Edwards not getting faster, but trying to be smarter

When cycling through the great players of the game, you can often find one, maybe two things that you associate with them as a person. Not as a player per se. Extravagant back-lifts, rubber wrists, the way Sachin walks down the pitch after an on-drive and makes you want to reach out and touch him through your TV screen - while all loveable quirks, they come from the individuals' foundations as people. Sachin wouldn't have needed to two-step down the track if he was six-inches taller. Then again, he wouldn't be Sachin.

At the start of the 17th over, Salma Khatun was bowling her offspin. Charlotte Edwards, on 56 (her first T20I fifty in 12 innings), sees fielders out at midwicket. There's one straight, too. So far, her innings has been more on than off side. With nothing straight down the ground on the off side, but two identical punches through cover, you could flip her wagon wheel at right-angles and it would look like Pacman grew a beard.

As Khatun delivered the ball, Edwards switched her hands and waited. Just as the ball arrived, she crouched as low as she could - which is not very low at all - and scooped the ball in the air over short third man. The ball went higher than it did far and plugged - the visual equivalent of a needle skipping off a record. Edwards wanted two. By the time her partner Nat Sciver completed the first run, Edwards was still going and the fielder had the ball. Edwards still wanted two, but Sciver and even the fielder advised against it. Edwards looked in a huff before she composed herself and began stretching her right knee.

After the 2000 World Cup, Edwards snapped a cruciate ligament in that knee playing hockey and was out for a year. Northamptonshire, with whom Edwards was training with at the time, helped her out. Kirk Russell, the club's physio, put her in touch with a good surgeon. The ligament was replaced with part of her hamstring. She went to the gym five times a week to recover. She was rebuilding herself. Then, in 2007, she had to have surgery on the same knee, having played the previous season "about 60% fit". Again, she went to the gym. But the right knee was neither better nor stronger and Edwards has certainly not got faster.

You can almost see it in the way that she stands at the crease. Almost all of her weight is on the front foot and, when she has to go back, the hands share the burden. Unfortunately though, she can't run with her hands.

England did well to turn 109 for 3 after 16 overs to 153 for 7 after 20, but they left runs out there and a few of them were second runs that Edwards couldn't commit to. After India thumped Bangladesh here two days ago, a big victory was needed to keep tabs on the net run rate, which may well be used to decide the ease of semi-final opposition. As it stands, India lead the way with +3.60 and England are second on +1.80.

It would have been easy for Edwards to succumb to her knee. After the Ashes defeat last summer, she took a break. Not to contemplate her position as England captain or toy with the idea of cutting down her workload. Just for a break. She's been playing on one knee for 15 years, but after one summer of being "under the pump" and reading comments about her that she felt were "really unfair", she started doubting herself.

She went away to the Women's Big Bash League, more determined than ever. For the first time in a while, she felt she had something to prove to herself. Perth Scorchers gave her the chance to do just bat. So she did, scoring 462 runs at an average of 42.

In turn her new national coach Mark Robinson, who made his name rebuilding broken cricketers at Sussex, suggested she try and take her game to another level. He was not entirely sure how she would take it (you try telling someone with 10,000 international runs to do things differently). But Edwards embraced the challenge.

She stepped down the crease to hit Nahida Akter through cover for four. She whipped Lata Mondal through backward square-leg for another, again after taking a few steps down to meet the ball early. When she was eventually stumped off Rumana Ahmed, she was so far down the crease that she could have mankaded the non-striker. She was unable to keep up her mid-innings burst that saw her go from 13 to 50 in 27 balls, as the 35-degree Bangalore heat took its toll after she had spent almost 18 overs in the middle.

As a team, there were some familiar errors lurking within pockets of the game, such as Danni Wyatt's drop at square leg in the second over of Bangladesh's over and some poor bowling to Nigar Sultana and Khatun who produced a wake-up call partnership of 64 for the fifth wicket. Robinson rated it a six-out-of-10 performance.

But a smart 36-run win should not be sniffed at, especially for a team looking to re-establish themselves at the forefront of the women's game. The late smiting of Katherine Brunt and Wyatt (17 off eight and 15 off eight, respectively) spoke of freedom, the tighter ring-fielding hinted at more dynamism.

Every win like this is a move in the right direction. For Edwards, it might be a more difficult step to continue to take, but you are going to have to mangle her other knee if you think she's not going to try.