Sophia Dunkley has played 86 times for England despite only turning 25 earlier this year. Katya Witney examines her form that saw her register a top score of 15 on the recent tour of India.

Two wickets in two balls set into motion England’s tumbling collapse before lunch on day three in Mumbai.

The first, sent down outside off stump on a length with no great pace, was an innocuous invitation to hit. Dunkley rocked back, looking to cut it into the off-side for an easy boundary. But, as she flicked her wrists through the shot, the ball pinged straight towards backward point, and in a split second, Harleen Deol was throwing the ball up in the air in celebration. Minutes later, Nat Sciver-Brunt was also on her way back to the changing room, having missed a straight one first ball.

Two mistakes, two different contexts. Dunkley’s dismissal was her fifth without reaching 20 on the tour. The 15 runs she scored in her final innings was more than she’d managed in any of the previous four, and it was also the only one in which she was dismissed by anyone other than Renuka Singh Thakur, with all of her dismissals falling to pace bowlers. Having been the only player in the XI who went on a pre-series spin batting camp to Mumbai, her struggles against pace point to a more overarching issue at play.

When Dunkley broke back into the England team in 2021 after a low-key first run in the side from 2018-19, she was quickly billed as leading the next generation of batters to take her country forward. The core of the side had become entrenched. Before 2018, the last specialist batter to debut for England was Lauren Winfield-Hill, back in 2013. But few who have broken in have threatened to do so for long enough to establish themselves as the future leaders of the group. Despite the expansion of women’s domestic cricket in England, and the group of young batters earning their stripes in the Hundred, change in England’s top six has been slower.

In their top six for the India Test match, Dunkley was the only player whose international debut came within the last decade. England’s senior batting group are all within two years of each other in age, and are all, Dunkley aside, now over 30.

While younger and less experienced batters have made their way into the periphery over the last few years, they haven’t broken into regular starting spots. Emma Lamb started her bid to permanently replace Winfield-Hill with a century against South Africa, but only played one ODI this year. Maia Bouchier’s place in both the T20I and ODI sides consistently relies on the availability of others and, despite her Test century last year, Alice Davidson-Richards hasn’t found a regular place in the first choice XIs.

The exception to this rule is Alice Capsey. Since her debut last year, she’s only missed nine international matches, several of those when she dislocated her shoulder in the Caribbean. But, with only a year of international cricket under her belt and still not 20 years old, it would be a stretch to say she’s cemented her place in England’s core yet.

Dunkley is the outlier. She is the only player who’s made her international debut since 2013 to make 500 runs in ODIs for England. She is also leading the chase to become the ninth England player to make 1,000 runs in women’s T20Is – on 761 after the India series, with Capsey her nearest competitor on 456. She is one of six batters (the same top six from the India Test) to have played more than 30 ODIs for England since 2020. Dunkley is the only recent debutant batter to become established. But even she is now losing her way.

Since September last year she’s averaged 15 across nine ODIs, with a strike rate of 65.53 – far from the explosive force she’s been billed as. The overall picture is slightly better in T20Is, with consistent starts and a strike rate pushing 120. But, her recent trend is downwards, having passed 30 only once in her last ten innings. It’s a pattern that’s becoming harder to ignore.

It’s worth stating that it was Dunkley’s role as a powerful innings finisher that catapulted her into centre stage, rather than as an opener. In her first ODI innings in 2021, she hit an unbeaten 73 off 81 balls from No. 6 to steer England to a win over India. Another important contribution came against New Zealand in a T20I series later in the year, where she hit two unbeaten quickfire scores, also at six. A debut international century against South Africa in 2022 was just her second ODI knock in the top four.

Dunkley embodied the future of women’s cricket, where strike rates were an increasingly valued metric. She had a solid domestic structure to fall back upon and from which to launch a second international stint. In her role as a lower middle order player, inconsistencies were part of the territory.

But, a move up to open in T20Is in 2022, before following in ODIs has required something different. Since January 2022, among openers who have played 20 or more T20Is, Dunkley’s average sits in the bottom half of the list (23.15), as does her half-century count of three.

There have been individual moments of success. A half-century in the first Ashes T20I in Edgbaston this summer ensured England didn’t lose momentum during a top-order collapse but in seven out of 11 T20I innings this year, Dunkley hasn’t got past 12.

England do have other options. Bouchier, seemingly forever looking in from the outside, scored 95 opening the batting in the final ODI of the summer against Sri Lanka. Dunkley was rested for that series after scoring eight, 13 and two in the Ashes ODI series – her first run as ODI opener. Tammy Beaumont is also a constant discussion point, 243 runs at a strike rate of 153.43 in The Hundred another reminder of her absence from the T20I side.

There is no disputing Dunkley’s potential or that she has the capacity for a long-term England future. At 25 years old, time is on her side. She was in the top five leading run-scorers in the women’s Hundred this year despite playing only seven games and warmed up for the India series with 73 off 48 for Melbourne Stars in the WBBL. She earned her place in England’s inner sanctum. But having worked so hard to break in, she is now in danger of slipping out.

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