New Zealand’s women are sweating through a two-week camp in Chennai, the first stop in a carefully plotted build-up to the Women’s ODI World Cup that starts on 30 September. Ten players – seven centrally contracted, three earmarked for the future – are working under head coach Ben Sawyer and assistant Craig McMillan at the Super Kings Academy, a venue chosen primarily for its slow, biting pitches and unrelenting heat.
“It’s currently winter in New Zealand, there’s no cricket and we’re nearly two months out of the World Cup,” Sawyer told ESPNcricinfo. “So, 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. So, the girls that we think will play lots of cricket in India in the future as well. So yeah, it’s been an amazing experience so far.”
Jess Kerr heads a seam-bowling group hoping to complement the spin department, while Georgia Plimmer and Brooke Halliday – who cracked 38 from 28 in last year’s T20 World Cup final – provide top-order ballast. Joining them are teenagers Izzy Sharp, Flora Devonshire and Emma McLeod, each getting an early taste of Asian conditions that the coaching staff believe will define limited-overs cricket over the next cycle.
Once Chennai wraps, the squad heads home briefly before a proposed stop in Dubai for a short one-day series against England. Those matches, along with two ICC warm-ups, should give New Zealand seven or eight games on slow, warm surfaces before the serious stuff begins.
“Yeah, it’s hugely beneficial and even more so this year because just with the FTP cycle, we’ve had no official matches since February,” Sawyer said. “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.”
Managing bodies, not just tactics, has been a focus. High Performance Sport New Zealand have provided heat-acclimatisation guidance drawn from the Tokyo Olympics, while sports dietitian Dr Kirsty Fairbairn keeps an eye on hydration and recovery plans. The approach, Sawyer explains, is simple: push hard early, force adaptation, then recover smartly once the practice matches arrive.
“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,” he said. “And now we’re playing the three games, we’ll try and recover really well.”
For now, the White Ferns are more concerned with bowling the right lengths and rotating strike on turning tracks than headline predictions. Yet the group looks settled – a blend of proven performers and untested talent, all keen to make an impression before the selectors name the final World Cup squad. The camp in Chennai is only a fortnight, but it could be the stretch that sharpens skills and minds for what lies ahead in India and Sri Lanka.
