Ahead of the 2024 Women’s Premier League, England opener Danni Wyatt speaks to Aadya Sharma on her career so far, the ups and downs of a cricketer’s life, her debut WPL season and where she expects the league to go.

Danni Wyatt has “seen it all”. Fourteen years of international cricket and 151 T20Is in – the most by an English player, female or male – she’s embarking on a new journey in Bengaluru in the Women’s Premier League. Wyatt feels special, even as she looks ahead at a hectic 12 months, hoping to balance the sport’s demands while doing “normal things” with family and friends.

“Aap aise ho? (How are you)” she asks in her Staffordshire accent, testing the mic for us. She throws in a few more phrases to flex her Hindi – ”chalo chalo (keep going)”, “shabash shabash (well done)” and “uttar dega (a wordplay-based warcry of the UP Warriorz, the WPL team she has joined)”. 

Now, on her twelfth trip to India, she knows exactly which words to steer clear of: “I can’t tell you the naughty words they teach me!”

What a guy! 🥹 👏🏼 https://t.co/gLOR907sc5

— Danielle Wyatt (@Danni_Wyatt) February 24, 2024

Wyatt has made a name as a fearless opening batter of the ‘see ball, hit ball’ tribe, but it’s a whole lot of different avatars she’s donned through her career that’s crafted her into who she is today. At 32, she is one of the game’s finest white-ball openers, but was also once an off-spinning all-rounder and a middle-order basher. Now, almost exactly 14 years since her England debut as an 18-year-old in Mumbai, she is set to debut in a groundbreaking T20 league that she hopes to be coaching in a decade from now.

She also hopes it “inspires young girls to take up the sport”, sharing a bit of her own journey with them along the way. 

When she links up with the national team in New Zealand after the WPL, Wyatt will be one boundary away from beating Charlotte Edwards’ England record for the most T20I runs. In the men’s game, only Jos Buttler – a player she loves to watch – has scored more. Reflecting on her journey, she recalls how playing with the boys in her formative years really “toughened her up”.

“I say now to young girls growing up to play boys’ and men’s cricket if they can, because you just grow so much,” Wyatt says. “Obviously, the boys bowl a lot quicker. And it just makes you learn a lot quicker. And they hit the ball harder. So it toughens you up.”

Wyatt was self-admittedly better at football, and was even on the fringes of playing for the Stoke City women’s team, but was drawn more towards the social circle cricket offered. She feels lucky that her older brother played in the same cricket team, helping her break into an all-boys group.

“I was actually on his team with all the boys back when I first started, which helped me feel comfortable and I played boys and men’s cricket for Whitmore Cricket Club for probably the majority of the first ten years of my cricketing career.”

If she could, Wyatt would love to still play for Whitmore CC even today.

But it’s now “impossible”, for Wyatt is part of a rapidly evolving ecosystem of women’s cricket that offers opportunities to play round the year. She has already featured in the Women’s BBL, the Hundred, and the predecessor of the WPL – the Women’s T20 Challenge. It can’t be all that easy to balance it with international cricket. Last year, she pulled out of the WBBL due to fatigue. 

Wyatt credits fellow English players Sarah Taylor and Ben Stokes for removing the stigma around mental health breaks in the sport. 

“[They] have come out, big cricketers, who you wouldn’t think would need a break, have come out and said ‘No, I’m burnt out, I need a break’.”

“For people like that to come forward, has inspired someone like me to do that as well and given me confidence to go to my coach and say, ‘I’m knackered, I can’t play anymore, I need a month off’ and it’s seen as a good thing to do. 

“It’s seen as brave, whereas before, maybe it was seen as being weak.

“So I think it’s so important you play your best cricket when you’re mentally fresh. When you feel like it’s coming, that’s when you need to take a step back and think, is it time to have a few weeks off and live a normal life? Because you can get stuck in this horrible bubble that you can’t really get out of, which is when you’ve probably gone over the other side and tipped over the edge.

“And then your performances will be bad, you’ll be miserable”.

Engaged recently and due to get married later this year, Wyatt now wants to beat the exhaustion by planning her time better, eager to take a break whenever she feels she’s tipping over.

“Now I’m looking at my schedule over the next 12 months, it’s pretty hectic. So I’m looking at gaps in the schedule so that I can take a step away and go on holiday, do normal things with my family, my partner and get away from the game. And then you’ll come back fresh and recharged and ready to go again.”

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Last year, Wyatt was all set to jump right into the inaugural WPL fanfare but was left “devastated” when she got no bids at the first-ever auction, even as seven of her English teammates found new homes for a month.

Dreamt of playing in the WPL. Heartbroken 💔 Congrats to all who got picked up. India is a wonderful place to play cricket

— Danielle Wyatt (@Danni_Wyatt) February 14, 2023

“Obviously, I was really gutted as I said in my tweet back then. I really got my hopes up and thought I’d be a part of it,” Wyatt says. “I thought I’d get at least one bid and I didn’t get one. So yeah, it was weird. It was a weird few days, I was pretty devastated. After being a part of the exhibition games before. I’ve got good stats here in India. So to not get one bid was pretty heartbreaking. 

“And I kind of had a completely different mindset in the last auction. I was just thinking, Well, I’ve had a great summer. I’ve done everything I can to put my hand up for a bid and for an opportunity in the WPL, so if I don’t get picked then oh well.”

Last December, Wyatt was in Mumbai with the touring England team when she was picked up by UP Warriorz in the auction, and felt “amazing” at the barrage of congratulatory messages that followed her jangling nerves.

By my reckoning, Danni Wyatt is the first player over 30 to make their Test debut for England women since 1996, exciting stuff.pic.twitter.com/zYnwXPjyTq

— Katya Witney (@Katya_Wisden) June 22, 2023

Now touring India is the men’s team, and Wyatt, being the “cricket badger” she is, has been following the Test series as much as she can. She would love playing Test cricket Bazball style: as the second-fastest WT20I centurion ever, her approach would fit right in. According to Wyatt, England head coach Jon Lewis, who also happens to be in charge at UP Warriorz, has a “similar mindset to Baz [Brendon McCullum]”, and is endorsing the same kind of cricket in the WPL.

“When I’m playing at my best, I’m seeing the ball, and I’m hitting it where I want to, and I’m not defending as much,” Wyatt says. “So yeah, it’s a really nice environment to play in. And I think he’s going to bring in that same message into the UP environment as well, which is really good. And that’s what people want to watch as well. You want to entertain people. And that’s how I’ll carry on playing my cricket.

“I just love all the England T20 batters, [Jonny] Bairstow, [Jason] Roy, [Jos] Buttler or Stokesy [Ben Stokes]. The way they play is just so entertaining and I love watching them. And that’s they’re inspiring me as well, whenever I go out there and bat, I want to bat like them”.

And among all those watching Wyatt and her compatriots over the next three weeks, those most encouraged would be the next set of female players: “The more we can perform on TV and inspire the next generation, the more the women’s game is just going to go even higher,” she says.

“Ten years from now I’ll probably be the coach of a [WPL] franchise, maybe more teams, probably more contracts, more money. Obviously this will be good for cricket in India. It will inspire more girls to want to take up the sport.”

Wyatt’s message to the younger lot is to use cricket as a form of expression and even an escape. 

“There can be loads of obstacles. I just think if you’ve got that passion, and the hunger to want to be a professional women’s player, you go for it. Don’t care what anyone says – you’re gonna get negative comments on social media, that’s just part and parcel of being a professional cricketer. 

“And you know, if you’re struggling with things at home, it’s just so good to get out and be part of a team”.

For Wyatt, choosing cricket helped rediscover her own personality, and that’s what she hopes the game does for others too: “I used to be so shy when I was younger. And since I played cricket, and I was part of a team and the social aspect of cricket, you’re always going out meeting new people, it just makes you grow as a person as well, which is really nice. 

“And I owe a lot to cricket to get me to where I am now.”

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