White Ferns vs South Africa: T20 Squad and T20 World Cup Forecasting
Today, Aotearoa's White Ferns wrap up their ODI series vs South Africa and should be rather desperate to avoid a series sweep. While this series is raising, or furthering a variety of concerns with the quality of this Ferns group, an ODI series against South Africa and this juncture isn't overly relevant in the current landscape other than the White Ferns being together, playing cricket.
The T20 World Cup gets underway later in February and after today's ODI, Aotearoa and South Africa will quickly move into T20I mode. The first of five T20I games will be played on Sunday and a White Ferns T20I squad has been named for both the series vs South Africa and then the T20 World Cup. As far as interesting selections go though, this squad offers none of that as it is essentially the same group from the current ODI squad with Lea Tahuhu coming back into the fold.
Tahuhu replaces Bernadine Bezuidenhout and this is a wee bit weird in itself as Tahuhu is a seamer, while Bezuidenhout opened the batting in the two losses to South Africa. Bezuidenhout had a decent Super Smash with 245 runs @ 27.22avg/108.88sr and that Bezuidenhout opened in these two ODIs, while Lauren Down and Maddy Green were rotated alongside Bezuidenhout is a bit strange.
There are however, too many batswomen in this White Ferns group and with Tahuhu an obvious inclusion, Bezuidenhout makes way. Tahuhu was fairly impressive in the Super Smash, taking 6w @ 22avg/6.28rpo, although in the Women's Big Bash League Tahuhu wasn't really a factor in taking 9w @ 38.33avg/5.94rpo; T20 World Cup is in Australia where WBBL is played.
The effectiveness of Tahuhu will be crucial to their chances of a positive result at the World Cup and diving deeper into Tahuhu's numbers only leaves me eager to see how this plays out. Tahuhu averaged less than 20 in each of her first five years playing T20I cricket, while the last four years have seen Tahuhu average over 20 in three of the four years. The 2018/19 WBBL saw Tahuhu take 14w @ 21.35avg/5.92rpo so who knows how Tahuhu is going to perform and we may gain further insight in these five T20I games vs South Africa.
As one would expect, the best kiwi T20 players are in this World Cup squad...
Five of the top-six bowlers from the Super Smash; Jess Kerr, Amelia Kerr, Leigh Kasperek, Anna Peterson and Sophie Devine.
Four of the top-five batswomen from the Super Smash: Katie Perkins, Suzie Bates, Sophie Devine and Rachel Priest.
Throw in the WBBL crew in Amelia Kerr, Green, Devine, Bates, Priest, Tahuhu and Katey Martin and this White Ferns squad is nicely prepared for a T20 World Cup in Australia. What I find super interesting though is that there is this wider idea I've been exploring of the White Ferns decline in international cricket, which features some under-whelming performances in major tournaments.
Aotearoa finished 2nd in the first two T20 World Cups (2009, 2010) and since then they haven't made the final. The last three T20 World Cups have seen the White Ferns fail to make the knockout stage in 2014 and 2018, which means that Aotearoa finished third in their group as women's format rolls from group stage to semi-finals. 2016 saw the Ferns lose to West Indies in the semi-final.
Different format and all, similar idea though as the ODI World Cup as the White Ferns finished 4th in 2013 and 5th in 2017. Those are the two worst results for Aotearoa in a Women's World Cup and while women's cricket has steadily gained international traction, offering a far more competitive landscape, these results aren't reflective of the supreme talent in recent White Ferns groups.
Aotearoa are in Group A for this T20 World Cup, along with Australia and India. That's reason to be concerned for starts as the last few years have seen Aotearoa struggle against the big-three nations and two of those three teams are in their group. If the Ferns are unable to get points against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, then this idea of the White Ferns decline hit a dramatic nek level.
Hence, the T20 World Cup is crucial for the White Ferns and women's cricket in Aotearoa. As is always the case, Aotearoa has the players to be competitive in a semi-final or final and the ceiling for the White Ferns in any major tournament is to win the whole thing. Any cricket team built around Sophie Devine and Suzie Bates is capable of winning a World Cup, let alone a team that also has world-class performers such as Amelia Kerr and Lea Tahuhu.
Right now though, the White Ferns are 0-2 vs South Africa and fighting off a 0-3 sweep. Then comes a T20 series against South Africa who will obviously be confident in themselves and how they are building towards the T20 World Cup, which raises the intensity of this series for Aotearoa. The White Ferns can either get things on track in alignment with the required level of play to win a T20 World Cup, or continue these low key woes and go into a World Cup having been touched up by a South African team who should be level with Aotearoa heading into the World Cup.
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