Boards must try to offer contracts to women

What an exciting time for the sport, with the World Twenty20 announcement – and for England women in particular. Having had our most successful tour of Australia and New Zealand ever we came into the new season all abuzz, especially when the eight contracts were announced and I was lucky to get one of them. They’ve been designed to allow us to be able to both play cricket at international level and also be able to give back to women’s cricket through Chance to Shine to try to increase girls’ participation.

My typical week involves going into schools and clubs three days a week and trying to get in around 25 hours’ a week of coaching time. That’s fitted around my training, so I will still get to do my England training commitments and Surrey Academy and play all games. I’m enjoying it so far. Initially I found it testing because it was seven days a week between training and playing but luckily I’ve been able to rejig it to cut down on travelling time – flexibility I wouldn’t have in most other jobs.

We're so lucky having the ECB on board who are very forward thinking – and already Cricket Australia seem to have taken a leaf out of their book with the announcement this week that their women are to receive contracts. It’s already making a difference for us – it takes the stress away of preparing for the summer for a start – you’re not having to think about external employers whose priority isn’t your cricket, whereas this way it’s all in-house and everyone’s working together.

It’s important for women’s cricket that all countries, where possible, move towards offering contracts of this sort of nature because we need to make sure that everyone is competing on an even playing field rather than, say, us and Australia get better because we have the ability to now commit to cricket. Now the ECB has blazed a trail, hopefully other boards will follow suit as with CA. It will be interesting to hear what the other players have to say about it.

The changes will take a while to come to effect but they've come in good time for the World Cup and World Twenty20 next year. One thing is for sure - England women now have support that past female cricketers have never had. Now it's about translating these advantages into further results and we've got plenty of opportunities this summer with West Indies, South Africa and India all visiting.

In the run-up to them, we have plenty of games to keep us busy including our recent Twenty20 where England played the Academy. It was nice to be named in the England team for the day and fingers crossed this will continue in selection for the rest of the summer.

I've got some good runs under my belt already - I think having two months in Australia in the off-season definitely helped. I played for Port Adelaide alongside Karen Rolton and Emma Sampson when they weren't on international duty. The experience gave me a chance to put some things into place and trial some thing ahead of our domestic season – no switch hits, though.

Since getting back, the Super Fours have been good as ever, because they give you a chance to test yourself. This year I’ve had the chance to open for the Diamonds, which is nice. I’ve done OK but with a few games left I really want to kick on as it’s the main forum for England selection.