Danni Wyatt-Hodge celebrated her 35th birthday on Wednesday with a Colin the Caterpillar cake at an England training camp. In barely a month's time, she and her wife Georgie will be welcoming their first daughter into the world. And all in good time for another big date in her diary for 2026, one that she hopes could yet be the crowning moment of her 17-year international career.
"I can't wait, it's an exciting year ahead!" Wyatt-Hodge tells ESPNcricinfo during a Vitality Blast content day, while looking out over the Lord's pitch on which the Women's T20 World Cup final is due to take place in July. "I don't want to think too far ahead. But it would be pretty special to lift a World Cup trophy with my baby girl in the other arm. That would be pretty surreal."
Impending parenthood has been no barrier to Wyatt-Hodge's form and focus so far this year. Quite the contrary, in fact.
"It's not affecting me," she says. "A lot of people go, 'Oh, are you ready? You're not gonna have much sleep ...' But for me, I think it's going to be a good thing to have something else to focus on. And it just puts things into perspective as well. You can think too much about cricket, and it can really stress you out. But it doesn't really matter at the end of the day, it's all about bigger things going on in your life. So relax and enjoy your cricket."
She's certainly been living by that mantra of late. After learning the news late last year, at the start of the Women's Big Bash, she embarked on a celebratory run of form, 432 runs at 48.00, that helped propel Hobart Hurricanes to the WBBL title, the first of her career.
"I was unlucky just to miss out on the Golden Cap [for most tournament runs]," she jokes, throwing her England team-mate Sophie Ecclestone under the bus, just as Ecclestone threw a fateful practice ball under the heavy roller at Karen Rolton Oval, midway through Hobart's final group match against Adelaide Strikers.
"The ball left a hole right on a length, so the game got cancelled halfway through, and I couldn't have a bat," Wyatt-Hodge laments. "But you never know, I might have got out early…"
Her strong vein of form continued after leaving Australia, with two matchwinning knocks for Team Heyhoe-Flint during England's intra-squad training camp in South Africa in March, and a formidable start to the One-Day Cup with Surrey: Consecutive scores of 124 from 80 balls against Warwickshire, and 96 from 83 against Durham.
"Cricket is such a fickle game, isn't it? But mentally I've been in a good place, and I love scoring runs for whoever," she says. "I made good use of the short boundary at Edgbaston last Saturday, but the standard of domestic cricket in this country has really gone through the roof. It's going to be scary to see how good it can get in the next 10 years or so. But I want to keep getting better. I want to keep improving."
It's the attitude that England will need to arrest their recent run of disappointing displays on the global stage, but also - without being indelicate - the attitude that Wyatt-Hodge and her fellow veterans in the national set-up will need to ensure that this summer's peak is not the last they are given the opportunity to climb.
As Charlotte Edwards, England's head coach, told ESPNcricinfo last week, the World Cup squad promises to be the toughest yet of her year-long tenure, precisely because of that balance between trusting the experienced campaigners to come good when it matters, and throwing the stage over to the squad's rising stars, with teenagers Davina Perrin and Tilly Corteen-Coleman among those namechecked by the boss.
"There's youngsters coming through, trying to take my spot, and obviously I don't want them to do that," Wyatt-Hodge says. "So, it just keeps pushing me and all the other players in the England squad, I guess. There's competition for places now, which is only a good thing for everybody in the squad.
"The likes of me, Heather [Knight], Nat [Sciver-Brunt], we've got to keep improving and keep getting better and keep pushing the standard. These young players are looking up to the likes of us and looking at how we train, looking at our attitudes, our behaviours, which is really important. We've got a massive role in this squad on that front."
All of which made for a fascinating dynamic on the squad's recent trip to South Africa. Thirty players, split into two distinct squads, and pitched against one another for five hard-fought T20 fixtures. For the record, Team Brittin got the better of Wyatt-Hodge's Team Heyhoe-Flint, winning the series 3-2 with a tense three-wicket win in the decider, but for once the outcomes matter less than the duels that took place out in the middle.
"I went into it as if it was just another series for England, even though it was a bit strange playing against your team-mates. But as soon as you walk over that boundary rope, it's game on, and you're trying to smack your mates for six, aren't you? Looking back now, playing against Lauren Bell, Issy Wong, Linsey Smith … some of the best bowlers in the world. To be facing them every day is only going to be a good thing, and hopefully hold me in good stead for what's to come this summer."
The circumstances of that tour were instructive too, with the ECB rustling up a last-minute trip to Pretoria after their original plans to play in Abu Dhabi were kiboshed by the conflict in the region. Such proactivity for the women's game would have been unthinkable even five years ago, let alone way back at the start of Wyatt-Hodge's international career in 2010.
"I said that to Nat Sciver the other day," she says. "In my first six years of playing for England, we had maybe one tour a winter. Whereas now, with all the franchise leagues as well, these winters just get busier and busier. But personally, I love being away, escaping the English winter and being surrounded by some of the best cricketers in the world. You've got to be on your A game, because you're always learning."
She's also earning, and increasingly significant sums too. In January, Wyatt-Hodge was the first of MI London's direct signings ahead of this year's rebooted Women's Hundred, and if her reported £100,000 salary was subsequently dwarfed by the big-money deals for the likes of Dani Gibson and Sophie Devine at the auction in March, then it is still another massive step-up from the amateur origins of her own playing days.
There's a school of thought, not dissimilar to that which impacted the men's game at the end of the 20th century, that the players who came through the sport's less lucrative era are innately tougher than those who are able to make a comfortable living from the outset. And while Wyatt-Hodge acknowledges that the rapid professionalisation of the women's game has thrown up new challenges, she's also entirely comfortable with the dynamics within this evolving set-up.
"I guess the youngsters coming in now are earning all the big bucks straight away, and so, as an older player, if they want to speak to me about it, then I'm happy to help nurture them," she says.
"But I look at the girls that played before us as well. They had to work and play cricket but, even back then, I reckon they were still very grateful for what they got. And that's like me now. I'm so grateful for what I have. I still can't believe I'm getting paid to play cricket.
"There are no egos. We're in an entertainment business. At the end of the day, our job is to go out there and perform and entertain in front of big crowds, which is not easy, but it's good fun, especially with your team-mates.
"That's the best part of it, looking back and thinking of all the memories of off-the-field stuff and touring the world … walking out to open the batting with Sophia Dunkley, one of my best mates … I still pinch myself how lucky I am."
And to that end, the best may yet be to come, as the countdown begins to June 12, and England's opening match of the T20 World Cup, against Sri Lanka at Edgbaston.
"It's very exciting," she says. "A home World Cup doesn't get much better than that. A few of us were around for [the win] in 2017, so we know what it's like. We just need to see it as a massive opportunity to show off to the world how good we are as a team, and take each game as it comes. I'm really, really positive going into it, and feel like something good is going to happen."
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