Adam Collins profiles England’s Tammy Beaumont, one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year.
This article features in the 2019 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, which is available to buy here. The most famous sports book in the world has been published every year since 1864.
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On the joyous July evening when England’s women won the 2017 World Cup, Tammy Beaumont had somewhere to go. With two medals round her neck – she was also Player of the Tournament – she headed for the white benches on the top deck of the Lord’s Pavilion. There, four years earlier, after failing in a one-day game against Australia, she had wept alone, knowing she would be dropped again. Looking out over the home of cricket, she asked herself whether she was good enough. It was a question that would continue to haunt her.
The first seven years of Beaumont’s international career produced little. Rock bottom came in 2014 at the World Twenty20 in Bangladesh, where she made ten runs in four innings. Doubt grew into a full-blown crisis. “I wasn’t in the best place with cricket,” she says. “I hated it.” She told England’s assistant coach, Carl Crowe, that she was considering quitting. Instead, she gave it one more go and – having batted in every position except No. 4 – set a goal of turning herself into the best opener in the world.
Her passion was nurtured on a challenging pitch in the back garden and, in the colder months, in the living-room, with a miniature bat and ball, as she tried to avoid getting into trouble with her mother. “Dad had to take the flak because it was his idea.” Beaumont followed in his academic footsteps, studying chemistry and sports science at Loughborough University, while Michael got a PhD in organic chemistry. Some of her best memories come from the time all three turned out for Sandwich Town Second XI, where her dad was a cagey off-spinner. “Michael was a very good fielder, so he’d be at cow corner and I’d be keeping,” she says. “The number of times it was ‘stumped or caught Beaumont, bowled Beaumont’ was ridiculous.”
She wasn’t selected for Kent Under-11 because she was a head shorter than her peers, a consequence of food allergies that slowed her growth. “My coach called me the Mighty Atom, because I was tiny,” she says. “I started gymnastics because my mum thought I was so weak I needed to build up some muscle. I grew out of it when I was about eight, but I was always shorter than everyone.”
Even so, Beaumont’s technical prowess shone through. A Kent debut came in May 2007 at 16, leading to selection in the Super 4s, then a bridge to international cricket. By August, she was off to the Netherlands on an England development tour. Two years later came her first cap.
She still has a way to go. “I don’t think I’m the best opener in the world. But that’s still the goal, and I want to do it for as long as possible.” After that, she would love to deploy her experience – the bad and the good – in a leadership role. “One day I would like to be in some kind of position of responsibility. That would be amazing. But if it doesn’t happen, I’d like to be part of one of the most successful teams in England history.”
