Sophie Ecclestone in her recent interview revealed that she wanted to quit cricket after the T20 World Cup and Ashes failure. Sophie missed out on England’s summer when the side hosted West Indies for T20 and ODI series. She missed out of T20 series and played for Lancashire instead and was ruled out for ODI series citing the need to prioritise her wellbeing.
She recently made her comeback during the T20 and Odi series against India. She had come under fire when she gave “cold shoulder” to Alex Hartley after England lost 16-0 Ashes series against Australia.
“It was a tough time for me personally,” Ecclestone told Sky Sports in a pitch-side interview before play on Tuesday. “I tore my meniscus and I had a very sore knee, but I feel like personally I was so tired and so drained from the last few months.
“As a cricketer, we don’t stop, we don’t get much time off and we go from franchise tournaments to England tournaments and it takes it out of you. I feel like during the West Indies series I wasn’t actually sure if I was going to come back and play cricket.
“I was away from cricket and I cried to a few people, I cried to my dad, I get emotional now, but it was a tough time. But I feel like I’ve come out the other side now and I’m back playing cricket.”
Ecclestone credited her teammates Lauren Bell and Alice Capsey as they were with her during the hard and made her comeback to this field and Sophie ended up the player of the match in the second Odi which pushed the decider that England eventually lost.
Ecclestone seemed to object to the timing of the request to speak, stating that she wanted to focus on her warm-up, and she denied the use of the word “refusal” in reference to the notorious interview with Hartley.
“It was a weird time,” Ecclestone said. “I feel like obviously that went down the wrong way, and a few things were said, and I was just concentrating on cricket at that moment.
“A lot of things were being said which wasn’t ideal for me and it affected me quite a lot to be honest. It took a lot out of me. There were a lot of words being thrown around about me that I thought were untrue and it wasn’t very nice to hear.
“I kind of had to put that to one side, and I did go off social media for a couple of weeks actually during the Ashes, just because it was affecting me quite a lot, what was being said. It wasn’t very nice but we’ve all learnt from that now and there’s a lot of feelings involved but we’re all over that now, and ready to move on.”
Ecclestone went on to say that she believed misconceptions had emerged about her in the fallout from the incident.
“I feel like a lot of words were being thrown around about me that weren’t true,” she said. Just that I was really arrogant maybe, and that’s just not me as a person.
“The word refusal was getting thrown around and that just wasn’t really true and some of the things people were saying about the team I didn’t really agree with, so it was hard to take for me and hard to take for the team.”
