Having suffered through the growing pains of spending her early career in the spotlight, Issy Wong is firmly back in England’s plans, with a new Hundred franchise and the maturity to re-enter the big time.
Coming into T20 Blast Finals Day, the biggest event on the women’s county calendar, having qualified last out of the three teams to win spots at the event, Warwickshire were immediately under pressure. Facing last year’s T20 champions, The Blaze, in the eliminator, just two runs came off Cassidy McCarthy’s first over. Two balls later, Warwickshire’s leading run-scorer in the competition, Davina Perrin, advanced down the pitch and was caught at cover. In a precarious situation, skipping out to bat at No.3 with a T20 batting average of 11.89, came Issy Wong.
The move to promote Wong to No.3 in the Blast raised eyebrows at the start of the season. A couple of brief flashes of power were interspersed between moving back down the order. But, facing her first ball at the Kia Oval, she began a match-defining knock with a confident punch through the off-side for four. Three more boundaries followed from her next seven balls and, just after the 11-over mark, she hit another to bring up a half-century off 32 balls.
“In theory it was if we lost a wicket in the powerplay,” Wong tells the Wisden Women’s Cricket Weekly podcast of when she would be promoted up the order. “But when the last over of the powerplay would start I’d get sat down and they’d say, ‘take your helmet off, we’ll be alright now. It was fun.”
“I’ve opened in T20s before for the Sparks so I felt comfortable going in during the powerplay. It’s a bit of a different role than coming in towards the back end of an innings and trying to finish it off. It’s exciting [in the powerplay], the field’s up, the ball is still hard. I loved it. I loved the opportunity to get out there and have a bit more time and try to be really aggressive and counter-attacking after early wickets and put pressure back on.
Having batted Bears out of trouble, Wong made an even greater contribution to their qualification for the final with the ball. She nipped through Tammy Beaumont’s defences in her opening over, taking out her middle stump to remove the England opener for a duck. The very next ball, Kathryn Bryce couldn’t avoid fending at a back of a length ball, putting Wong on a hat-trick. She finished the match with figures of 4-15, sealing Bears a second outing later in the day. While that game ended in disappointment, Wong was again individually outstanding, scoring 31 off 19 and bowling four dots in her opening over.
“I don’t see myself as a No.3 in every format, I’m not deluded,” says Wong. “But I love it and will keep working on it… I think cricket’s so, fickle is the wrong word, but it’s so dependent on the environment you’re in. In that Bears T20 environment, I was really lucky to get that kind of role, being with England looks very different.”
Wong didn’t get much opportunity to show her skills with the bat in international cricket this summer, coming in at No.8 and 9 in the two innings she was required for. But that she was back in England’s T20I set-up at all, marked a significant point in her career.
When she shot to fame as a teenager, with her infectious energy and bold outspoken ambitions to hit the magical 80mph marker, Wong was at the forefront of the new set of Gen Z players set to dominate the women’s game in the 2020s. Her effortless charisma was a dream for a media landscape looking for personalities in the early years of The Hundred to sell cricket to a brand new audience. Before having significant on-field success, Wong was one of the most well-known women in English cricket, and one of its most marketable players. That was evident when her image was blazened across every promo poster for the 2023 Ashes, a series in which she didn’t bowl a ball.
Having staked her claim three years ago, as part of a young cohort of bowlers looking to replace Anya Shrubsole and Katherine Sciver-Brunt as England’s leading pacers moved on, Wong was quickly one of the most in-demand quicks on the franchise circuit. By early 2023, she’d played in both the WBBL and WPL, before her 21st birthday. For England though, her star power had begun to fade. A difficult outing against Sri Lanka, having been picked in a side missing most of its first choice attack, was a very public show of the struggles she’d had with her run-up over the previous months.
In that match, Wong over-stepped three times in her first over, which took her 10 deliveries to bowl. She was hit for three fours in her second, after which she wasn’t brought back into the attack. It was a difficult watch.
Aside from her involvement in last year’s series in Ireland, again as part of a side missing its first choice players, that was Wong’s last match for England for a year and a half. But, with the slate wiped clean under Charlotte Edwards this summer, Wong was back in the fold.
“I guess I hoped to be,” says Wong, when asked whether she expected to be involved as much as she was for England over the summer. “You always hope though, don’t you? I think I felt like I was in a really good place coming off the A tour in Australia. I felt really clear on my skills and what I could do in different periods of the game. Chris Liddle, who’s head coach here [at London Spirit], worked together for 18 months, and we made some really good strides and I felt like I was in a good place going into the start of the English summer.
“I haven’t been around the group for 18 months, and things change very quickly in that time. The last England squad I was in was in Ireland, and I don’t think there was a single player, apart from maybe Paige Scholfield, who was in that group. I’ve played not that many games for England but under five different captains, I think I’m the only person who’s got all five of Heather, Nat, Amy Jones against India, Kate Cross and then Tammy in this series. I’m quite happy with that.”
When Wong did get that opportunity again this summer, she was a different bowler than she was last time out. She mainly took pace off the ball, bowling mostly in the middle overs against West Indies and used in the powerplay against India. In a series where pace travelled, any hint of it pounced upon by a powerful India line-up, Wong turned to slower balls almost exclusively, a far cry from the express pace she promised three years ago.
“I guess it’s reading the situation and a bit of experience,” says Wong. “And it’s kind of what’s required of me at the time. Playing with Lauren Filer for England this summer, that’s a role she does so well [pace on]. So for me it was, ‘how can I compliment that really well?’ And I think changes of pace at the death were so important to these girls who hit a really clean ball.
“Don’t get me wrong, there’s still that desire to run in and bowl quick. My initial comments about women bowling 80mph, which I think I said five years ago now, I absolutely thought it was possible. If it’s possible, why wouldn’t you try? I’m still very much in that headspace of trying to be as fit as I can, as strong as I can, and in as good a position as I can at the crease to bowl quick. But I feel like I’ve got loads of options as well, which is something I’ve had to develop over a few years.”
While the initial focus of England’s new management this summer was on the upcoming 50-over World Cup, with Wong not involved in that format, there was acknowledgement of a home T20 World Cup lurking in 12 month’s time. That Wong is in England’s plans at this stage, with only six more T20Is scheduled before that tournament kicks off, gives her a huge opportunity to live out a full circle moment.
“I was sat just down there for the [2017] World Cup final,” says Wong, gesturing towards the Grand Stand at Lord’s. “Watching that was really cool. I think a lot of people my age remember that vividly. It felt like a real turning point for the women’s game… I think when you’re a kid and you’re watching your heroes go out and win a World Cup on home soil, that’s what you leave those days with and you think, ‘wow, I’d love to do that one day’. I’d love to play in a home World Cup, it would be incredible. I’ve not been to a World Cup at all yet.
“But I know it doesn’t work like that. It’s about taking one step at a time, looking at the next game, and preparing for that, training over the winter and trying to get as good as I can for whatever team I’m playing for.”
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