Time to bring on the A-game

It was a disappointing loss against England and I have to say some poor fielding cost us. We leaked about 20 runs on the field unnecessarily and the game slipped from our hands there. The pitch was slow and aided the spinners – England’s did better obviously.

Among the top teams, New Zealand have played England and Australia in the World Cup so far and I have to say that their bowling attacks are similar – they both have very disciplined units and good allrounders like Shelley Nitschke, Lisa Sthalekar and Charlotte Edwards. Our strength I’d say is the ability of our pace bowlers to get some nip out of the pitches – Nicola Browne and Sophie Devine manage to get bounce and swing off the tracks. What has let us down is our inconsistency.

If you see a pattern in the run-scoring in this tournament, you’ll see the teams that have done well have firstly been able to adapt to the different ground conditions: the North Sydney Oval helps fast bowlers, while Bankstown is slower, where 180 would be a good total; secondly a top-order batsman, like Anjum Chopra against Australia, has stayed on till 40 overs to steer the batting. We have that sort of batsmen, who can stay long and score at a quick rate and when we get it right we are a very strong batting team.

We meet India on Tuesday and we know we need to be on the top of our game. People are saying India’s win against Australia was an ‘upset’ of sorts but really you can never underestimate a top-ranked team even if they are in a transitional phase. Any of the top four in this World Cup can beat the rest.

I’d like to also say that the most impressive teams on this World Cup for me have been the relatively inexperienced ones – Pakistan, West Indies and South Africa. The West Indies bowlers bowl really good line and lengths while the others are also very committed on the field. They are young teams, full of enthusiasm and it’s been a revelation watching them play.