A few days ago, if you had googled her, you wouldn’t have found any relevant result. There was this CricInfo page with not many details but the matches from Royal Women’s One-day cup last year. No bio. No other matches. Cricket Archive, a few more details regarding her matches, but not much.
If you go digging deep, you will find articles about her batting performances and how she led her teams to win by scoring tons and ton amount of runs. Debuting for Hampshire in 2010, one of her memorable knocks came in 2015 for the team, where she scored an unbeaten 165 against the Northants.
Next year, she went on to score a record-breaking 179* from 103 deliveries for Team Solent in the British Universities and Colleges (BUCS) league match against Aberystwyth.
In fact, in 2013, it was her efforts that made the Team Solent a reality. When she joined them, they had 5 to 6 good players. She found the players, organized training, helped them with the kits as well. In that year, Solent won almost all the matches in the competition.
For her outstanding contribution, She was nominated for Pharmanutricals Sports Woman of the Year at the 2016 Solent Sports Awards which she lost it to triple jumper Lia Stephenson. During the ceremony, the chief guest for the event was the legend, Charlotte Edwards(who also represented Hampshire, Vipers). She had only one advice for Taylor at that time, to keep enjoying the game.
She then went on to represent a few clubs in Hobart and Tasmania, and everything was going according to the plan until the injury happened. She suffered an ACL injury that kept her away from the game for more than two years.
In those two years, things changed. Hampshire moved on. They had batters who single-handedly won the game for them. Taylor needed a way to get into that team. She began to work on her bowling skills. She was a part-time spinner for years but was into batting for years. With a lot of practice, she mastered the off-spin.
RHF trophy selection happened, and she scored 70+ in the practice match and also had an opportunity to bowl. The latter impressed Edwards more. However, she didn’t make the cut initially. Taylor was then signed up for commentary. She was about to join the team for the matches of Vipers. Surprisingly for her, she received a call from Edwards at the last moment and there you go. For someone who used to be the opening batter, adapting to the team needs was difficult initially but today she is a bowling all-rounder who bats at 10 or 11.
In the RHF Trophy, she didn’t play many games and came back only against Southern East Stars where she picked up two wickets. Then against Sunrisers, she had one. The performance that turned heads came a few days later against one of the best teams in the competition, the Western Storm. She had 4/41 which includes the wicket of Luff who literally scored fifty in every single match.
A few days later, the big day arrived, the final against the Diamonds. Now, the Diamonds had some international stars including Jenny Gunn, Sterre Kalis among others. Taylor rattled them all.
She bowled slower through the air, opted for arm ball and rarely tried to spin the ball. She kept it straight and made the batters work for runs. They couldn’t.
Armitage fell while trying to hit the outside off delivery but landed straight to Dean at the point. MacDonald lost her balance and had hit the stumps. Taylor came up with a faster and a fullish delivery to Gunn. The latter fell for it, trapped before the stumps. Heath then got out sweeping a fullish delivery right into the hands of Monaghan at deep midwicket.
Kalis was stranded without the partners who got caught in the spin web of Taylor. Langston thankfully added 20+ runs, and when one thought that the partnership was going well, Taylor spun the web and dismissed Langston who tried to sweep. A couple of overs later, she got the big fish, Kalis. With no batters left in the line-up, Kalis had to do something. After scoring a brilliant half-century, she tried to take on Taylor but fell for the prey. She found captain Adams at the mid-on, and the match was almost over. Taylor finished with 10 overs 6 Wickets while giving away 34 runs.
In the final, who doesn’t love a performance like that?
Now, cricket as a profession is not everyone’s cup of tea. It is not something women cricketers, especially those who don’t have central contracts can have. Taylor went to bed that night as the star of the RHF Trophy right before the Sky Cameras. The next day, she woke up, went back to work, to an aerospace company.
