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A wonderful career in international cricket came to an end on Thursday in the rural, thatched-pavilioned idyll that is the Getty ground on the estate at Wormsley in Buckinghamshire. Claire Taylor had made 30 when she slapped a delivery to point and stomped from the field for the last time. It had not been one of her greatest achievements but it helped set up the win against Australia that kept the England women's team in their official place as the leading one-day side in the world. After 14 years, in which through immense single-minded dedication to her craft that elevated her to the status of perhaps the finest batsman the women's game has seen, and from it the England team to world champions, Ashes winners and the best in the business, that is not a bad time to call it a day.

In 1998, Peter Roebuck, editor of the inaugural edition of the Australian version of Wisden, deemed Belinda Clark to be Australian cricketer of the year, and took a while to shovel himself out of the opprobrium heaped upon him. So when in the spring of 2009, the then Wisden editor Scyld Berry, who has often explored cricket writing from unusual angles, announced he had accorded Taylor the privilege of being one of the yellow brick's famous five cricketers of the year, he risked ridicule. Not to have recognised her contribution, said Berry at the Almanack's launch, "would have been a sin of omission, an act of prejudice". At a stroke he raised the profile of the women's game to a level to which it had been unable to aspire, notwithstanding its remarkable achievements over the previous couple of years.

Taylor's personal story is an interesting tale of how she used her hyperintelligence to plan a path to the top of her game. She is 35 now, and says she is creaking a bit. The gym is used more for rehab than training and her body, as much as a recognition that there is a future career to plan as well, has told her it is time to go. When she was 21, though, her cricket lay before her. She was a high-flying Oxford maths graduate, singled out for a lucrative career in IT. Instead, as a fine hockey player, but a batsman of no great distinction and a sometime wicketkeeper, she announced her intention to transform her game.

She met Mark Lane, the respected long-term coach of the England women's team, who once a week for the next decade, same time, same Guildford nets, instilled into her batsmanship, not just technically, but mentally as well. She developed a pragmatic approach, rarely pretty, but effective. Lane ensured she kept her hockey grounding, using the bottom-handed nature of that sport to her advantage as a source of power rather than as a hindrance.

She was also able to use her intelligence and intellect in the advancement of her art.Or perhaps that should be science. Lane has said that her game has been basedon "doggedness and determination". But it was her ability, he added, "to think severalovers ahead and work the field around" that took her to the verytop.

Taylor has conceded that her mathematical skills, even if only the most rudimentary of them, were an advantage here. "I don't know if other people do it," she told Berry, "but when I'm batting at my best I have a 3D awareness of the shape of the field and where the spaces are – I used to play chess at Montessori school. Maths, I think, has given me more controlandconfidence when I'm calculating the runs per over we have to score." So while she has developed power to her game, she has, at her peak, worked the angles and manipulated the ball around the field to greater effect than any contemporary.

I had known of Taylor and her ability for some time before actually seeing her play. We had met at functions and after one in particular enjoyed, along with some of her team-mates, a raucous time in a Soho bar. But I had not at that point acknowledged that the women'sgamewas anything beyond a sideshow. Then came England's Ashes win in Australia, and the World T20 in England – the semi-final of which, at The Oval, produced one of the most riveting, compelling cricket matches I have seen, as England chased a challenging target to beat Australia thrillingly and progress to the final. Taylor made an unbeaten 76 from 53 deliveries, clobbering the winning boundary over long on.

That day I became a convert to women's cricket, and in no small part can thank Taylor for that. She scored more than 1,000 runs in 15 Tests with four hundreds; played in 126 one-day internationals, with 4,101 runs and eight centuries including 156 not out, the highest ODI score made at Lord's by anyone, man or woman; and took part in 27 international Twenty20s as well. She was Ashes winner, double World Cup winner, Wisden cricketer of the year, and the world's leading player. Not bad for someone once deemed "average" by her coach. In her persistence lies a lesson to us all.