With the women's Cricket World Cup less than two months away, several key New Zealand players have arrived in Chennai to ramp up their preparations for the global event, to be hosted jointly by India and Sri Lanka.
Seven cricketers in the 10-member team are centrally contracted and will undergo a two-week camp at the Chennai Super Kings academy here under head coach Ben Sawyer and assistant coach Craig McMillan.
The seven contracted players include seam all-rounder Jess Kerr, young opener Georgia Plimmer and all-rounder Brooke Halliday, while Izzy Sharp, Flora Devonshire and Emma McLeod are the emerging players.
The White Ferns are the current Women's T20 World Cup holders and would be aiming to secure a rare double by winning the prestigious event, starting September 30.
Sawyer said the decision to organise training in India was taken keeping in mind weather conditions back home.
"It's currently winter in New Zealand, there's no cricket and we're nearly two months out of the World Cup. To have that prep time in India, we've been able to bring seven contracted players and then three of our players of interest along," Sawyer was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.
"So, the girls that we think will play lots of cricket in India in the future as well." The management is also taking the advice of High Performance Sport New Zealand and a dietitian on how to best acclimatise to the subcontinental conditions.
"We've actually tried to train really hard the last five days and I guess in a way not to recover, try to just do it naturally and let your bodies adapt to the conditions," said Sawyer.
"And now we're playing the three games, we'll try and recover really well. But yeah, we've actually tried to expose ourselves as much to the heat as we can." After the training stint in India, the group fly to Dubai for the One-dayers against England and the warm-ups ahead of the Women's Cricket World Cup against South Africa and India in Bengaluru.
"It's hugely beneficial and even more so this year because we've had no official matches since February," Sawyer added.
"So to get these three one-day games in Chennai, to get two or three games in Dubai against England, a really strong opposition, will be great and then we also get the two World Cup warm-up games. So that's seven or eight games we're going to get in similar conditions. Yeah, that's just huge for us." New Zealand open their campaign against trans-Tasman rivals Australia in Indore on October 1.
This report includes content sourced from Press Trust of India (PTI), edited for clarity and context.
