I really ought to add a chain of exclamation marks after that astonishing statement, but only people like DJ Trump do that.

The words are from Syd Egan in the latest edition of the crickether blogspot (crickether.com/2023/01/15/the-crickether-weekly-episode-147/). Egan and Raf Nicholson wax lyrical over Scrivens’ performances, but mostly over her captaincy.

Nicholson makes the shrewd point that great players don’t necessarily make great captains. (The same is true of great players making great head coaches. In another world – that of rugby – Martin Johnson is a prime example.)

Shafali Verma is cited to prove the issue. There was consternation around the cricket world when the BCCI announced that she would not only be included in India’s Under 19 squad for the World Cup but also be captain.

People moaned: ‘Why on earth select a player already at the top of the game, with multiple caps at international level?

Answers came there aplenty, reassuring us that it was both sensible and fair. Why deny a 19-year-old the right to take part?

What was being overlooked was her ability (and experience) as captain. She had little or none of the latter.

India may yet walk off with the Under 19 trophy, but inevitably so much hangs on one player’s performance. Other nations, lower down the pecking order, know that feeling. Once your leading batter gets castled early in proceedings, do the other ten have the ability to get back on track?

Closer to home, Alice Capsey is the next cab on the rank to be a star player. But few would see her as an automatic choice as captain – not for a good few years yet, at any rate.

On current evidence – that is, as the Super Sixes get under way in South Africa – Scrivens looks to have the whole squad backing her up. Strong performances have come from players up and down the order.

England still have questions to answer: they have not yet batted second in the competition. What happens if (when?) both the captain and Libby Heap are dismissed in the opening over? That is a challenge the team has yet to face; it would leave them with around 120 runs to find from somewhere. But that is where their experience comes into play.

Thanks to the foresight of Clare Connor and her associates at the ECB who mapped out a programme of competitions and contracts to raise standards and deepen experience, it is the young who have benefited the most.

So individually they have grown used to responding at moments of great tension. One over to go, seven runs needed to win; 5,000 spectators; a dozen cameras observing your every twitch. ‘You bowl a maiden, please, Jemima,’ and Jemima does.

That is the sort of pressure several of England’s current squad have got used to, a privilege given to very few in the past.

As for Scrivens herself, she has been in the rarest of positions with the Sunrisers franchise, based in Chelmsford. Despite being one of the youngest in a squad all too used to losing, she had led the way in runs and wickets.

As for her captaincy, at the age of seventeen she was asked to lead the Kent side. Admittedly Tammy Beaumont and Tash Farrant were away on more urgent business, but that appointment was a signal honour for her. And Kent won.

Over the decades English cricket has not followed the Australian example of giving youth its head. Rehan Ahmed recently became England’s youngest male cricketer, breaking the record of Brian Close that had stood since 1949.

Women’s cricket has been less negligent: I saw Holly Colvin make her debut in an Ashes test at Hove in 2005 when she was 15 years old. And she took three wickets.

But captaincy is quite another matter. There are well known sports where the head coach/manager does all the shouting, all the deciding. Not so in cricket. The burden of captaincy can weigh heavily on two shoulders. If a coach feels the need to send out semaphore signals to the captain to suggest changes, that is a sign of defeat, of inadequacy.

We have only to think of the senior England side of the past few months. While Heather Knight was out of action with injury. Nat Sciver was her obvious replacement. But in no time she announced she needed to step aside to recharge her batteries. When Amy Jones was asked to step in, she accepted reluctantly, admitting that captaincy didn’t come naturally to her.

So the Nicholson/Egan call has to be seen in that light.

Is it pure chance that we spot Scrivens fielding at extra cover, exactly where Knight sets such a fine example to her team? I don’t think so.

Still, we have no idea when the England skipper will retire to tend her garden. If she follows Katherine Brunt’s example, there won’t be a vacancy at the top for a good few years more.