Kate Cross says she is “struggling to get [her] head around” missing out on England’s 50-over World Cup squad, describing the call as “savage” and admitting the news is yet to settle.
The 33-year-old seamer has been a mainstay of the ODI attack since the last global tournament and claimed her 100th one-day wicket earlier this summer. Even so, England have opted for an extra spinner for Indian conditions, leaving Cross on the outside looking in.
“It’s hard to take, because I don’t feel like I’ve done enough to deserve not being on that plane,” she told the No Balls podcast she co-hosts with Alex Hartley. “Everyone that is a current player who doesn’t get selected is going to disagree with selections and going to think that they should be there.”
Cross was first omitted for a rain-reduced ODI at Lord’s last month and did not return for the series decider in Durham. That proved a hint of what was coming, yet the official announcement on Thursday still jarred. “There’s so much for me to get my head around, and I haven’t processed it,” she said. “It’s still really raw.”
The decision leaves England with just three specialist quicks – Em Arlott, Lauren Bell and Lauren Filer – plus Nat Sciver-Brunt, who is expected to bowl once she completes her comeback from a knee niggle. The trade-off is a fourth spinner, a call head coach Charlotte Edwards feels suits sub-continent pitches.
Cross, though, cannot help wondering when she fell down the pecking order. “But what I’m really struggling to get my head around is it all feels like it’s happened so quickly that I’ve just clearly fallen out of favour with Lot [England coach Charlotte Edwards]. That’s a hard bit to get my head [around]. If I’d had 14-18 months of being pretty average at cricket and not performing in an England shirt, then I think I’d understand it a bit more.”
In truth her last 12 months have been mixed. A stress-fractured back kept her out of most of the winter, and her returns against India – 0 for 58 in Worcester and 1 for 54 at Taunton – hardly screamed match-winner. She concedes as much. “I guess to an extent I have, because I didn’t have the best summer in an England shirt and I had a really tough winter and missed out a lot through the back injury… Being in the best XI [is] a different conversation, but [not even] being on the plane… It feels savage.”
Selection setbacks are part of professional sport, a point Cross knows only too well. “It’s what you sign up for,” she added. “You don’t get to have those amazing highs without having these real lows, but it doesn’t make the lows any easier knowing that they’re going to be there. I probably had a good indication that I wasn’t going to be in this… But it doesn’t make it any easier.”
With the World Cup beginning in Mumbai in early November, England believe they have picked a squad that can thrive on slow, turning surfaces. Cross, meanwhile, will play domestic cricket and stay ready, just in case plans change.
