This time last year, England's women cricketers encountered the latest iteration of a long-standing captaincy paradox. When Heather Knight was put out to pasture at the end of her nine-year reign, it exposed a familiar shortcoming for a fast-emerging sector of the sport. Who could possibly hope to step into Knight's vast shoes when - through no fault of her own - her long occupancy had prevented any potential successors from honing their own leadership credentials in the interim?
It was at that point that an unlikely candidate was mentioned in dispatches. With a baby-faced complexion that still makes her look younger than her 22 years, Grace Scrivens had come to partial recognition in 2023 when she led England team to the Under-19 Women's World Cup final in South Africa. However, her former Essex head coach, Andy Tennant, had no doubts about her ability to step up to even higher honours.
"She's a little bit like the English Graeme Smith," Tennant declared last year, after Scrivens' precocious leadership had carried Sunrisers to the valedictory Rachel Heyhoe Flint Trophy in 2024.
Twelve months on, it was a tougher baptism for Essex in the new professional Tier 1 competition. The team finished bottom of the One-Day Cup standings with two wins in 14 matches, and second-bottom in the T20 Blast, although Scrivens herself emerged with credit after scooping three awards at the club's end-of-season bash, including Women's Batter of the Year for her haul of 429 List A runs including back-to-back hundreds. Far from denting her leadership ambitions, however, the experience seems only to have sharpened her desire to bounce back.
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"I love captaincy," Scrivens tells ESPNcricinfo. "I think it helps my game so much. Captaining Sunrisers when we won that season was a real high, and even though we didn't win as many games as we wanted to with Essex, I think you learn so much from highs and from lows.
"When you're winning, it's a much easier job … much less meetings, obviously! But when you're losing, you learn loads as well. You learn how to deal with people in the dressing-room, and you learn different ways to manage yourself around wins and losses. You learn how to keep a positive attitude, and how to come out every day and train as hard as you would if you were winning. It's sometimes tricky, but all in all it's a great experience.
"The best thing about being a captain is getting the best out of your players," she adds. "I just try to be fun and energetic, as I would be normally. I don't think that changes loads when you're captain, I can still play jokes and have a laugh. I try not to take things too seriously.
"But also I know - and the girls know it as well - that when we need to be on, we're on, and we're really all in it together. So it's just about trying to get people together as much as you can, and get the best out of each player. I'd never be a massive shouter or anything, but I think people know when we need to switch on, which is the main thing."
Scrivens clearly remains a name for England's future, but how soon can she be a part of the team's present?
"That's obviously a really hard question," she says. "All I can do now is just try and go out there and win games for Essex and score runs. That's the job of a batter as it is anyway. So that's my aim for these next eight games [in the One-Day Cup]. If that England call comes, then obviously I'll be delighted and take that with both hands, but you just see what happens."
With Nat Sciver-Brunt now established as Knight's successor, and with other potential candidates, such as London Spirit captain Charlie Dean, showing more willingness to be part of the leadership conversation, the notion of Scrivens' fast-tracking appears to have receded in the past 12 months.
This time last year, she led England A in the four-day leg of their tour of Australia, before taking the same role for the white-ball visit of New Zealand in June and July. More recently, however, she was passed over for a captaincy role during the 30-player training camp in South Africa: Sophia Dunkley and Dani Gibson took charge of Team Brittin and Team Heyhoe Flint respectively for the final matches of the trip, when Sciver-Brunt and Dean were absent.
It was a fairly clear sign that, with all of England's focus on the upcoming T20 World Cup, Scrivens isn't yet being considered for that maiden international call-up. But, she accepts, simply to be a part of that elite camp was another significant step in her development.
"It was great to put everyone that you want to look at in the same spot, and just ask them to play some good cricket," she said of the trip. "It was a great experience being there, obviously prepping for that World Cup, getting the chance to learn off the best and be around the best coaches.
"I get on well with Lottie. She's a great mentor for any young player coming through. She pushes you, and that's what you need as a young player, to be pushed and to be challenged and asked the right questions of. She's been great.
"Obviously there were a few new captains, and that was great," she adds. "You learn so much when you play under different people, because everyone's style is so different. There's no one way to be a captain. When I'm in different environments, I just try and tap into different people's knowledge and just pick bits up and say, 'I want a bit of that, and I want a bit of that'."
All of which leans back into Scrivens' new domestic season with Essex. She will be playing under the guidance of a new head coach in Stephen Parry, while a familiar figure will be alongside her in the nets, with Nick Browne having slotted in as the women's batting coach after retiring from the men's squad last summer. And for the whole set-up at Chelmsford, the only way is up after the travails of 2025.
"We've had a really good winter," Scrivens says. "Obviously Stephen Parry's come in, which has been great for us, because we've trained heaps more than we would have last season. And we're all a really close-knit bunch. You play the game of cricket for each other, rather than for yourself. And when you do that, you often put yourself in better positions. So we'll just try to play as one, and tap into supporting each other as much as we can on the field.
"Last year, we would have wanted to win more, but being here at Essex and having a home base has been great," she said of that maiden season as a county set-up. "They really took us in as a family, and it's a great place to play cricket. It feels really special to play here."