{"id":1945,"date":"2017-05-04T14:14:14","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T14:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/?p=1945"},"modified":"2023-03-22T12:40:30","modified_gmt":"2023-03-22T12:40:30","slug":"examined-life-heather-knight-bsc-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/2017\/05\/04\/examined-life-heather-knight-bsc-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Examined Life – Heather Knight (BSc 2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heather Knight (BSc 2012)<\/span> is<\/em> captain of the England cricket team. <\/em><\/p>\n

I started to fall in love with cricket when I was about six years old. <\/strong>My brother and I played in the back garden, and we both joined the local cricket club, Plymstock CC. I spent most of my childhood there playing in the boys\u2019 and men\u2019s teams, but didn\u2019t really view cricket as a potential career path until I\u2019d spent four years playing for England and professional contracts came in.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>I wanted to go to a university with an MCCU cricket academy. <\/strong>Having visited Cardiff for an open day, I felt it had a really good vibe and I knew I would enjoy my time there.\u00a0 I was particularly interested in Physiology, and Cardiff has a very strong Bioscience department<\/a>, which was also attractive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Midway through my degree, I was called up for England\u2019s tour of India in 2010. <\/strong>I had to become very good at organising my time very quickly!\u00a0 After India, I was frequently on tour for months at a time, meaning I had to study a lot of the lectures remotely.\u00a0 I also had to take some of my exams in the re-sit periods, as I\u2019d missed the original dates due to international commitments. The department were always brilliant with allowing me extended time for assignments, and remaining flexible; I think it helped that my personal tutor was cricket-mad!<\/p>\n

My Cardiff degree made me see things outside the sporting world from a different perspective. <\/strong>Nevertheless, having got into the England team in my second term, I haven\u2019t managed to revisit the field of Physiology since graduating.\u00a0 It\u2019s definitely an area that I\u2019ll always retain a real interest in, and remains an option to explore later in my career.<\/p>\n

I always loved Six Nations weekends in Cardiff; the atmosphere in the city is electric.<\/strong> Being English, I didn\u2019t seem to be on the right side of the England vs. Wales clashes too often, but I always loved the occasion.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s cricket has progressed exponentially since I first became involved with England seven years ago. <\/strong>The game\u2019s exposure is becoming much more prominent, and professional contracts are becoming standard practice around the world.\u00a0 Furthermore, the introduction of T20 leagues like the Kia Super League and the Big Bash mean that cricket is played all year round. I\u2019m glad I got my degree when I did, as it would certainly be much harder now.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>As captain of England, I lead from the front. <\/strong>Following an iconic figure like Charlotte Edwards, who captained the team for ten years, was always going to be tricky.\u00a0 However, I\u2019ve always tried to lead the team in my own way and try to be as open and honest with the players as I can.<\/p>\n

The opportunity to play in a home World Cup is massively exciting. <\/strong>The ICC Women\u2019s World Cup takes place this summer, and is on English soil for the first time since 1993.\u00a0 England fans are the best supporters of the women\u2019s game around the world, so there\u2019s no better place to play the world cup than here.\u00a0 Obviously, the home advantage will be useful and we are used to the conditions, but I\u2019m not sure we\u2019ll go into the tournament as favourites!<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll be going into the tournament to be in that final at Lord\u2019s, and to win it. <\/strong>We have a trip away in April to Abu Dhabi for a training camp, and will start our squad preparations in June at Loughborough.\u00a0 Like I said \u2013 I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll be tournament favourites \u2013 but that suits us just fine.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an opportunity for everyone to get involved in cricket.<\/strong> It\u2019s a very social game and there\u2019s a place for everyone at some level, as well as the opportunity to mix with a variety of people that you might not otherwise meet. I met some great people through Cardiff University\u2019s cricket club and I am still friends with some of them today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heather Knight (BSc 2012) is captain of the England cricket team. ","protected":false},"author":1080,"featured_media":1961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,83,39,163,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biomedical-life-sciences","category-biosciences","category-cardiff-connect","category-examined-life","category-our-alumni"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1080"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1945"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2061,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions\/2061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}