Our White Ferns are creeping under the World Cup radar and with Suzie Bates, Amy Satterthwaite and Sophie Devine in their team, they are as good as any other team in the competition. Those three are stars of women's cricket and will be crucial to Aotearoa's success over in England, yet for the White Ferns to win it all, they will need strong contributions from the rest of their squad. So who is most likely to stand up and lend a helping hand to Bates, Satterthwaite and Devine? 

Rachel Priest (Wellington)

Of the three players I've picked, Priest is the veteran and isn't quite the low key player that the other two are. Priest has been a staple at the top of the order for Aotearoa and while we can expect her glove-work behind the stumps to be of the highest quality, how Priest performs with the bat will go a long way towards dictating how successful the Ferns could be. 

Priest will bat alongside Bates, which immediately opens up opportunities as any opposition will highlight Bates as a key wicket. Satterthwaite is likely to bat No.3, so Priest is - in theory - the least threatening batter in that top-three. Priest won't need to dominate, that's what the others are for but where Priest will be crucial is if she can score 30-40 with a strike-rate of 100 more often than not. Priest has been building nicely towards the World Cup, hitting 77 in the last Rose Bowl game, followed by scores of 5, 22 and 47 in three one-day games for Berkshire Women over in England.

With two centuries and eight half-centuries to her name, Priest can definitely fill the void if Bates or Satterthwaite don't fire which will obviously be handy but with such steady batters in that line up, Priest could be given freedom to attack. That's where Priest can put pressure back on the bowlers, taking attention away from Aotearoa's stars.

Leigh Kasperek (Otago)

As I wrote when the White Ferns' World Cup squad was announced; teenager Amelia Kerr got all the headlines, but it's Leigh Kasperek who you wanna watch out for. Kasperek's record in international cricket is rather bonkers as she's averaging 17.23 with the ball in ODI cricket and 9.36 in T20 cricket, with a strike-rate of a wicket every 33 deliveries she bowls in ODIs. She hasn't played a whole lot of international cricket and was ruled out of the Rose Bowl via injury, although international teams will know what Kasperek is capable of after finishing tied with Sophie Devine as the leading wicket-taker at the Women's World T20 last year.

Kasperek took 9 wickets @ 10.11avg in India, so how she adjusts to English conditions will be interesting. I suspect Kasperek will be called upon to do plenty of work as the No.1 spinner, especially as opposition teams will likely try to target spinners with an eye on targets well over 200. There's no reason why Kasperek won't bowl her 10 overs every game and if she can consistently take a couple wickets, conceding less than 3.50rpo, then the Ferns will be able to build a strong pace attack around Kasperek.

Before getting injured over in Australia in February, Kasperek was thorughly enjoying her kiwi summer for Otago. Prior to the T20 in which she got injured, Kasperek took 12 wickets in six one-day domestic games and 5 wickets in three domestic T20 games and she took 2+ wickets in seven of her last eight domestic innings with the ball.

Holly Huddleston (Auckland)

Lea Tahuhu will lead the White Ferns bowling attack, with Bates and Devine also offering some world-class seam stuff. Swiftly emerging as a potent seam threat has been Holly Huddleston and I get the feeling that opposition teams won't quite be ready for Huddleston, let alone the entire bowling attack that the Ferns could roll out.

In 18 ODI games, Huddleston has 28 wickets @ 20.32avg and just as Priest has been doing the cricket thing over in England for Berkshire, Huddleston has been playing for Middlesex. In three games for Middlesex, Huddleston has figures of 2/29, 2/22 and 4/24, giving her 8 wickets in just three games. 

After making her debut in 2014, Huddleston took 6 wickets in six games. That however included a 5-for and she went wicket-less in four of those six games before not making another ODI appearance until October 2016. A switch was flipped when she returned to the White Ferns in 2016, as she has taken a wicket in all but two of the 12 games she has played since and she has taken 2+ wickets in five of those games.

There's plenty of room for Huddleston to go unnoticed in this White Ferns bowling attack. We can safely assume that Tahuhu, Bates, Satterthwaite and Devine will all feature with the ball with the only funk coming in how many overs Bates and Satterthwaite are required to bowl. We can kinda bank on Tahuhu, Huddleston and Kasperek bowling their full bunch of overs and I'd put Devine in there as well. With Huddleston likely to take the new-ball, she'll form a fearsome opening pair with Tahuhu which opposition teams will struggle to score freely against. Don't be surprised to see Huddleston finish this tournament near the top of the wicket-taker rankings; I've got a feelin'.

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