How England and Anya Shrubsole dealt with the pressure in a nail-biting Women's Cricket World Cup final

As the Women's Cricket World Cup approached its nail-biting conclusion on Sunday, it was England, not India, who coped with the pressure better

Shrubsole celebrates with her team-mates (Getty)

When India were starting to collapse at Lord’s on Sunday afternoon, chasing 229 and with it the World Cup, England’s Katherine Brunt sensed that the momentum was starting to change. And as Indian batsmen started to come and go, Brunt knew that the chasing team were starting to feel the fear.

“There’s no need to panic,” Brunt told her team-mates in the huddle as another wicket fell. “There’s a girl coming in here, she’s on nought, she’s at Lord’s, and it’s a World Cup final. She will be absolutely s******* herself.”

As Brunt recounted the story in the Pavilion at Lord’s on Monday afternoon, she apologised for her language. But what she said had ultimately been proven right. India had collapsed from 191 for three to 219 all out, all within six overs. No-one saw it coming when Punam Raut was still in, but ultimately it was England, not India, who coped with the pressure better.

“I can’t describe how it is until you’ve been there, but it can completely consume you [as a batsman],” Brunt reflected. “We just had to remember that when someone came in, that feeling is restarted every time. It is just the occasion. It can either get the better of you, or not. And that is what happened for us.”

It was Anya Shrubsole, England’s decisive hero, who got the better of the occasion in the end. She took four wickets in her remarkable cup-winning spell, starting with Raut, ending with Rajeshwari Gayakwad, thrillingly sealing the comeback.

It was a scarcely believable display of execution under immense pressure given that one bad over could have gifted India the runs they needed to win.

Shrubsole helped to win the match with a spell of five wickets in 19 balls (Getty)

So how did Shrubsole do it? By putting the context and the trophy as far out of her mind as she could. “You kind of forget,” she explained at Lord’s on Monday.

“I've always said this: initially you think about it and then you just get into the game. You're so focused on what you need to do, that almost everything else, you just forget it. It's only once it ends that you think: 'I just won a World Cup final'. It took me quite a long time after the game to realise.”

If Shrubsole’s spell of a lifetime surprised some fans, and it certainly surprised India, her team-mates knew how good she was at handling that type of intense pressure.

England snatched victory from the jaws of defeat against India (Adrian Dennis/AFP)

“Once Anya got the ball in her hand she knew exactly what she was doing, and she executed her plans to a ‘T’,” admired Tammy Beaumont.

“She is always pretty cool under pressure, she’s very laidback. She is pretty good at those kind of situations, she doesn’t get too emotional. One of the things that made her do so well yesterday was that she could be so calm and the rest of us could all be getting really feisty.”

That level-headedness is one of Shrubsole’s great gifts. Even after Jenny Gunn dropped Poonam Yadav at mid-off, risking the title by doing so, Shrubsole stayed cool.

“Don’t worry, it happens,” she told Gunn. “I imagine she was probably feeling worse than me. She normally catches everything and it is just one of those things.”

So while this was the greatest moment of Shrubsole’s career, the coolness that allowed her to deliver it means that she will not be getting too excited about it either.

“I pride myself on not getting too up in situations and trying not to get too down in situations,” said Shrubsole, admitting she was looking forward to getting home and putting the kettle on once all of her England duties were over. “I think it’s hard not to get too high up at the minute, but I’ll go home and spend some time with my family. In my head, life will return to normal pretty quickly. Whether that actually happens or not, I don’t know.”