Shelley Nitschke is driven by the new changes to the women's game © Getty Images

With such a schedule coming up, some may've found it difficult to juggle their employment with their playing commitments. In the past, our ever increasing playing schedule has put pressure on employers, and unfortunately some girls have had to forego their casual positions due to cricket commitments. Looking from the perspective of the employers, it does put them in a difficult position at times.

Although the Cricket Australia contracts won't exactly allow us to resign from our employment roles, they will help alleviate some of these pressures. I guess I have been very lucky in regard to this, working at the South Australian Cricket Association.

While working in cricket, as well as playing, can become a bit of a cricket overload, I have been very well supported with respect to both state and international commitments. Needless to say, all the girls are pretty happy about the concept of contracts, hopefully in time other countries will also follow the lead set by the ECB, and now Cricket Australia.

Next subject - the World Cups! With our pre-season well underway here in Australia, the World Cup in March 2009 will be here before we know it. We have just had a squad camp in Brisbane a few weeks ago, our second for the pre-season following a camp in May at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. The Brisbane camp provided much nicer weather [than in Adelaide], and a chance to get outdoors on some turf wickets. Everyone is pretty excited about the year ahead, with the World Cup in Australia in March and the Twenty20 World Cup in June next year, you can hardly blame us.

We are used to things happening quite slowly in the world of women's cricket, and the common response to a small improvement is often, “Well, at least it's something”. This mentality needs to change.

The Twenty20 World Cup alongside of the men's tournament is a major coup for the women's game. The Twenty20 women's international between Australia and England at the MCG earlier this year played as a curtain raiser to the Australia v India Twenty20 proved a great success and gave us some unprecedented exposure in Australia. Not to mention giving the players the buzz of playing under lights at the MCG in front of around 30,000 people.

Let's hope that the next 12 months can boost the profile of the game, and set the platform for the future of the game. At the moment it appears that it is all happening, something makes me think I am at the wrong end of my career.

	Ebony Rainford-Brent and captain Charlotte Edwards have been benefiting from their deals © Getty Images

What an exciting time for the sport, with the World Twenty20 announcement – and for England women in particular. Having had our most successful tour of Australia and New Zealand ever we came into the new season all abuzz, especially when the eight contracts were announced and I was lucky to get one of them. They’ve been designed to allow us to be able to both play cricket at international level and also be able to give back to women’s cricket through Chance to Shine to try to increase girls’ participation.

My typical week involves going into schools and clubs three days a week and trying to get in around 25 hours’ a week of coaching time. That’s fitted around my training, so I will still get to do my England training commitments and Surrey Academy and play all games. I’m enjoying it so far. Initially I found it testing because it was seven days a week between training and playing but luckily I’ve been able to rejig it to cut down on travelling time – flexibility I wouldn’t have in most other jobs.

We're so lucky having the ECB on board who are very forward thinking – and already Cricket Australia seem to have taken a leaf out of their book with the announcement this week that their women are to receive contracts. It’s already making a difference for us – it takes the stress away of preparing for the summer for a start – you’re not having to think about external employers whose priority isn’t your cricket, whereas this way it’s all in-house and everyone’s working together.

It’s important for women’s cricket that all countries, where possible, move towards offering contracts of this sort of nature because we need to make sure that everyone is competing on an even playing field rather than, say, us and Australia get better because we have the ability to now commit to cricket. Now the ECB has blazed a trail, hopefully other boards will follow suit as with CA. It will be interesting to hear what the other players have to say about it.

The changes will take a while to come to effect but they've come in good time for the World Cup and World Twenty20 next year. One thing is for sure - England women now have support that past female cricketers have never had. Now it's about translating these advantages into further results and we've got plenty of opportunities this summer with West Indies, South Africa and India all visiting.

In the run-up to them, we have plenty of games to keep us busy including our recent Twenty20 where England played the Academy. It was nice to be named in the England team for the day and fingers crossed this will continue in selection for the rest of the summer.

I've got some good runs under my belt already - I think having two months in Australia in the off-season definitely helped. I played for Port Adelaide alongside Karen Rolton and Emma Sampson when they weren't on international duty. The experience gave me a chance to put some things into place and trial some thing ahead of our domestic season – no switch hits, though.

Since getting back, the Super Fours have been good as ever, because they give you a chance to test yourself. This year I’ve had the chance to open for the Diamonds, which is nice. I’ve done OK but with a few games left I really want to kick on as it’s the main forum for England selection.