The image is bleak. Sophia Dunkley trudges off the pitch, head down, her bat slung across her shoulders in resignation. Out for just 11 as part of a misfiring middle order as Pakistan gave England an almighty scare before rain intervened at last year’s 50-over World Cup.
Dunkley scored just 68 runs across six innings at the tournament, where England reached the semi-finals. In the last match, Dunkley dropped down from her favoured No. 5 spot to seven and fell for just 2 as South Africa won by 125 runs before losing the final to India.
But, off the back of that disappointment, Dunkley returned to T20s and her increasingly settled position as an opener in that format, this time with Sydney Sixers in the WBBL. There, she scored three half-centuries and had four more innings in the 40s to be the fifth-highest run-scorer in the competition, behind third-placed fellow England opener Danni Wyatt-Hodge.
“I absolutely loved the WBBL this winter,” Dunkley says. “Sixers is a really great club and it was such a special time for me. I just felt very much backed and valued in that environment, which I think allowed me to play with freedom and really feel part of that team.
“A few years ago, I started in the middle order, and then kind of worked my way up to opening. Now I’m starting to find my feet and the formula about how I want to go about it.”
Finding a settled place at the top of the order could be key for Dunkley and her team as England Women embark on what could be a landmark year with T20s at the forefront.
It’s nearly 12 months since Charlotte Edwards took over as head coach and just over three months until England host the 2026 T20 World Cup. Reflecting on both, Dunkley addressed what had changed under Edwards’ leadership.
“Opening the batting again in T20 cricket, which was great to be able to have the chance to do that again,” Dunkley tells ESPNcricinfo. “I absolutely love doing that and batting with Danni.
“She’s one of my best mates, so going and opening the batting with your best mate at The Oval on a Friday night is what you dream of growing up. That was really nice to get a bit more of a role in the side and a bit more clarity on what the team wanted from me. That’s been great.”
Batting position and clarity around her role have long been important themes for Dunkley, who has bounced round the order in both white-ball formats for years. She started out in T20Is at No. 7 and worked her way up, declaring ahead of England’s home series against New Zealand in 2021 that she wanted to cement her place in the top four.
Dunkley has opened the batting 41 times in T20Is since mid-2022 after impressing on her promotion to No. 3 in the home ODI series against South Africa. But she was in and out of England’s white-ball squads in 2024 following a disappointing tour of New Zealand that spring and played just one game at the T20 World Cup later in the year, where she was listed to bat at No. 3 but wasn’t required as Wyatt-Hodge and Maia Bouchier sealed a 10-wicket win.
She remained behind Bouchier through an unremarkable tour of South Africa and two of the three T20s on England’s ill-fated Ashes tour of Australia – she scored a half-century from No. 3 in the second game, which was a rare batting highlight for the visitors on that trip. But, since Edwards’ appointment last April, Dunkley has returned to open at Bouchier’s expense.
Dunkley, Wyatt-Hodge and Bouchier were all named in a 30-strong group who landed in South Africa this week for a training camp, which includes a series of trial matches between two squads of 15 where players will have a chance to make a case for selection before the domestic season starts.
In eight T20Is under Edwards’ leadership, Dunkley averages 43.16 with a strike rate of 130.80 compared to career marks of 25.40 and 122.53. She scored an unbeaten 81 against West Indies and 75 against India during the last home summer.
Just as Dunkley has sought clarity around her role, Edwards has looked to provide clarity around what is expected of her team physically. Following chastening criticism of some players’ fitness, Edwards vowed to introduce minimum benchmarks a year into her tenure, allowing for baselines to be established over that first 12 months.
“We’ve always had a big push on our fitness in S&C [strength and conditioning] and it just solidifies what we’ve been doing already and maybe gives us more of a visual idea, but I don’t think it changes too much about what we’ve been doing before,” Dunkley says of the prospect of those standards being formalised.
“We got a lot of scrutiny for a lot of different aspects of our cricket and different aspects of our game and everything. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty tough to take at the time and we really were trying our hardest to put out performances.”
Edwards is also very clear about the ethos for her team, moving away from predecessor Jon Lewis’s “inspire and entertain” theme and focusing simply on winning.
“I don’t think we’ve necessarily got a specific mantra but it’s just about winning games of cricket really and how we do that to different conditions and different pitches,” Dunkley says.
“With the talent we’ve got on the team, hopefully that does provide an entertaining game of cricket and there’s so much talent on show, hopefully we can showcase that. But it’s just about getting over the line and wining really.”
This summer couldn’t pose a greater test of a straightforward philosophy.
