Claire Taylor

Taylor is a right-handed top-order batter and one of England’s most prolific run-scorers in recent years.

She top-scored with 177 in the 2003 npower Test against South Africa and, with Lydia Greenway, broke the world record for a fourth-wicket stand in the first Test when they shared a 203-run partnership.

She later took a sabbatical from a career as a systems manager to concentrate on cricket and was one of the first effectively professional women cricketers.

Taylor played four one-day internationals against New Zealand in 2004 as England beat the world champions 3-2.

She enjoyed a fine 2005 World Cup, which included scoring 136 against Sri Lanka, but England lost to Australia in the last four.

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England exacted revenge by winning the Ashes 1-0 that summer, with Taylor hitting 43 in the first innings of the second and final Test which the hosts won by six wickets.

She made the highest individual score by a woman at Lord's when she hit 156 not out against India in the 2006 NatWest Series, and was shortlisted for the International Cricket Council's Women Cricketer of the Year award in 2007.

Taylor was England's leading performer on the winter tour to Australia and New Zealand. She helped retain the Ashes, scoring 79 and 64 not out in the one-off Test at Bowral, and beat the Kiwis, including an unbeaten 111 in the second ODI.

Her contribution was recognised when she was named England Women's Player of the Year at an awards ceremony at Lord's ahead of the 2008 international summer.

Taylor continued her fine form that season, fittingly seeing England home against India in her 100th ODI.

She was shortlisted for the Women’s Player of the Year for a second successive year at the ICC Awards in early September but England captain Charlotte Edwards took the prize.

Taylor helped England to World Cup glory in Australia during March 2009. She was named player of the tournament for her century against Sri Lanka and two fifties. She also took a stunning catch at gulley in the final against New Zealand.

Her status as a legend of the women’s game was secured when she was the first woman to become one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year.

Taylor became the first woman to be named among Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year

She was also named player of the tournament in England’s victorious World Twenty20 campaign, with two unbeaten seventies and 39 not out to see her side over the line in the Lord’s final against New Zealand.

Taylor's seminal 2009 was capped when she beat off competition from Edwards to be named Women's Cricketer of the Year at the ICC Awards.

She was part that side that could not retain the World T20 in the West Indies but otherwise enjoyed a successful 2010.

Taylor was forced home early from the 2010-11 tour of Australia after suffering a shoulder injury in the second warm-up match against Western Australia.

She returned the following summer but it proved to be her last as, in July, she retired from international cricket, having scored 5,246 runs in 15 Tests, 126 one-day and 27 T20 internationals.