Email This Article To Someone!

Finally after two and a half years of intense fitness and cricket training we jetted off to South Africa on Sunday for the Women’s World Cup Qualifiers. The qualifiers were due to take place in Pakistan in November last year but were cancelled due to political unrest in the country.

Although the squad were disappointed about the postponement we put it behind us and continued our indoor cricket training under coach Miriam Grealey and assistant coach Thinus Fourie. We also continued our weekly fitness sessions with physical trainer Rachel Ormrod who ensured we were in top shape for the tournament.

This is a very important tournament for us to participate in as gaining a place in the final means automatic qualification for the next World Cup, which will take place in Australia in March 2009. Bearing this in mind we have been training extremely hard and as a result are confident getting to the final.

Although the tournament, which will be held in Stellenbosch, will take place from 18th to 24th February, we headed out a week earlier for practise and warm-up matches. Ten of the squad were in South Africa for the World Cup 3 years ago so most of us knew what to expect regarding the climate and playing conditions.

We were all very tired after the long journey we had encountered so took things easy on Monday by doing a light fielding session at the Sahara Oval, St. Georges were we will be based for the warm-up week.

On Tuesday we were a bit disappointed to awake to rainy overcast conditions as we had thought we’d left the rain back at home in Dublin! Although our training session was interrupted a couple of times due to the rain the sun finally came out and we were able to have a proper outdoor training session for the first time since September. Afterwards we all headed to the beach to cool down from the hot sun!

We headed off to the NMMU on Wednesday to play our first match since August against an Eastern Provinces boys development XI. The standard was quite high and the boys were very strong batters so they got off to a great start and posted a good score. Although we lost the match a lot of positives came from it and we now know the areas to concentrate on before our next match on Friday against the Eastern Provinces Women’s XI.

Thursday brought us back to the Sahara Oval were we spent a 4 hour training session in the scorching heat rectifying a few discrepancies that arose from Wednesday’s match. This was the hottest day so far and it took a lot out of the squad but Physio Nikki Bernie ensured we kept re-hydrated so we’d be well prepared for Friday’s match.