One of the chief disappointments with Thursday’s Hundred Draft was the watching suspicion that most of the serious wheeling and dealing had already been done behind the scenes, so it is pleasing to hear that England spinner Sarah Glenn was just as in the dark over her future as the rest of us.
“I had no idea, I didn’t know what to expect,” she tells Standard Sport. “I was just watching it having a cup of tea and then it was like, ‘Oh, my name’s there!’.”
Glenn spent last season with the Trent Rockets, but was a free agent once more heading into the first ever women’s Draft after the franchise opted to retain England team-mates Katherine and Nat Sciver-Brunt instead.
Many of the leading prospects went into the evening with a fair idea of where they were headed after weeks of negotiations. Men’s Test opener Ben Duckett went as far as to publicly urge Welsh Fire not to use their Right To Match to retain his services so he could head to Birmingham Phoenix instead.
Perhaps aided by the luxury of being one of the best domestic players on the market, however, Glenn made a conscious decision to leave her fate undecided.
“It was a tricky one because I don’t think anything’s ever guaranteed,” she explains. “Certain teams might promise you something and then it doesn’t work out because of how the squad’s laid out.
“I preferred to just not know at all because it puts doubt in your mind and you can really get wrapped up in the numbers and comparing yourself. It can become quite toxic if you get into that headspace. I wanted to be completely oblivious to it all. It made me a little bit nervous but I thought it was the best way to go about such a unique experience for the first time.”
As it turned out, it would hardly have taken an army of back-channelling intermediaries to suss out whose radar had settled on the 23-year-old: Glenn is heading to Lord’s to join London Spirit on a £25,000 deal, where she will play under her England captain, Heather Knight.
“I’d spent a lot of time with Heather at the World Cup [last month],” she laughs. “But I am a bit of a space cadet, so I don’t know if I just missed some hints or something.”
It is, Glenn says, going to be “pretty cool” to be able to call the Home of Cricket, well, ‘home’, for the best part of a month this summer. The Spirit finished second-bottom of last year’s standings but were without Knight throughout the tournament because of injury and used the No2 pick in Thursday’s Draft to add Australian all-rounder Grace Harris to their squad.
If anything, the selection of Glenn was something of a surprise, given the team are already well-stocked in a spin department that saw England’s Charlie Dean and New Zealand’s Amelia Kerr retained from last season.
Not being in the WPL meant I got to come home, have some down time, work on a few skills.
“I think it’s a great trio to be honest,” Glenn says. “I think we all bring something different. Deano brings that real good turn, a bit of dip and flight, so does Kerr with the googly - I’m hoping she can teach me how to bowl one properly, give me a few tips on that as well.”
Glenn heads into the new domestic season off a fine winter in which she was England’s second-highest wicket-taker at the T20 World Cup. She has watched this month’s groundbreaking Women’s Premier League in India - the final of which takes place on Sunday - from afar having gone unselected at auction but has no grumbles with her omission and is sure her time will come.
“I look at the group of players who were selected and I don’t doubt any of them,” she says. “I was gutted to not be a part of it but I try to see the positive aspect. Not being in the WPL meant I got to come home, have some down time, work on a few skills.
London Spirit added some more international stars to their squads last night.
— Lord's Cricket Ground (@HomeOfCricket) March 24, 2023
Who are you looking forward to seeing at Lord's this summer? 🤔#LoveLords | @thehundred pic.twitter.com/yWkxqYqzp6
“I’d obviously much rather be playing in a WPL team, that’d be amazing, but I’m so young and I’m letting things be as they are. If I make certain motivations really specific about wanting to prove them wrong or anything like that you can end up forcing it.”
Another good summer could unlock doors to future franchise gigs, too.
“It can take two or three games where you have an absolute stormer and suddenly you’re in all these competitions,” she says. “That’s how quickly you can accelerate. One day that might happen and suddenly I’m always away from home thinking, ‘Oh gosh, I could do with a holiday!’.”
