Kate Cross believes a crop of talented young England cricketers herald a "really exciting time" for the squad as they prepare for this year's Women's Twenty20 World Cup in Bangladesh.
England will attempt to follow their T20 clean sweep of Pakistan by securing a 2-0 one-day international series win over the tourists in Chelmsford, east of London, on Wednesday.
England then face series in both white-ball formats against New Zealand and Ireland before heading to Bangladesh for the T20 World Cup in October, where they will look to dethrone champions and arch-rivals Australia.
"We've got a lot of youngsters coming through now," medium-fast bowler Cross said.
"I think the way Dani Gibson's stepped up in that T20 series (against Pakistan), opening the bowling and playing the role of a No 7 that we'd want is really impressive...When you've got someone like (England's) Nat Sciver-Brunt as your blueprint to follow for the world's best allrounder, then it's nice to have someone to role-model that."
The 32-year-old Cross, a veteran of 88 international appearances across all formats, added: "I think the way Lauren Bell has worked really hard on becoming a better bowler and trying to swing the ball both ways now, not just be an inswinging bowler and reduce her predictability for power-play bowling and stuff...The way she's gone out there and tried to do that in games is a really brave thing to do."
But Cross said it was important England maintained a ruthless edge throughout matches following last week's unconvincing 37-run ODI win against Pakistan in Derby.
"That's something we saw glimpses of in the Ashes (in 2023)," she said. "Obviously to go toe-to-toe with the best team in the world for the last 10 years (Australia) and beat them in two white-ball series was an incredible achievement...so we're doing a lot of really good things.
"But it's how do we keep that mindset positive all the time? That's something we're disappointed with from Derby, that we could have been a little bit more ruthless in some of those moments."