MEMORABLE MILESTONE

A ton for Gunn

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Gunn made her T20 debut in 2004.
Gunn made her T20 debut in 2004. © Getty

"You always have people tell you that you belong to the kitchen and you shouldn't be playing cricket," Jenny Gunn said, opening up about the challenges faced by women cricketers. "They would be saying this pretty much behind social media, they wouldn't say it to you on your face. And half the times you would want them to go to the nets and face us and actually prove that they can do better than us.

"That's something we will always find. But I say, if we can be more successful and show what we can do, we can have things going our way."

A few years ago, Shahid Afridi had said that girls have nice hands and they make good food, when asked about what he thought about their cricket academies for them. And as irony would have it, it's a girl - Gunn - who has surpassed his record of most T20I appearances and is set to become the first cricketer - man or woman - to play a 100 of them.

"We were having this discussion with some of the youngsters in our team who were asking me when I debuted in T20s. It was back in 2004, and a few of the girls were five-years-old (then). That's pretty much an idea of how long I've been playing cricket and cannot quite believe I'm going to play my 100th T20 game. Hopefully tomorrow," she says and knocks her head *touchwood*.

100 T20Is was a number she was unaware of, before being informed by the ECB media manager a day ago. Maybe there are celebrations in store, maybe not. She has no clue what her teammates are planning for her, if at all they are. However, what got her emotional was the knowledge that she was set to become the first cricketer - man or woman - to reach the landmark.

"I didn't know that," she said with a bit of a choke. "Now you say that, it's pretty amazing because he's (Shahid Afridi - 98 T20Is) not a bad player.

"You just hit me, it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. You just left me speechless. It's such an honour. I didn't think I was going to play 14 years. We just walked out on our debuts in Twenty20. Who would have thought that it would catch on and take the world by storm? It's going to be a huge honour and one that nobody can take away from me."

For a career that has had its share of success and near success, which includes a World Cup and a World T20 win, she rates the 2009 world cup semi-final victory over Australia at the Oval as her most favourite moment.

"We chased down 160-odd, which at that time was unheard of in women's cricket. And to do that against Australia and to go through to the final, was just brilliant. Also, to that in England was special. That's going to be up there. There are a lot of games to think about but hopefully tomorrow will be a memorable one as well."

And amidst all the good memories, she's more than happy to overlook the bad ones. When reminded of her dropped catch in the 2017 World Cup final, which could have lost England the cup, she pretends, "I forgot that. What are you talking about?" And after a brief pause, adds, "Heather dropped there one off my bowling but no one remembers that."

Nah! She wasn't too pleased with the public memory of that dropped catch, but goes on to admit it was a 'shameful' thing for her. "If I had caught that it would've been the best series I've ever had. I didn't mean to drop it. It just didn't get to me as much as I wanted to, didn't read it right. But no one's perfect. I told Bryony yesterday when she dropped one. And to me, it happened in the world cup final. It happens to the best of us and just hopefully not in a world cup final when it is on TV."

Nonetheless, her teammates have been effusive in praise of her. "Jenny Gunn has been a legend of the game for a number of years and the best thing about Jenn is that she keeps reinventing herself," Tammy Beaumont said. "She has always been improving her skills. You saw her today, charging at long off, putting one of the best stops of the day. She's still massive part of our team.

"It's great to see her performing really well in the England shirt, She's still kind of showing the debutants what's it about to be an England cricketer. Hopefully, she'll go a couple of wickets up in her 100th game."

She is set to become the first cricketer to play a ton of matches in the shortest format, but cricket wasn't her first-choice sport. Born to Bryn Gunn, who played as a full back for Nottingham Forest during the legendary era of Nigel Clough, opting to take up sports professionally wasn't a big deal. "I wanted to play football for England. Cricket did just sort of happened, I played in school."

And she doesn't go too modest or subtle in describing who the more popular member in the family is. "My dad is one of those laid back people. Every time we meet, he shows the one-handed catch he took at the boundary off Anya Shrubsole, and I think he has become more famous for that than he was in his playing career," she jokes.

While getting to cricket was more natural for her, the journey by itself wasn't the smoothest. Being double-jointed at the elbow, she has a bizarre bowling action which could be easily confused for chucking. Not surprisingly, her action was called twice by the umpires but cleared on both occasions, with the ICC noting that she bowled with 'extreme hyperextension'.

"Dealing with (the challenges of my action)? I've been having 14 years of (people) calling me a chucker. Women's cricket is something that new people are watching and (they) say that my action is dodgy, I chuck it, it's ugly. So I'm like, it was 14 years ago. But you know you're doing something right if more people are remarking on your action."

Nonetheless, despite the challenges of her action, she deviced arguably the deadliest slow-ball in women's cricket, and it is largely the effectiveness of that delivery which has made her such a lethal bowler. Given her gentle medium pacers and limited batting credentials, there she needed to have an outstanding skill to have achieved the kind of success that she has. She has gone on to become England's highest wicket-taker in ODIs and their second-highest in Twenty20 Internationals.

That delivery is called a whiff...

Remember how Richie Benaud found himself short of an answer while explaining what 'mullygrubber' was - a term he frequently used and was alleged to have coined himself?

On Friday (March 23), Tammy Beaumont found herself in a similar situation when asked, what 'whiff' was - a term she claims was invented by her and Heather Knight to describe Jenny Gunn's slower delivery.

"It kind of just whiffs out, a bit slow," Beaumont tried to explain. "I don't know where it came from. I think Heather and I were in-charge of that one. She kind of... she has to run in a long way to let it go slow. So you know..."

If you have seen Gunn bowl those deceptive, extremely slow and loopy deliveries, you know what Beaumont was trying to explain. If not, don't even try. No description could possibly explain it completely.

But as she later went on to explain, it is quite an effective weapon. "Part of her re-invention is the whiff, is what we call it. It's the extreme slow ball. Which often doesn't get clocked on the speed-o-meter on the TV. So, she is not that pleased about it because it's so slow. But it's effective, we love it."

"Everyone is talking about the whiff," Gunn gets excited as the word is popped up and in a nervous tone adds 'please don't make fun of it'. "I didn't call it the whiff, it was Heather who called it the whiff. I'll have to give that (credit) to Heather. She only asks me to bowl that."

Speaking about how the delivery came about, she adds, "It was just about playing around, and I found the slower ball, something that really worked. I don't know how I bowl, I don't watch much of that. It would get too much into my head. I'll then focus too much on it. Literally, it just happened by accident."

Beyond just her game, her journey from a 17-year-old to being 31 was a phase in which the women's game as a whole also developed immensely. It improved in skills and quality and also witnessed a rise in its popularity. New innovation came in, of which Gunn exploited the slower ball better than anyone else.

She believes the women's game has scaled up greatly during the course of her career, especially with regards to the fitness levels and the big-hitting prowess. For her itself, it was a massive change from being a 'chubby kid' in 2004 to now - where she is lean and fit. "I'm getting fitter so I can actually run from long off to long on. For some reason, my captain makes me do that.

"It has changed - there's a lot more sixes, a lot more skills involved now. You have to be smarter when you're bowling and people in the field diving, taking catches. I think it's got exciting to watch and I think that's why we're standing alone.

"We used to play on huge boundaries back then, and that was probably a negative thing that they did. No one had the strength to hit a six or was skilled to hit sixes, whereas now, yes, there's a decent sized boundary and you manage to hit sixes still, so that's the main change in skill level of batting."

She also believes that the English team have had an advantage, having played competitive cricket growing up, wherein their interest in the game was culturally accepted and supported.

"If you see in our team, barring one of us (Danielle Hazell), we've all got brothers. So we're very competitive. We didn't want our brothers to beat us. And the best thing is to get a man out, and see him hating on getting bowled by a girl. From a very young age we've had that and that's why probably we knew we can do this.

"We're very lucky that we come from a background where sports is okay, we can play. We're lucky in England, I've played for 14 years, year by year, it has got so much better. In England, for us, we've been pretty successful so more people have had an interest. We've been on TV. That helps in being successful. More people want to watch us and be involved.

"I guess it's the same for Indian cricket. They've been successful. And when you perform, people start listening, watching. And it's good to see now. In my times of coming to India, you would just go down and watch boys play cricket. You see girls playing cricket now. That's what you want to see. You want to see young girls be the next Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami," she concluded.

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