over days before for Central Sparks. She was also named in England’s ODI squad that summer, but didn’t make the playing XI. “Personally, I’m so grateful I didn’t play,” says Arlott. “I know that’s a terrible thing to say but looking back now, had I debuted I would have had half the impact I’d love to have now because of what I’ve learned and experienced off the pitch as well as on it.
“The first time I got picked, I got the call and then the next week it was the Test match. As a youngster, I was just grateful I’d got a regional contract and I was living in the moment for everything I experienced at regional level. I thought it was so cool that it was my job, and I think it would have been too quick and I would have gotten overwhelmed.
“I was one of the first people to come into that group who was a complete stranger, and I really personally struggled with that because I went into my shell… I was sat there going, ‘I’m not good enough to be here and they all probably think I’m terrible’. That’s what I mean when I say I’m grateful they didn’t [pick me].”
Missing out the following year however, having been called up again for a Test match against South Africa, was a different matter.
“The South Africa Test still haunts me to this day,” says Arlott. “The way I had Covid during that Test match, I felt like the stars just didn’t align and there wasn’t a lot I could do. It was a really tough time, I was in an absolute hole with it for the next year but didn’t say too much about it.
“You just sit in the whole ‘what if’ and you never know. If I was healthy and fit there was still no guarantee I was going to play, but that choice was taken away, and you never know whether that will be the last time you get to experience something like that.”
Despite still being in her mid 20s, Arlott had reason to worry. Since that Test match against South Africa in the summer of 2022, nine out of 11 England debutants were aged 22 or under at the time of receiving their first cap – excluding last year’s series against Ireland which all of their first-choice T20I players missed.
With opportunities limited to come into a side which has had the same core for over a decade, any chances have largely been given to young talent, rewarding potential over domestic numbers and experience. There’s also the Nat Sciver-Brunt effect, where her status as the world’s best seam-bowling all-rounder has blocked out that space in the XI for a generation. She allows England to field specialist pacers down the order, and pad out the batting with a lower-order hitter or pick three spinners in their side.
“When you’re out of the bubble of those England conversations, you don’t really know what gets said and what doesn’t get said,” says Arlott. “Twenty-seven isn’t that old in terms of cricket, and I’d like to think I’ve got plenty of years left to play. But you see youngsters coming through like your Ryana MacDonald-Gays, that are in their early 20s, why would they even bother looking at me when I’m a bit older?”
Arlott is one of three players in their late 20s who have previously been on the fringes of selection in England’s squads to face West Indies. While an injury ruled Paige Scholfield out when she was previously picked in South Africa, Alice Davidson-Richards found herself out of favour despite scoring a century in the Test match Arlott was forced out of.
“I think it’s really pleasing to see that there’s no [age] cap,” says Arlott. “I’m 10 times the cricketer I was when I was last selected. I had a few years where I really struggled with thinking my chance had gone, and I had to come to terms with that because I never thought I was going to get looked at again. And then Lottie came in, coupled with having a really good start to the season and it’s nice to reap the rewards of being consistent at the regional level and putting your hand up.”
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The biggest factor in Arlott’s transformation over the last few years has been overcoming her struggles with self-belief. A trip to Australia over the winter was key to unlocking a new phase in her career, and led to her knocking on England’s door once more.
“I just kept going through the monotonous winter at home at Edgbaston,” says Arlott. “I am not moaning about that at all, but it gets a bit samey. One day I just thought ‘screw it, I’m going to challenge myself’. I messaged the head of Western Australia and said ‘I would love to come out and train with you guys’. I hate meeting new people and I’m terrible in those situations, and I was like I can’t keep going through my career and not put myself out there. So I threw myself in at the deep end and went to Australia. I didn’t know anybody. I had never been to Australia, or even been out of the country, on my own before. I forced myself to figure it out.
“The first day of state training I turned up and I was terrified. But it was the best thing I ever did, and I think I’m three times the person now that I was even 12 months ago.”
Imposter syndrome, or the inability to feel that one’s success is deserved, affects up to 60 per cent of people. But for sportspeople, having both your successes and failures play out publicly, all the while doing a career idolised by millions, those feelings can be at their most intense. For Arlott, facing her demons head on was the turning point.
“The girls out there [at Western Australia] were great,” she says. “It really taught me how to have the right amount of fun whilst playing. I think it probably links back to the anxiety side of it. When I’m really anxious, I go into my shell, and I’m fully okay with admitting that I am a weirdo and I just bounce around the group at Birmingham, but I actually held that in because I was worried about people judging me.
“When I went to Australia, I was like ‘if they all think I’m a complete freak, it’s fine, I might not see them again’. Actually it was really liberating and I’ve met people that I’ll probably be friends with for life.”
That renewed confidence Arlott found in Australia will be key to rewarding the faith put in her by the new England regime. With a 50-over World Cup round the corner and a high-profile series against India later in the summer, the timing finally feels right to make the most of the opportunity she’s been given.
“This is the culmination of the last couple of years for me to get to this point,” says Arlott. “I would love to be more consistently around the group in every format, but the only way I’m going to do that is to prove that I deserve to be there. I’ve just got to make sure that I’m performing and doing things at the right time. That’s all that I can really control.”
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