Nat Sciver-Brunt does everything

There are times when it does feel like it’s Sciver-Brunt versus the world.

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Inoka Ranaweera bowls the ball at 74.3 kmph, it drifts in and turns away from the right-hander. It beats the outside edge, and the veteran left-arm finger spinner gets Alice Capsey out stumped for nought in the 35th over of the innings. It’s a classic.

It is Ranaweera’s third wicket, and second of the over. This might just be Sri Lanka’s moment. England are reeling at 168/6, captain Nat Sciver-Brunt is there on 63.

And the responsibility lies on her shoulders. It almost always does.

After Charlie Dean’s wicket ends a small recovery, Sciver-Brunt smashes 36 runs off fewer than 18 deliveries. Her hyperdrive is working. She finishes with 117, and England have 253.

The entire thing screams, “Fine, I’ll do it myself”. That might as well be on her Instagram profile.

Nat Sciver-Brunt cut, pulled, drove, and used her feet. She is at once a power player who understands elite batting tempo.

Teams put fielders out on the legside, and she takes all the runs on offer. But she also smashes the ball straight and square on the offside.

She started slow and used the crease against the spin. She geared back during the collapse. But then, as often happens, once she drops the hammer, others are left in her wake.

And this isn’t just about power; her batting talent is so high, that you can’t keep her on strike. 52 singles, seven twos and a three - and her non-boundary strike rate was an impeccable 65.1.

From the ICC website

She scored faster than Sri Lanka’s batters even after excluding boundaries.

Often it feels that Sciver-Brunt is doing everything for England, because she does.

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Nat Sciver-Brunt made her ODI debut in July 2013. Right from the early days, she was an incredible outlier with the bat. Until the end of 2016, her strike rate was huge. She was the only player above a run a ball for four years, and averaging more than 40.

Back then, she was also a really good six-hitter. She came in as a power player - so much so that the Natmeg shot through her legs was a way of stopping the big hits.

Since then, she’s become something else.

We have true values for women’s cricket since the start of 2017. Apart from six-hitting, she’s a plus on everything versus both seam and spin. But she prefers facing the slower bowlers, rotating strike better and also hitting more fours.

Another way to illustrate this is non-boundary strike rates. Only Danni Wyatt-Hodge is ahead of her, but she isn’t close to Sciver-Brunt’s consistency with the bat.

Nat Sciver-Brunt is still among the ten quickest batters in world cricket in this time period, with the seventh-best true average. For a long time, she has been one of the elites.

Almost every year she is a plus, but on occasion she’s gone massive.

In 2023, she only played five innings, but smashed three centuries - two of which were versus Australia. She has never made more ODI tons in a calendar year.

It’s been more normal since 2024, but that is “normal” by Nat Sciver-Brunt standards. A true average of around 17 combined with a true strike rate of nearly 10 is still a very strong output.

So we can divide her modern ODI career in two parts - 2017 to 2021, and from 2022.