Speaking on The Broken Trophy podcast, England Women’s fast bowler Katie George shared the story of how she taught an opposition player who assumed she wouldn’t be able to hit the ball very far a lesson in a club game.

George, 21, was named in the 24-strong group of women’s players who returned to training on June 22.

“Probably one of the funniest moments [happened when] I was playing a mixed game and some wise chap decided to come up to short-leg for me because he didn’t think I was going to hit it off the square,” George said, when asked about her experiences of playing mixed cricket. “So I took great delight in sweeping a spinner into his sensitive area. Not on purpose of course! It’s safe to say the next ball he was stood in a more standard square leg. I think there’s definitely a funny side of it.

“My mum goes after the game, ‘How come that silly boy stood at short-square leg for you?’

“‘Oh he didn’t think I was going to hit the ball that far.’

“‘Well you definitely did that, didn’t you!'”

George has played two ODIs and five T20Is taking five wickets across both formats with best figures of 3-36. She says she is able to brush off comments related to her gender, but that it does affect some women and girls negatively.

“There’s always horrible commenters, the standard ‘you should be in the kitchen’ kind of thing. But, especially in this day and age there’s very few people who think that. Proving them wrong was my motivation. I do fire a few shots back and I think that surprises them. Personally for me it is all fun and games but I think it can affect people and I’ve seen friends affected by it and that does get to me. But it’s getting better from what I’m seeing, I still play mixed cricket and it feels very welcoming.”

Despite the challenges, she encouraged girls with high aspirations to take on the challenge of playing in mixed teams.

“Clubs are so much better now. Most do have girls teams. A lot of the time they play on separate nights, but I think if you’re younger and you’re good, if you think you’ve got a path to go down then I would play and challenge yourself because that’s how you improve the quickest. If you’re not going to play against people that you’re better than, you’re just going to end up middling, you won’t get that challenge where you’re sort of up against it.”