power of recall among sports people is a peculiar thing. Perhaps it is because their work relies on reaction and instinct but many are prone to misremembering their own spectacular feats: forgetting dates, venues or even the details of the performance itself. For example, in cricket, it is common for batsmen looking back on their careers to recall an early breakthrough knock as a century when it may have only been a match-winning 60. Slowly but surely the sands of time scrape away at authentic memory. During England’s celebrations deep into the London night, after the most miraculous of World Cup wins against India at Lord’s, Anya Shrubsole, player of the match award stuffed in her bag after a match-winning six for 46 (such is her modesty her medal was buried deeper instead of around her neck), was given a piece of advice: to write something down – her feelings, her emotions or simply the thoughts running through her head; to commit to paper a moment that deserves permanency. ?? England beat India in a thrilling Women's World Cup final - a photo essay Read more As the celebrations at the team hotel wound down and with no after-party on the cards – “Sunday night in London is not exactly banging,” bemoaned Katherine Brunt – Shrubsole went back to her room and made a few notes. She will jot down more precise, coherent thoughts when she finally makes it home and sits on her couch. “Then,” she says, “it’ll all start to sink in.” Sometime down the line we might get to read Shrubsole’s words because what she did, when it looked as if a home World Cup was slipping through England’s fingers in front of a record-breaking crowd tipping over 25,000, needs to be lauded for years to come. The host’s dreams were circling the drain: India needed 38 from 44 balls with seven wickets in hand to beat England’s score of 228. Then Shrubsole happened. Her final spell, which included taking the World Cup-winning wicket, brought her five in 19 balls. She was a non-playing member of England’s win in 2009. She is the reason they are champions in 2017. Even Jeremy Corbyn took the time to congratulate her. “It’s just amazing the kind of people you hear from,” she said. “Someone said it to me [that Corbyn had tweeted her] and I was like, ‘Surely not?!’ Then they showed me. I guess that’s a reflection of the influence that game had on everyone here.” Her football club, Portsmouth, also got in touch. She hopes to be able to watch a game from the directors’ box at Fratton Park early this coming season. Advertisement The key wicket in her final spell came first: the opening batsman Punam Raut trapped lbw for 86. In Shrubsole’s next over two more followed, which included bowling Jhulan Goswami with an inswinging yorker that
David Wright Jersey hit leg stump. It was a fine delivery but Shrubsole had been told to bowl length by her captain, Heather Knight. There were no complaints when a similar delivery struck Rajeshwari Gayakward’s off stump to confirm England’s eight-run win. She cannot recall the intricacies of her spell. That will come, she hopes, when she sits down to watch the highlights. “It is quite hard to remember everything that happened. The noise when we took that final wicket is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget. “ You kind of forget [you’re performing in a World Cup]. You’re so focused on what you need to do that almost everything else, you forget it. It’s only once it ends that you kind of go: ‘I just won a World Cup final’, and it took me quite a long time after the game. I was in a complete state of shock and then you realise the magnitude of what you’ve achieved.” The Recap: sign up for the best of the Guardian's sport coverage Read more No one has better figures in a World Cup for England and none of her team-mates was surprised that she would be the one to drag England over the line. Tammy Beaumont, whose 410 runs enabled her to walk away with player of the tournament, is all too aware how cool Shrubsole is under pressure: “She’s pretty good at those kind of situations. She doesn’t get too emotional.” Shrubsole was made vice-captain for that very reason but does admit that she’d “never been so terrified” as when Knight suffered a stress fracture in her foot during the
http://www.officialmetsproshop.com/Dwight_Gooden_Jerseylead-up to the World Cup. Shrubsole can do feisty, though – something she gets from her father, Ian, a bustling club quick who could strike a long ball. Both struggle to keep their competitiveness in check – a trait that has pushed Shrubsole on since she was picked for Somerset Under-12s and realised she had something to offer the game. “Even playing cards,” she says. “Both of us hated to lose at a completely trivial game.” Her father’s photo of her watching him from the stands at Lord’s as a 10-year-old dressed in full whites went viral as she embarked on her incredible last-gasp salvo. On the pitch things were calm. Even with the tension from the stands there was a belief across all 11 out in the field that, because India had not really put a dent in the run rate – the runs required did not dip under four an over – they could instigate panic out in the middle. Knight was responsible for that, keeping her cool while also calming others – Beaumont admits to being “pretty pumped up” as she patrolled the boundary, where she would eventually catch the dangerous Harmanpreet Kaur for 51. They
Authentic Luis Sardinas Womens Jersey also knew that Veda Krishnamurthy, who was taking the game home with Raut, was on the verge of making a bad decision – “a ticking time bomb” is how Brunt described her. Once England had Krishnamurthy shackled, she lashed out and hit Shrubsole across the line to Nat Sciver at midwicket. England’s head coach, Mark Robinson, switching intermittently between the bench at the boundary’s edge and the home dressing room balcony to get a higher view of the field, had full trust in his players that India were on the brink of crumbling. “We were one wicket away all the time,” he said. What tension there was seemed exclusively on the periphery of the game. The majority of the crowd’s gasps and groans seemed to drown out the cheers from strong Indian support. Even those in the press box were starting to lose faith: the holding copy for the ECB’s press release, sent out after every match, told of an India win. Heather Knight: ‘It felt like Jenny Gunn had dropped the World Cup’ Read more There was one final twist, when Jenny Gunn dropped Poonam Yadav, with 11 needed from the final 10 deliveries. Such was the ease of the chance that Beaumont began celebrating. Alex Hartley turned to the ground, pumping her fists, not realising the ball had been grassed. Danni Wyatt, not in the playing XI, had hurdled an advertising board to rush the field, assuming the game was done. One inswinger later Shrubsole rendered the error redundant. Wyatt, along with the rest of the squad, made it all the way out to the middle. Still, amid the drama and the “where were you when” nature of the occasion, Shrubsole is staying grounded. “I am a huge believer that you’ve never made it and the day you think you’ve made it is the day that you’re in
http://www.officialmarinershop.com/Nelson_Cruz_Jersey a lot of trouble. There’s always some way you can improve and hopefully at the end of my career I will look back and think I did as well as I possibly could do.” It seems Shrubsole would like a few more things to write down
