Tammy Beaumont hit the highest individual score in the men’s and women’s Hundred at Sophia Gardens yesterday, sparking another round of discussion as to why she isn’t in England’s T20I side.

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Beaumont hit 118 off 61 balls for Welsh Fire against Trent Rockets, with 22 boundaries in her innings. She shared a 100-run stand with Sarah Bryce before she was eventually removed by Kirstie Gordon.

The innings generated some reaction online to where the innings leaves Beaumont’s selection in the England T20I side, which she was dropped from last year.

It’s worth revisiting why Beaumont was dropped from England’s T20I side. She’s one of the most recognisable faces in English women’s cricket. She’s one of only two players in history with centuries in all three formats of the women’s game. Her name is emblazoned across England’s statistical records in T20I cricket, as one of the top-five run scorers, owner of their second-highest individual score and one of five players with more than ten fifties.

Despite this, last summer in the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games, England decided to go in a different direction with their T20I side. To keep up with the way the global game continues to head, they decided to rejig their opening partnership into a more explosive, hit or miss, combination – Beaumont didn’t fit into that.

Beaumont’s strike rate sticks out in her white-ball stats as more belonging to the era before the accelerated course the women’s game has undertaken over the last few years. While that doesn’t matter so much in ODI cricket, where weight of runs can outweigh the rate at which they’re scored, it does in T20 formats. Beaumont’s strike rate in T20Is is 108.37, nothing to be sniffed at, but England had other options available to them. Namely Sophia Dunkley.

Dunkley had made the transition to T20I opener and pushed for selection in the 2021 Hundred as a top-order batter. She offered an increased strike rate and the ability to hit bombs alongside Danni Wyatt at the start of England’s innings. Thus, for their Commonwealth Games squad, Beaumont was left out and Dunkley moved up to open.

At the time, Heather Knight said: “She’s one of the best players in the world and has been for a long time. We just felt we wanted to be more aggressive in the powerplay in T20 and we feel we’ve brought in players that can bring that fearlessness, that aggressiveness to the squad.”

However, in the 12 months since Beaumont was left out, things have changed. Dunkley hasn’t been as destructive as she could have been and Beaumont’s T20 approach has significantly changed. At the World Cup earlier this year, England came out with a clearly changed game plan under the new coach, Jon Lewis.

The increased aggression that they showed with the bat was emblematic of the no-fear approach T20 sides have taken over the past four years, and this was evident in their team selection. After Dunkley and Wyatt at the top came Alice Capsey at three, who hit England’s fastest-ever half-century during the competition. She scored 78 runs across five innings in the competition but at a strike rate of 141.81. Since then, Dunkley scored a half-century against Australia in the Ashes T20I series at Birmingham but recorded a 23 and a nine in the following two innings. She also had a difficult ODI series, where she scored 23 runs across three innings at a strike rate of 41.81.

Meanwhile, Beaumont put in a shift in the Charlotte Edwards Trophy early in the season. She scored 191 runs at a strike rate of 142.53. Then, when she scored her double century in the Ashes Test match in June, murmurings started to stir of a return to the T20I side. While that didn’t happen, she only furthered those conversations through her performance in the ODI series. In that, she hit a 47 and a 60 in the first two innings. Particularly of note was her innings at Bristol. She scored her runs quickly, hitting nine boundaries in her innings. She shared a 56-ball 74-run stand with Alice Capsey, where she showed a more aggressive approach to match what England now require of their white ball openers.

Now, with the century in the Hundred and a T20I series against Sri Lanka coming up, Beaumont could be in the running for a recall. After yesterday’s century, she told Sky Sports: “I’m someone who, if I feel like I can keep learning and keep improving, I don’t give up… It’s nice to perform but, at the same time, England have got some amazing batters in T20 cricket and if I’m counted as one of them that’s pretty special.”

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England Tammy BeaumontThe HundredInternational CricketCounty CricketGlobal T20 Leagues