England batter Claire Taylor made history in 2009 when she became the first woman to be named Wisden’s Cricketer of the Year. Scyld Berry paid tribute to the first lady of Wisden.
Claire Taylor played her last international match in 2011, an ODI against Australia. She ended her career with 5746 runs in 168 games for England. She was inducted into the ICC Hall of Fame in 2018.
It is one of sport’s axioms that you can defeat only the opposition in front of you; and one of cricket’s that defeating Australia in Australia is the ultimate achievement. In February 2008, England Women beat Australia Women in a one-off Test at Bowral – only their fourth Test victory in Australia (and two of those had come on their inaugural 1934-35 tour). They were steered home by the single-minded determination of Claire Taylor, who followed a first-innings 79 with 64 not out when set 142 to win. In men’s Ashes cricket, only half a dozen England batsmen have dictated the course of a deciding Test with the same mental strength.
Last summer, as England Women won all nine of the one-day internationals that rain allowed to conclude, Taylor was dismissed only twice by a bowler, and twice run out. In May, she was named England Women’s Cricketer of the Year. In October, she was installed at No.1 when the ICC launched its one-day international rankings for women. In an era when run-scoring has been neither so high nor so fast as in men’s cricket, she has averaged 43 in Tests, 39 in ODIs, and 30 in Twenty20 internationals – and in her early career she was a wicketkeeper-bat rather than a specialist batter.
Samantha Claire Taylor was born in Amersham on September 25, 1975, to a father who played rugby and a mother who had played hockey for Northumbria. The nearest she came to cricket was softball, as the only girl in the Dolphin School team, until she was spotted, aged 13, at a summer sports camp by Carol Bosley, captain of Ridgeway (which then merged with Reading). Hockey was more her game in her teens – she was in the England Under-17 and Under-19 squads as a centre-forward – but, being agile and energetic, Claire also kept wicket from 16, firstly for Thames Valley (starting before women switched to trousers), then for Queen’s College First XI when she went to Oxford to read maths.
At this stage of its evolution, women’s Test cricket is similar to that of men’s in the 19th century when it was becoming professionalised: when most players were amateur, and used light bats, and the normal run-rate was around two runs an over, against medium-pace or spin. In the Bowral Test, Australia had two capable spinners, but after England lost their first wicket at 12, the main enemy was fear itself. Taylor had slept little during the game, about four hours a night, waking early and thinking of the day ahead. “I was determined to finish the job, which I hadn’t in the first innings [when she had outside-edged an off-break], because we’d never get another chance like that again.” And she did finish it, to completion, hitting her 11th four for the winning boundary.
There was no money for retaining the Ashes, not even a tour fee; just the intangible rewards of honour, pride and satisfaction. However, thanks to Sport England funding through the ECB, Taylor has been compensated for the time she spends training (she is the kind who goes for a four-mile run before she has a net), and combines cricket with the projects she undertakes as a part-time management consultant.
In addition, eight members of the women’s squad combine training with 25 hours a week as coaches for Chance to Shine. Since taking over women’s cricket in 1998, the ECB have organised it excellently, giving England Women the best chance of succeeding at international level (if only, some might add, the same applied to the men). And Taylor, in her batting, has personified this excellence.
