With vital ICC Women’s Championship points at stake in the first three one-day matches, New Zealand arrives in India determined to make progress on the road to the 2017 World Cup. The teams will play five One-Day Internationals and three Twenty20 Internationals at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium here, beginning from Sunday.
“This series is massive for both teams,” New Zealand captain Suzie Bates said here on Thursday. “We’re not here just to focus on the first three games — which count for points — but the whole five ODIs and the three T20Is. We want to win both series and win well.”
It cannot be easy for the tourists, who have to adapt to India arriving from a southern hemisphere winter, but they have been camped here for nearly a week now.
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The Kiwis will also benefit from playing India ‘A’ in a warm-up match here on Friday. “Where I’m from its zero degrees so it’s been a change for some of us,” said the Dunedin-born Bates. “So we’ve come over earlier, and will have had almost 10 days of preparation. We knew we had to get used to the conditions, and to the heat.”
Earlier this year, New Zealand won two of its first three ODIs against England, earning four valuable IWC points. Although the series was lost 3-2,
Bates was pleased with her side’s form.
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“Rachel Priest has been outstanding in both formats as an opener,” she said. “We’ve got Amy Satterthwaite at three who’s been world-class and then we’ve got the likes of Sophie Devine who can hit the ball pretty hard.”
If Devine was a member of the national field hockey team, Bates played basketball at the 2008 Olympic Games. Asked if there were skills transferable to cricket, the 27-year-old laughed.
“It has been a while since I’ve played basketball,” Bates said.
“When you play any sport you play at international level you learn from the pressures and the stress of performing. Mentally it’s one of the biggest gains. We do play warm-up games of basketball. Its open spaces that I think I’m pretty good at. So I guess out on the field that’s helped.”