For the England women's cricket team, the beginning of the slog to the summit can probably be traced back to 5 May 2010, a disastrous day on St Kitts, when they played Australia in a group match of the World Twenty20, Murphy's Law kicked in, and anything that could go wrong did, and did so in spades. The result was the tightest imaginable, with scores finishing level, a super-over eliminator doing likewise, and Australia deemed winners on countback because of the single six struck earlier in the match by their batsman Jess Cameron.

It does not however tell the story of the complete mess England made of that match, in which Clare Taylor, the world's leading female batsman, was run out without facing a ball and then unaccountably flagged through to the wicketkeeper the first ball of the super over. Nor does it tell of the England captain Charlotte Edwards, not a regular bowler, deciding to bowl the last over of the match herself, with eight runs needed, sending down a high full toss first ball, which was dispatched to the boundary.

It was an appallingly executed match by a team who held the World Cup and the World T20 titles and were strong favourites to retain the latter. Having lost that match, and deflated by the performance, they then lost to West Indies and were eliminated from the competition having not even reached the semi-finals.

Since then, progress in T20 cricket, the best format for women's cricket, has been little short of astonishing. In July of that year, they twice were beaten at home by New Zealand, but since then, they have lost only twice – to Australia in Canberra last year, and to West Indies in their last home game of last summer – in 33 matches.

It is a run of success quite possibly unprecedented by any British team, male or female, in any sport, and it makes Edwards arguably the nation's most prolific leader of all. From it Sarah Taylor has emerged, in her capacity as a wicketkeeper-batsman of genuine first-class standard, as arguably the best female cricketer of all time, and the astounding Lydia Greenway as its finest fielder. England have kept ahead of the game and intend to continue doing so.

There is a story here of the benefits of proper funding and investment, a challenging mission statement, massively increased security and status for the players, increased participation levels and therefore more competition for places, and, crucially, a top flight academy and performance programme.

Players are not yet centrally contracted (although that may come eventually, the current fear being only that there simply would not be enough to do) but most are in cricket-related employment for 100 days of the year. Seven players work as coaches and ambassadors for Chance to Shine, the organisation that takes cricket into schools, and 12, including Sarah Taylor and Dani Wyatt, are on the MCC groundstaff from April to September, as part of the MCC Women Young Cricketers programme, delivered by the England Women's coach Mark Lane, a superb coach utterly empathetic to the demands of female cricket.

From cricket, when factoring in touring fees, allowances and match fees that can be doubled by winning, Clare Connor, the former England captain and now the England and Wales Cricket Board's director of women's cricket, reckons that for 100 days pro-rata, the top players' earnings are more than in any other female team sport in the UK.

The support of the ECB has been crucial. Since Connor presented a paper to the board several years ago, everything, within reason, has been put in place, to the envy of other less well resourced nations. The women's game is flourishing. Edwards and others have been involved in Chance to Shine since 2008 and by this year they had introduced more than one million children to the game of which 48% have been girls, 160,000 of them this year alone. In a decade, the number of clubs with women's sections has grown from 93 to 560. Every one of the 39 county cricket boards has age group girls teams at U17, U15 and U13 level. Connor has at her disposal a team of 12 selectors and scouts on a regional basis, with a sophisticated talent identification system and data base.

Competition to get into the national side is fierce. In Connor's time, up until 2005, there was little: the team was all but set in stone. Now there is a stringent path to follow, involving the best identified 52 over-16 county players competing in the Super 4s programme, in which they are each allocated one of four equally balanced teams who then play each other in both T20 and 50 over matches. Connor estimates they now have 20 players competing for squad places, each capable of playing in a final eleven. Such is the depth of ability that this summer the Academy team beat the national teams of West Indies and Pakistan.

The drive to improve has been relentless. In preparation for global tournaments, England and the academy have played as much cricket as possible in different environments including Sri Lanka. Their training camps are intensive and include strength and conditioning, skills, nutrition, spin, diving techniques in the field, sweeping and all the small things that make a difference. In short, they are successful in no small part because they are better prepared.

But herein lies one overriding problem: the better they become, the less challenged they are. Two teams – England and Australia – dominate, with West Indies, India and New Zealand a tier below, and the remainder below them.

When Australia's men's team reached that level of domination they included their A team in their own tournaments and concocted a game against the Rest of the World. For the integrity of women's international cricket the ICC, through investment, needs to close the competitive gap, through following the England model, helping create more bilateral cricket and robust domestic competitions.

That, though, will not stop the England drive to remain at the top. The more input they give them, says Connor, the more they want. "They are hungry for success. It is what drives them."