England Next Gen: Ryana MacDonald-Gay on her rise and balancing cricket and hockey- QHN

Throughout the Hundred, BBC Sport is running a feature series called England Next Gen, designed to look at players who may make the step up to international cricket in the next few years. Next up is Oval Invincibles and South East Stars bowler Ryana MacDonald-Gay.

“And then she runs out of the room!” MacDonald-Gay laughs as she recounts the tale.

The ‘JB’ in question was Jonathan Batty, Oval Invincibles head coach. MacDonald-Gay had recently turned 18, but Batty was exercising caution by going through her parents first. The news? That MacDonald-Gay was a wildcard selection for that summer’s Hundred.

Seconds later her own phone began vibrating. “It was such an incredible feeling to get that call and be told ‘we want you’,” MacDonald-Gay says.

“You don’t realise people are actually watching until they say ‘we are watching’. It’s really nice to know that all the hard work you put in elsewhere is noticed.”

That, though, was just the start. Whereas MacDonald-Gay expected to spend the month shuttling liquid refreshments around, she instead made her debut against Northern Superchargers at a packed Kia Oval on opening night.

“I was literally shaking,” she says. “I’d never played in front of more than 500 people before, let alone thousands. It was insane.”

Having calmed her nerves by “talking – it literally could be about anything, a random conversation – it is just distraction”, she claimed the wickets of India’s Jemimah Rodrigues and South Africa’s Laura Wolvaardt.

By September MacDonald-Gay could call herself an ever-present tournament winner. Surely 2022 had peaked.

Except that the following morning, MacDonald-Gay was woken early by a phone call. An England Select XI were due to take on India in Durham later that week – did she want in?

Naturally, she was keen, hastily arranging northbound travel with South East Stars team-mates Alice Davidson-Richards and Alexa Stonehouse. Rain eventually forced the fixture’s abandonment but not before MacDonald-Gay returned remarkable figures of 6-18 from 3.5 overs.

Enter her mother and her mobile again. “She rang when we came off the pitch and said ‘Oh my god, you got a hat-trick.’ I replied ‘No I didn’t, Mum. What are you talking about?'”

But unbeknown to everyone on the field, MacDonald-Gay had indeed picked up the final three India wickets with successive balls. It was her first hat-trick in senior cricket.

“Usually, I always find a way to bottle the third one,” she says, referencing T20 Finals Day with Kent a few months previously when she had twice been one delivery from the landmark.

That performance cemented MacDonald-Gay’s selection in England Under-19s’ 2023 World Cup squad. Despite defeat by India in the final, MacDonald-Gay describes the trip as an “incredible” experience.

She was vice-captain, with Grace Scrivens leading the team. That pair, plus Stonehouse, had appeared in a county final for Kent U13s in 2017. Five and a half years later and they were competing for world honours.

Perhaps it was not too much of a surprise, though. MacDonald-Gay’s path was only ever going to be sports-based. She played everything and anything from an early age.

“I even played some rogue ones, like korfball – I played that to quite a high level as well. Slowly, I started knocking things off, narrowing in on hockey and cricket.”

She still plays hockey, having made the England under-18 side as a schoolgirl. Cricketing commitments meant she was unable to go on trial for the U21s last winter, but she still plays when time allows.

“The balance is tricky – it can be a lot,” she admits. “But I love both sports equally. And they are so different, so when people say ‘you need a break’, I turn to the other sport.

“Even if it is not physically a break, it’s a mental break from one sport. Hockey is such a different game to cricket – it’s played at pace, it’s intense. It’s a bit of a rush, a bit of adrenaline.”

MacDonald-Gay’s formative cricketing experiences came alongside her brothers, between whom she is sandwiched in age. She first represented Kent at under-11 level under coach David Sear:

“David was so passionate about cricket,” she says. “If he hadn’t been like that, a lot of people would have dropped out there. But he made people want to carry on and keep getting better.”

Sear helped England internationals Tammy Beaumont, Lydia Greenway and Charlotte Edwards forge their careers, and MacDonald-Gay recalls fondly providing guards of honour for, and receiving her junior caps from, the latter pair.

Soon she began following in their steps, spending 2021 in Stars’ academy before signing professional terms later that summer. Now a regular in regional cricket, MacDonald-Gay’s trajectory is steep.

While the Invincibles used her in the middle of the innings last year, she took the new ball for England A against their Australia counterparts in June, but five of her six wickets in the three one-day internationals came in the final 10 overs of the innings.

That has given MacDonald-Gay the confidence to perform a variety of roles at regional level, and she ended the Rachael Heyhoe-Flint Trophy – the domestic 50-over competition – with nine victims for Stars.

Her coaches speak highly of a three-dimensional cricketer, one who is capable of opening the batting and is lightning fast when patrolling the boundary.

Full international honours will likely require a little more patience, but MacDonald-Gay is far from the type to get ahead of herself.

After the Hundred she returns for the second year of her sports psychology degree at Loughborough University. In September she will sit the exams she was excused for while on World Cup duty.

Revision – the great leveller.