"I tried to mimic his bat twirling, I thought let me try to go through the same process before every ball. The thing is, I kept dropping the bat"
Monday 20 April 2020 10:20, UK
Who did the Sky Sports Cricket pundits idolise growing up? Every Monday, we will be asking one of our experts for their cricketing hero and this week it's Ebony Rainford-Brent's turn...
I'm going to bend the rules a little and pick two people; Alec Stewart and my former England captain Charlotte Edwards.
It's so weird that Stewie's my boss at Surrey. We joke about it now, but I've had to tell him 'you were my childhood hero'.
I remember being around 11 or 12 and coming through the Surrey doors, carrying my bat with me, and there he was.
The telling thing is he walked past this kid, a young, black girl - he had absolutely no reason to say hello to me - and he stopped to say something motivational. That stuck in my mind.
I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something like, 'alright, youngster; keep it up'.
That's all it took, I was sent into obsession mode. The posters started going up on the wall. And, you know how he used to twiddle his bat at the crease, always twiddling, I would try it every time I went out to bat - trying to copy anything he did.
I'd love to say I could think of a specific innings of his, but my memory has always been bad, and I wasn't hugely interested in cricket as a kid. I used to just play football with my three brothers.
Someone came into my primary school when I was about 10, invited me to go to this cricket club to play with a load of other young girls; I got talent scouted and I started to trial for Junior Surrey.
That's where I first heard of Stewie. It was the mid-1990s, he was in the pomp of his career and was seen as a hero at the club. There were massive pictures up of him all round the ground.
He was like Cristiano Ronaldo of the cricketing world; everyone talked about him.
As I got older, once I was playing for Surrey and Junior England and focussed more on being a top-order batter, I started to look at styles of how I wanted to play.
Two contrasting styles, but I used to look at Brian Lara - the freedom with which he batted - and Stewie, who represented to me the hard graft, mindset, discipline, routine.
That's the thing about Stewie, he's so methodical. Everything he does is so immaculate; he dresses immaculately, he's organised, always on time. And he once gave me one of these lectures, that 'if you want to make it, you have to be disciplined and structured'.
Whenever I would lose it a little bit out in the middle, I'd think to myself, 'what would someone like Stewie do?'
That's why I tried to mimic his bat twirling, I thought let me try to go through the same process before every ball. The thing is, I kept dropping the bat. I never quite mastered it and in the end my coaches said to me 'can you just put it away, it's not working for you'.
Charlotte is similar to Stewie in many ways. Both were ruthless run-scorers, super competitive and great leaders.
I think I was drawn to them because I was the opposite. I was quite jovial but, to realise my potential, I needed to draw on their skill sets.
I needed what those guys possessed and thought 'can it rub off?' It wasn't natural for me, it took me a long time, but I'd say by the end of my career I had learned from their lead.
I first came across Lottie when playing against her as a kid, Surrey versus Kent, and I remember she had this one shot in particular; you didn't get a huge amount of quick bowlers in the women's game at that time and she was able to just wait and flick the ball off her legs in a way that no-one else could.
I remember stopping her and saying, 'you have to teach me that shot' and she would just laugh. Eventually, when I played for England and she was my captain, she showed me how to go about it.
She's one of the most competitive people I've ever met. Whenever you'd be in a game situation and it was time to turn the screw, she'd be the first one to say, 'let's be ruthless here'.
That's why she was such a good batter. She never lapsed in concentration; if there was a chance to score runs, she's scoring them.
I got to bat alongside her, and I'd say get a quick 20 before getting out and then I'd look across and she'd scored another hundred. She always had that mindset of 'dig in'.
She was a great captain too. I think that is why she ended up in the position for so long, because of that winning mindset; she just would never let up.
When I first got into the side in around 2007, we weren't that good. I remember in my first series in India, we lost every game. Lottie stood up in the changing room - everyone was depressed - and she told us we'd lost pride for our country, for ourselves.
One thing she made us do to try and sort it out; there's a song called Never Forget by Take That and she said that every time we win, we're going to sing that song, because I want you to never forget where you've come from, what it means, who you're doing this for.
To then watch the team go from being really average to Ashes, World Cup and World T20 winners in 2009 was amazing. We owe Lottie a lot.
By the end of her England career, the decision was made by the powers that be. They felt it was time. For her, there was never a time to stop playing, unless she was pushed.
She reminds me a bit of Katherine Brunt from the current side, to an extent. They are both so competitive and so single-minded in terms of what they want to achieve. Brunt will keep bowling until someone physically takes the ball out of her hand!
It could be intimidating being around her. But, it's really weird isn't it, you start off admiring these people from afar but, by the end of your career, you know them so much better.
You see them as humans and not obsessions. Stewie and Lottie are two of the best.
