England women’s team skipper Charlotte Edwards retires from all forms

England women’s team skipper Charlotte Edwards has called time on her England career today. The decision comes just a day after speculations about her stepping down from captaincy had begun to make rounds.

“I leave very proud of the standing in which the women’s game is held and of my contribution as a player and captain,” she said.

“It’s the right time for a new captain to lead the team forward.”

Edwards will continue to play domestic cricket, captaining the Southern Vipers in the inaugural Kia Super League this summer and leading Kent in the Royal London Women’s One-Day Championship. Six teams compete in the new T20 event, which runs from 30 July to 14 August.

She made her debut in 1996 against New Zealand aged just 16, the youngest international at that time. A decade later, she went on to replace Clare Connor as the leader of the team and went on to lead the team a record 220 times. In all, she earned 309 caps (23 Tests, 191 one-day internationals, and 95 T20Is) across the three formats and scored more than 10,000 runs

During her 10-year reign in charge, there were four Ashes series wins, as well as global tournament victories in both the World Cup and World T20 in 2009.

Edwards’s last international appearance came in England’s five-run defeat against Australia in the semi-finals of the recent Word T20 in India, a result that led to public criticism of the team by their new head coach, Mark Robinson.

Edwards was named as one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year in 2014 and awarded a CBE in the honours list the same year. She was also the first woman to join the MCC world cricket committee.

Also read – England can whitewash Sri Lanka: James Anderson