Wisden winner Tammy Beaumont raring to go for home Ashes

TAMMY Beaumont joined a very select group last week when she was named Wisden Cricketer of the Year – just the sixth woman to do so.

The opener joins current teammates Heather Knight, Anya
Shrubsole and Nat Sciver, as well as two of England Women’s greatest-ever
batters Claire Taylor and Charlotte Edwards, in winning the award.

For Beaumont, 28, the most pleasing aspect of the award was
the universally positive reaction to her inclusion alongside Surrey duo Rory
Burns and Sam Curran, plus Jos Buttler and Virat Kohli.

She said: “I’ve had so many lovely messages over social
media. Teammates and members of staff have been in touch as well, so it’s been
nice to see all the really positive messages about it.

“I saw messages on Twitter and it was really nice not to
have any ‘why has a woman got it?’ or ‘why does she deserve it?’ No one was
really debating why I’d got it, which was nice to see that everyone was really
positive.

“I had to keep quiet for quite a few months in the end so it
was nice for it come out and it not to be a big secret.

“It was great for myself and women’s cricket as a whole to
have another player recognised is great.

“You never really think about trying to achieve something like that in your career, runs are the currency but it’s a massive honour. When it comes along it’s a shock and surprise and will mean an awful lot, particularly that it’s a Wisden award I’ve been given, it will take pride of place at home.”

Fresh from a fortnight off, Beaumont was back with the
England squad this week as they prepare for a busy summer against the West
Indies and then the Ashes.

Having started cricket drills this week, the build-up will
continue with warm-up games that begin in a couple of weeks.

England come into it off the back of a fine end to their
winter tour of India and Sri Lanka, responding to losing the one-day series in
India by rattling off ten successive victories.

The slow start in the Sub-continent mirrored the drawn
series in the last Ashes Down Under, that saw Australia retain the urn.

Beaumont knows that is something England cannot afford with
the Australians over this summer.

“You go out to the Sub-continent and expect it to spin,” she
added. “We kind of only had one warm-up game and were straight into an ODI
series against a very good India team in their home conditions, and they’d been
playing a lot of cricket.

“So it was really hard and by the time we got finished, the
confidence and cricket we were playing would have challenged them a lot more
but 2-1 was probably a fair result in the end.

“But then winning ten on the bounce puts us in a really good
place for our busy season ahead.

“Three or four days after the West Indies series we’re into
the Ashes, and that’s the big one really.

“It’s incredibly difficult to win an Ashes in an away
environment so, hopefully, the Australians will find that over here. We started
slowly out there in 2017, that will be the big thing. It was probably the first
few ODIs where we lost that series.

“It would have been nice to do it in Australia, that’s
something we’d love to do in the future, but our sights are firmly set on
bringing them home this time.

“It’s a good thing for us to put right and hit the ground running.”

PAUL EDDISON / Photo: Getty Images