Phoebe Litchfield still pinching herself at Ashes prospects

"I still feel like I'm going to watch the Ashes, I need to remind myself that I'm potentially playing it," says Phoebe Litchfield.

In a way, it's unfair to a player to say an international career feels inevitable because, however talented, there is a huge amount of work that goes into reaching the highest level.

But sometimes, a player who is clearly going to make that step pops up.

In mid-2019 a social media clip of Litchfield, the left-handed batter, playing cover drives in the New South Wales nets as a 16-year-old went viral. Later that year she made her WNCL debut for NSW and WBBL debut for Sydney Thunder, in the latter scoring a half-century in her second game.

In late 2022, on the T20I tour of India, she made her Australia debut and her first ODI series followed a few months later against Pakistan, in which she made 154 runs for once out.

Her caveat of "potentially" playing in the Ashes is understandable for a young player who doesn't want to jump ahead of selection calls, but it would be a huge surprise if she doesn't add a Test cap come next week in Nottingham.

The retirement of Rachael Haynes opened one vacancy and the late withdrawal of Meg Lanning created another at the top of the order. Alongside Alyssa Healy's desire to move down the order to manage her workload, everything points to Litchfield opening the batting as she did in the warm-up match against England A.

"I'm so excited, can't put it into words," she tells ESPNcricinfo. "The T20 tour to India and the Pakistan series here were amazing highlights but think there's an added layer to the Ashes. If the opportunity to open arises, I'll definitely grab it. It's probably the best position."

Ask others about Litchfield and there is one word that crops up frequently. "Just fearless, we speak about that in our white-ball cricket, and she embodies that," Australia's stand-in captain Healy says.

Her technique was honed by working with her father Andrew at home in Orange when she couldn't travel to Sydney 250km away. "It started when I just picked up a bat and it was probably very backyard cricket, then as I progressed, he told me where my front elbow should go and sort of progressed from there. Wouldn't say it's a perfect technique, but people have said it looks alright."

There is no multi-day cricket in the Australian domestic women's game - there isn't in England, either - but Litchfield has experienced two-day men's cricket when she played the local competition in Orange. Although, she adds: "To be fair, our team wasn't that good, so we didn't last the full day most times."

Litchfield is something of an outlier in Australian cricket as a specialist batter coming through the game. The dominance of white-ball cricket in the women's game lends itself to multi-discipline cricketers. If you look at a possible Australian XI on the England tour, it's potentially only Litchfield from the batting group who does not have a second string, albeit Beth Mooney plays as a specialist batter. Litchfield still keeps wicket as a back-up but has never been pushed into being something she isn't.

"I began as a bowler but bowled off the wrong foot and as soon as I went down to training sessions, they were like you can't bowl like that because you'll get an injury," she says. "So, I stopped bowling early on. I was a keeper, still have that as a secondary skill, but for the time, just want to focus on being the best fielder I can be and obviously, the batting."

While Litchfield's talent was clear from early on, there has been an evolution in her game over the last 12 months. She is adding power to her T20 cricket, while last season, she averaged 49.87 in the WNCL which included a maiden century. Litchfield may not feature in the T20s of the multi-format Ashes - although Lanning's absence leaves a hole to fill there, too - but she wants to be as versatile as possible.

"Being a full-time cricketer, I can work on my game all the time," she says, speaking just a few days after completing university exams. "I've been in the nets working hard on different shots and just being able to work hard on the craft of batting. There's a lot to work on both the power game and just mentally. Your cover drive can be good, but out in the middle, a lot can happen and it's about weathering that.

"You can't look perfect all the time; not that I want to look perfect but leading into one-day cricket and the [Ashes] practice matches, I've been working hard on the technique because that's what gets found out, especially over in England with the swinging ball."

For someone who clearly loves batting, the chance to do it for a whole day in a Test match is an exciting prospect. "I'm so keen," she says. "Now that I've got an added appreciation of batting and really enjoying it, I'm excited at the prospect of batting all day. Whether my mind can do it, we'll see, but keen to give it a crack."