by England captain Heather Knight feels fully focused on leading her team at the T20 World Cup as she seeks to move past being sanctioned for appearing in ‘blackface’ at a fancy dress party in 2012.
A photo of Knight, then 21, was recently discovered on Facebook, earning her a reprimand and a suspended £1,000 fine from the Cricket Disciplinary Commission after she admitted being accused of bringing the cricket into disrepute. game.
In a statement last month, Knight, England captain since 2016, said she was “truly sorry for the mistake” she made and had “regretted it for a long time”, while that Dave Lewis, the acting director of the Cricket Regulator, admitted there was “no racist intent in his conduct”.
After a warm-up camp in the United Arab Emirates, England will begin their T20 World Cup campaign against Bangladesh in Sharjah on Saturday.
Knight, 33, believes “the line has already been drawn” regarding his punishment and believes the team is fully focused on the challenges ahead.
“It was obviously something that was ongoing over the last few months and it’s something, as far as I’m concerned, that was addressed, and something that happened a long time ago, so it’s not relevant to me. didn’t come to mind at first,” Knight said.
“The line has already been drawn, in my opinion, so I’m obviously very excited about what’s to come (at the World Cup).
“We have a very supportive group, there’s no doubt about that, so yeah, (I’m) pretty happy to get into cricket.”
England had a fine white-ball summer, winning 13 of 14 matches, and were only denied a complete sweep by the rain of a match.
Drawn into Group B also alongside Scotland, South Africa and the West Indies, hopes were raised of England winning a first global trophy since the 2017 50-over World Cup.
Knight believes his side showed enough quality to make an impact in the tournament, with rivals Australia looking to extend their winning streak to the previous three titles.
“We take a lot of confidence from the way we played this summer. The way we’ve evolved as a team has been brilliant,” Knight said.
“We feel like we’ve added some intelligence to how we want to play, and I think that’s going to be really important on these courts.
“There will be times where we have to kind of graft a bit, the boundaries are big and there may be times where we find ourselves on slow wickets where we will have to adapt to what’s in front. us and be really smart about how we do this.
“I think we did that brilliantly – probably that series against New Zealand in particular – by just finding different ways to win and getting different people to stand up at different times.
“I don’t think it adds pressure, I think it has given us great confidence that when we play our best cricket we can beat anyone.”
