White Ferns x T20 World Cup: Setting The Scene
Tomorrow evening marks the start of a rather important major tournament for Aotearoa's White Ferns as the fire up their T20 World Cup campaign. Any time you have two of mother Aotearoa's greatest cricketers in your team with Sophie Devine and Suzie Bates once again leading the White Ferns charge, the aim has to be finals cricket. That's not just a case of making the most of such talents, it's a legit expectation based purely on how good Devine and Bates are.
Having followed the Ferns closely over the past few years though, this T20 World Cup feels like a fork in the road ... maybe just in my mind with how I view matters. I can see a scenario where the White Ferns rise to the occasion, led by Devine and Bates with a variety of other contributions from players (Amelia Kerr, Rachel Priest, Katey Martin, Maddy Green etc) who have the legit potential to shake this World Cup up.
Lining up against that, is this trend of the White Ferns not only being under-whelming, but slipping in a cricketing landscape that is swiftly increasing in popularity and competition. I've tried to refrain from being overly dramatic about this and have waited for serious trends to emerge, all of which has been described via the Niche Cache. The recent series' vs South Africa can perhaps best reflect this fork in the road kinda vibe as the kiwis were torched in an ODI series, then flipped that into torching South Africa in the T20I series.
Those are the two sides of the White Ferns that we are working with for this T20 World Cup. Positivity stems from the White Ferns performing well in the relevant format, enabling us to push away the negative vibes from the ODI series and stick to the T20 stuff. These two sides do however sum up the White Ferns woes and legit hope that they still have the right pieces to aim for a World Cup final.
With Australia and India in their group, it's super realistic that the Ferns won't crack the semi-finals. I'm laying that down as an easy way to assess this World Cup as making it to the semi-finals and beyond would be an emphatic success, anything less would encapsulate the how stagnant the Ferns have been since falling from their perch among the big-three. Losing only to India and Australia would be alright though, if the Ferns lose to Sri Lanka and/or Bangladesh, then I'll be typing the unfortunate 'wtf happened to the White Ferns' yarn.
There are greater implications, not in terms of pressure on the players but with how the team's performance in this World Cup could reflect how seriously nations are taking women's cricket. With far more resources, the big-three in India, Australia and England are well ahead of other nations in terms of investment and on-field performance. Other nations are catching up, quickly and Aotearoa via NZC has made some nice moves that can be viewed as 'meh' or landmark moments depending how you view equality in sport.
For example, I'm of the view that far more can be done for women's sport and rather easily. This differs from how minor moves to invest further in women's sport are celebrated by governing bodies and media as being more than what they are. Bring this back around to the White Ferns and while this has plenty of nuance within, women's cricket currently reflects where investment and resource are being laid out for female cricketers internationally. How the White Ferns perform among this landscape of varying degrees of investment, will help us understand the impact of NZC's support and resource.
In their first outing, Aotearoa take on Sri Lanka. In their two warm-up games, Sri Lanka defeated England and lost to South Africa, making it hard to sort out what to expect from Sri Lanka. Compounding matters are the margins of the results as Sri Lanka lost by 41 runs to South Africa and then defeated England by 10 wickets.
All of which does make this a lovely game to start the World Cup as the kiwis have to start near their best to get a couple points from this game. Aotearoa's warm-up games were a loss to England in which only Bates and Martin passed 20 runs, then victory over Thailand. Again, hard to build any forecasting ideas from these games and it's all about anticipation for the first outing against Sri Lanka.
Those warm-up games featured the whole squad and things were tinkered with for the game against Thailand, so I'll refer to the England game in conjunction with the South Africa series to suss out the probable batting line up. Expect Priest to be the wicket-keeper, even with Martin in the middle order (Martin cracked 57 @ 129.54sr vs England) and this leaves us with; Devine, Priest, Bates, Green, Amelia Kerr and Martin.
That leaves Katie Perkins and Lauren Down as likely surplus, with Perkins a nifty squad member as she can cover a variety of batting positions. At this point, I reckon Jess Kerr should be a certain selection in the bowling group, although deciding between Kerr, Holly Huddleston and Rosemary Mair will be niggly. Hayley Jensen offers strong all-round skills and should be in the 1st 11, then Leigh Kasperek and Anna Peterson compete for spin overs.
My 1st 11 would be: Devine, Priest, Bates, Green, Amelia Kerr, Martin, Jensen, Kasperek, Huddleston, Tahuhu, Jess Kerr.
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Peace and love 27.