Women's Ashes top 20: Katherine Brunt and Kate Blackwell on England's drought-breaking 2005 triumph

April 6, 2005 was the day when former Australian batter Kate Blackwell was given a clue that young English fast bowler Katherine Brunt would be a key player in that year's Ashes series.

The previous day, Australia had ended England's World Cup campaign in the semi-final in Potchefstroom, South Africa.

«The very next morning as I was doing a quiet wander around the grounds at the accommodation, there she was, Katherine Brunt, doing laps of the oval,» Blackwell told ABC Sport.

«She's out of the World Cup but she's there running laps, putting in the hours and the hard yards to keep herself fit, getting herself ready for the next series which was going to be the Ashes later in the year and I was like 'oh my goodness, we need to look out for this one, she's going to be fiery and ready to go'.»

Wagga Wagga-born Blackwell was a star-struck 21-year-old when she made her Test debut in the Ashes series opener at Hove.

«I had an amazing team around me,» Blackwell said.

«The batting line-up, Belinda Clark, Lisa Keightley, Karen Rolton, Lisa Sthalekar, my sister Alex and our bowling attack with Cathryn Fitzpatrick, Emma Liddell, Julie Hayes, Shelley Nitschke and our keeper Julia Price.

»These were my heroes, especially Belinda Clark, someone who I looked up to as a young cricketer, now I was playing alongside her."

Female cricket idols were nowhere to be seen for Brunt when she first took up the sport.

«I grew up playing with my brother, playing boys and men's cricket, I didn't really have any knowledge at all of women's cricket at that standard,» Brunt told '2005 – The forgotten Ashes' podcast.

«Not at all did I think there was an Ashes series or World Cups, just the fact that there were women playing somewhere but they weren't playing near