Jan Brittin obituary

Jan Brittin, who has died of cancer aged 58, was the highest Test match run scorer in women’s cricket, a record that is likely to stand for the foreseeable future given that women’s Tests are less numerous than they once were.

A calm, elegant and quietly confident opening bat, Brittin amassed 1,935 runs in Tests for England between 1979 and 1998, and for some years also had the highest tally in international one-day cricket – 2,121 – until her compatriot Charlotte Edwards surpassed that total in 2003. Edwards idolised Brittin, and their careers overlapped by a couple of years. But they played in significantly different eras – Brittin, initially at least, in the be-skirted days of Rachael Heyhoe Flint, and Edwards in a time of trousers and Twenty20.

In Brittin’s day women’s cricket also had a lower profile than it has done in later years, so perhaps the key point in her career was when England won the 1993 World Cup final at Lord’s against New Zealand. The crowd was much smaller than it was for England’s sell-out World Cup win in 2017 at the same venue – only 4,500 were in the ground then. But the prime minister, John Major, was present, the match was broadcast live on BBC’s flagship sports programme, Grandstand, and England’s win made it on to the front pages of most newspapers. In many ways it was a pivotal moment in the development of women’s cricket.

It was also an emotional day for Brittin, who was deeply touched by the acclamation that she and her colleagues received from the crowd, especially when the England team walked on to the field through the Lord’s Long Room and the members lined their path to clap vigorously as they went by. “Never before have I gone out with tears in my eyes,” she said.

Having set up England’s win with the match’s top score of 48, Brittin took the winning catch as New Zealand fell short in their run chase. It was a difficult chance that could easily have been fluffed, “hit hard and high to deep midwicket,” wrote Mike Selvey in the Guardian. “Brittin was lurking. As the ball steepled away towards the grandstand she dashed to her left and took the catch as it came over her right shoulder: dropping it was never an issue. Up went her arms – the ball was last seen heading aerially towards Swiss Cottage – and she stampeded off into the arms of the awaiting supporters who had already streamed out of the stand and flooded on to the pitch.” Brittin’s 416 runs in that World Cup tournament were the most by anyone on any team, and she accumulated them at an average of 51.

Born in Kingston upon Thames, south-west London, to Kevin Brittin, a clerk at an aircraft manufacturing company, and Maggie (nee Goodway), an accounting-machine operator, Jan grew up in Chessington, Surrey, where she went to Fleetwood County secondary school (now Chessington community college). Showing an early aptitude for sports, she played cricket for the local club side, Tadworth, and later for the women’s club Redoubtables, and represented Surrey for many years. An excellent hockey player, both at Chelsea College of Physical Education in Eastbourne, where she trained as a teacher, and at Ealing hockey club, she won three caps with the England indoor team in 1987.

After teaching for a while at Wallington County grammar school in Surrey, she managed a sports shop in Tooting, south London, before being offered a job in the British Airways sports department at Heathrow, where as an amateur England player she could at least get staff discounts for air fares on foreign cricket tours.

Her Test debut was at home against West Indies in 1979, aged 19. Over three matches in that series, sometimes batting in the lower middle order, she had limited scope to impress. There were only five women’s Tests of any description over the next five years, so it was not until 1984 that she made her next England appearance, against New Zealand at Leeds. This time her impact was more significant, as she opened the batting and made 144 not out in the drawn first Test. She followed up with 96 in the next at Worcester and on tour with England in Australia that winter averaged 42.90 in five Tests, including a century in Perth.

Having established a reputation for consistent excellence that was to become the hallmark of her career, Brittin’s first World Cup final was in 1988, against Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where she top scored with 46 not out batting at No 3. But it was not a happy team performance and she recalled later that as Australia knocked off the runs with ease, “the ground seemed a very large and a very lonely place.” A bitter experience for someone who hated losing, that defeat made the win in the 1993 World Cup all the sweeter, especially as England were also out in the semi-finals of her only other World Cup, in 1997 in India, a match in which she top scored for her side again, with 32.

Brittin called a halt to both her one-day and Test match careers the year after that, at the age of 39 – even though, in many ways, she still appeared to be at the height of her powers. In her final Test series, at home against Australia in 1998, and despite batting with a damaged finger, she had innings of 146, 59 not out, 167 (her highest Test score) and 72 in her last three matches.

Across her 19-year Test career covering a record 27 matches, Brittin averaged 49.61 with the bat and scored five hundreds, a total not yet beaten. She also took nine wickets with her off spin and, as an exceptional cover fielder, a record 12 catches in Test cricket. In 63 one-day internationals her batting average was almost as good – 42.42 – with another five centuries and a highest score of 138 not out in 1982. She was made MBE in 1999.

After her playing days Brittin was a teacher at Danes Hill school in Oxshott, Surrey, having spent more than 20 years in her previous job at British Airways. But she kept up her associations with cricket and in particular with Surrey, where she was an engaging and unassuming coach to younger players who appreciated the attentions of one of the greatest players the women’s game has seen.

She is survived by her parents.

• Janette Ann Brittin, cricketer, born 4 July 1959; died 11 September 2017