2023 White Ferns Tour Of Sri Lanka: Series Preview
White Ferns cricket is back with a tour of Sri Lanka starting early next week. Three ODIs and three T20Is will be played, with the ODI games falling into the Women's Championship where Aotearoa is currently ranked third. White Ferns have a 3-1 record with a couple games washed out and Sri Lanka is ranked fifth with a 2-5 record having also enjoyed some washed out cricket.
Conditions in Sri Lanka and ongoing White Ferns woes make this an intriguing tour for Aotearoa. Despite a change in coach and apparently changing the whole vibe around White Ferns, their T20 World Cup campaign featured the same fragility and wobbles as the ODI World Cup a year prior. Two different World Cups with two different coaches and White Ferns crumbled under pressure in both events.
Outside of World Cups, White Ferns can beat nations like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in Aotearoa. Touring those nations offers a different challenge though and how Aotearoa adapts to Sri Lankan conditions will be crucial to their success. Fortunately, White Ferns spinners are fantastic and the spin-quartet will be the most important bowlers for Aotearoa on tour.
NZC contracts don't mean anything to kiwi cricket fans, so let's ignore the consistent weirdness of those contracts and zone in on squad selection. Initially Jess Kerr was in the squad to tour Sri Lanka but she suffered an injury and was replaced by Aotearoa's best spinner of the past decade in Leigh Kasperek.
J-Kerr should be in every White Ferns squad as she is the second best seamer behind Lea Tahuhu and is currently the best Aotearoa bowler in the Women's Champioship (10w @ 10.1avg/2.9rpo). For spinny conditions, Kasperek should have been in the squad ahead of other seamers like Hannah Rowe, Rosemary Mair and Molly Penfold.
Penfold, for example is still being selected on potential. Penfold has not taken a wicket in six of her last eight innings and is a consistent White Fern while averaging 35.9 in List-A and 41.1 in T20 cricket. There are various holes to highlight in Rowe and Mair's mahi as well, but the concept of Kasperek missing out on selection for spinny conditions while bowlers who have barely snared domestic wickets are selected is peak White Ferns antics.
Unfortunately it took an injury to J-Kerr for Kasperek to be selected. Now Kasperek joins Amelia Kerr, Eden Carson and Fran Jonas in a funky group of spinners touring Sri Lanka. There is a strong case to be made that all four of these spinners are better bowlers than Rowe, Mair and Penfold. This is at least nicely suited to Sri Lankan conditions.
All four offer their own twist on spin bowling. A-Kerr is a leggy who spins the ball both ways. Carson and Kasperek are both offies, yet Carson is quicker and Kasperek's has quirky variations. Jonas is an accurate lefty. A-Kerr is also a world-class batter right now, Kasperek is a fabulous all-round cricketer and Carson is developing into the best White Ferns fielder
This is a point of difference for White Ferns and the spin-quartet should be celebrated as a fundamental strength of White Ferns cricket. Coach Sawyer is unlikely to deploy all four spinners in one game though as his selectios over the past year have been just as baffling as ol' mate Bob before him. All four can play in the same team though with A-Kerr batting up the order and the other three playing ahead of seamers.
The batting group could be boosted by Bernadine Bezuidenhout's aggressive strokes, perhaps Georgia Plimmer reaches a development checkpoint by stacking up lots of runs. Brooke Halliday can always get a start to her innings but she is yet to do anything consistently for White Ferns. There could be a batter who bolsters the run-scoring, yet White Ferns batting revolves around A-Kerr, Suzie Bates, Sophie Devine and Maddy Green.
A-Kerr's batting is better than her bowling and Green has finally tapped into her potential. The rise of Green has balanced out the loss of Satterthwaite, although Green now has to find consistency in her run-scoring across both formats to help White Ferns win. Green is second behind Bates for White Ferns runs in the Women's Championship and has built a sneaky good T20 hitting record where her strokes down the ground shine.
Bates was also the leading White Ferns batter at the T20 World Cup and her resurgence after bouncing back from injury has coincided with a rather dramatic dip in form for Devine. Devine has a Women's Championship record of 103 runs @ 17.1avg and she could only manage 19 runs @ 6.3avg/61sr in a T20 World Cup campaign where she was yanked up and down the line up.
This is Devine's worst year of T20I batting since 2008. Devine hasn't hit a six this year in T20Is either, the first time this has happened since 2008. Devine hasn't played an ODI this year while averaging below 30 in the three years prior, after averaging 30+ in seven consecutive years. Devine didn't bowl at the T20 World Cup which was part of those woes and she has 2w @ 46.5avg/3.9rpo in the Women's Championship.
Heading into Sri Lanka, the reputation of Devine is greater than her actual production with bat and ball. Devine appeared jaded at the T20 World Cup and while she is a fine leader full of mana, under her captaincy White Ferns have been fragile in back to back World Cups. There is enough batting class and spin funk for White Ferns to win in Sri Lanka without Devine dominating. Devine's leadership will be immense though, so how she steers this group through Sri Lanka will be just as important as runs and wickets.
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