England named their squad for the 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup today (August 21), and while there's a sense the tournament has come too soon in Charlotte Edwards' reign for her impact to be fully felt, for others it's their last chance to secure their legacies, writes Ben Gardner.
It only emphasises the strangeness of this winter’s World Cup that England’s squad announcement has come now, when their summer’s showpiece event is still in full swing, and when many of the details of the event itself are still being ironed out. It is both somewhere in the distance and approaching more quickly than it appears. England’s final pre-World Cup ODI was seen off exactly a month ago, with still over a month until the event’s start. The pieces are now in place.
First, the squad itself. Charlotte Edwards said that England had picked an extra spinner, but they’ve also managed to squeeze in more seamers than for last year’s T20 World Cup. Still, none of those seamers are Kate Cross, with Em Arlot preferred in part for reasons of batting depth. It may well bring a curtain down on the ODI career of Cross, who will turn 34 on the day England begin their World Cup campaign.
Alice Davidson-Richards is the other who will feel particularly aggrieved to be left out, having averaged over 50 and struck at over 90 this summer, and been recalled for the first time since 2023. Danni Wyatt-Hodge and Alice Capsey’s selections over her is in part a recognition of their excellent domestic form and in part a nod to the experience and flexibility the pair offer England. This is a squad with as many bases as possible covered for a tournament of unknowns. A formal announcement that the Chinnaswamy won’t be used as a venue is expected in the coming days, and England have never played an ODI at any of the other stadiums in use for the competition.
It combines to create the sense of a tournament that could be anyone’s for the taking, but that has also come around too soon for a team not quite ready for the opportunity. The Gospel of Edwards has been spoken and heard but not quite fully absorbed. India showed this summer why they are second favourites for both this tournament and the T20 World Cup next year. It’s that latter tournament, at home, after a full year of Lottie, that will provide a fairer staging post for this team’s development, and that stands as the greater opportunity for a triumph that would bring wider reward.
But it’s also, for those who can remember winning the 2017 World Cup, a last chance to shore up their legacies in the tournament that matters most in women’s cricket. “ODI World Cups are the pinnacle of our sport,” Edwards said.
For Nat Sciver-Brunt, it’s a chance to cement her status as one of the era’s pre-eminent cricketers, leading from the front as captain and with the bat. For Heather Knight, it’s a chance to correct a sub-par World Cup record - she has one century, against Pakistan - and to show a poor 2024, in which she averaged 20 in ODIs, was a mere blip. Both will also want to ease concerns over their fitness, with the 2027 Ashes the next major goal.
Tammy Beaumont will want to rectify a poor record in India, where she is without a fifty in 10 games, and perhaps to close the three-ton gap between her and Meg Lanning at the top of the all-time women’s ODI centuries chart. Wyatt-Hodge, unlike that trio, does not have a claim to ODI greatness, and was a peripheral figure in that 2017 campaign. At one point during the summer, there were questions raised over her international future. Her recall emphasises that while many of those in the squad will get another go at a World Cup, for its stalwarts it’s now or never.
That transition has been a long time coming, delayed by the lack of permanence on show from those in line to replace their senior counterparts. Plenty rests on Sophia Dunkley, who has shown signs this year of having finally becoming the international-calibre batter that always seemed just below the surface. The bowling handover has already happened. England have one of the quickest bowlers in the world in Lauren Filer, a seamer upon whom the mantle of attack leader sits neatly in Lauren Bell, and an all-time great in Sophie Ecclestone, albeit one without a statement triumph to her name. England are underdogs, certainly, but perhaps it could suit them.
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