In 2022, Davina Perrin became the youngest-ever player picked up in The Hundred draft when she was just 15 years old. Three years later, she’s the leading domestic run-scorer in the T20 Blast, has starred in an U19 World Cup campaign and was picked for England A to face New Zealand this summer. Arguably more importantly, she’s now finished school, and is ready for life as a full time professional cricketer.
Only one player has scored more runs than Davina Perrin in the group stage of the T20 Blast. That player is Suzie Bates, a T20 World Cup winner, the most internationally capped player of all time and a legend of the game, whose New Zealand debut came five months before Perrin was born. Of the rest of the top five scorers, all have played for their country at least 20 times, and two have played in World Cup finals. Perrin stands out among a group of elites.
Her runs this season are not a one off either. She was Central Sparks’ leading run-scorer in the Charlotte Edwards Cup last year, which led to her being selected for the U19 World Cup. She was by far England’s top batter in the competition, awarded player of the match against USA for her 74 off 45, and only India’s Gongadi Trisha scored more runs than her across the competition. Following that success, she received a last minute call-up for England’s A tour of Australia, her first senior international call.
“I got the phone call and it was, 'Let's get you a visa as soon as possible and get you on the first flight',” Perrin tells Wisden.com. “I was like ‘okay let’s go’. I was only out there for two weeks so I’d just got used to the jet lag and then I was on my way back, and I had to get used to the sleeping schedule back here.
“But that’s the whole point of the structure, that you can go through each stage and it provides a really great form of integration. You get to be slowly drip-fed into the system, you get to meet the coaches and become more familiar with how the environment works, what’s expected of you and how you can go about your business within that space.”
Perrin will be one of the first to benefit from the rebooted domestic system which provides a more structured pathway for young players through to the highest level. She’s followed it to a tee, shining in the domestic system, earning her first professional contract, featuring in two U19 World Cups and now appearing for England A – for whom she also played for earlier this summer against New Zealand. Her assent through that pathway will be a major tick for its establishment if she goes on to senior international honours.
“The sky is the limit at the minute,” says Perrin. “That structure has been vital, being in a professional structure all year round and being immersed in that has been so crucial for knowing what’s needed of me, knowing how to consistently perform and how to show up every day and do the right things. That’s been the real differentiator. The U19s has been great but the standard in the domestic game and the consistency within that has enabled that integration a lot more.”
While Perrin’s feats in domestic and age-group international cricket are impressive, just how early she is in her journey shouldn’t be lost. Over the course of her career so far, Perrin has had to balance full-time education with life as a fully professional cricketer. She earned her first contract in The Hundred before taking her GCSEs, and has only been able to focus solely on cricket for the last few months.
“I’d love to say I had a really good technique for balancing it but I didn’t,” says Perrin. “I just did the work that was in front of me and took my exams when I needed to. There was one time when the PCA had to help me out. We had a game down in Canterbury, a T20 match, and on the morning of the game I had a maths GCSE to hit, and you can’t miss that. So they had to put me at a school to sit my exam in Canterbury and then I went and played 30 minutes later. The balance was kind of there, but there were parts of it that were easier than others.”
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Equally, jetting to South Africa, Malaysia and Australia to play international cricket, as well as touring the country as one of the best young prospects in the game every summer should be a daunting prospect for any teenager. As a girl from Birmingham, with a big family who have cricket at their heart, staying close knit has been essential in keeping Perrin’s feet on the ground.
“I’ve got five siblings and I’ve got my parents who do a good job of keeping my feet on the ground and keeping me humble,” she says. “Whether that’s taking the mick out of me and roasting me or pep talks here and there.
“My older sister used to play cricket and my little brother is nine, he’s getting into it. He’s watched me play a few times and he thought, ‘You know what, I’ll give it a whack’, and he does to be fair. He’s a typical young lad who loves to turn up, bowl as quick as he can and hit it as hard as he can… But my older sister is the reason I play cricket now. I was sat on the side watching her train and the coach who was there at the time was Chris Guest, who was the U19 head coach, and my dad was like ‘Guesty, can she join in?’ and he was like ‘Yeah go on’. I was tiny because I was only six at the time and it was a 9-plus game, so there were all these lads and they gave me a plastic bat and I fell in love with the game from there.”
But despite her age, and the light-hearted feel she tries to keep in her cricket, Perrin is aware of the important position she holds through her identity. When she was awarded her first professional contract by Central Sparks in 2022, Perrin became only the third Black female professional cricketer in the country. Having worked with Ebony Rainford-Brent’s ACE (African Caribbean Engagement) programme, she’s passionate about being a role model for young Black girls.
“It’s about paving the way and being one of the first few to enter a space, and purely being there,” says Perrin. “At the end of the day, you can’t be what you can’t see and by just being there you’re paving the way for so many young black girls, and black boys of course, looking to get into cricket, and hopefully we’ll see more people like me playing professional cricket.
“But it’s also taking moments like this and using the space and platform that I’ve been allowed to have to discuss these topics and raise awareness. It may not have to be a great conversation but ensuring that people are aware that there is so much more to do.”
While role models in women’s cricket were few and far between during Perrin’s early cricketing years, that hasn’t stopped her from trying to emulate the best of the best from eras past.
“I always say I wish I could be a left-hander because I’d sit and watch the likes of Brian Lara on YouTube and I’d be like ‘If I could only bat that way,’” she says. “That era of West Indies cricket, Sir Viv Richards and the like, I definitely try and channel a bit of Sir Viv when I’m batting, and Michael Hodling, I used to love watching him bowl. That’s peak cricket for me in my mind, if only I could have seen it live.”
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