Cricket World Cup

The ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup is under way in New Zealand. There are, in fact, three world cups happening here over the next two years – cricket, rugby and football – of which this is the first. The Basin Reserve in Wellington is a key venue for the competition, so, last year, I took advantage of an earlybird offer to get tickets for all the Wellington matches for a bargain price.

Then New Zealand moved to Covid red traffic light, and all bets were off. Initially, the restriction was a maximum of 100 spectators per match, so all tickets were refunded. Bugger. Since then, spectator numbers have been relaxed, firstly to 10% of a venue’s maximum capacity, and then, by the look of the crowd on Sunday, quietly ignored altogether. As a previous ticket-holder, I was offered tickets prior to the general public, and so we decided to go and see the White Ferns take on Australia. For the price, I might add, of half the total that I paid for seven matches earlier.

The weather wasn’t that great, but it wasn’t raining, just cloudy and grey and with a nagging Southerly keeping us cool, so we were wearing fleeces in the stands. The White Ferns had won the toss and elected to bowl first. They started out strongly, keeping the run rate down at around 3.5 and taking three early wickets to leave the Aussies on 56/3 in the fifteenth over. It looked like we had them on the run, and WASP had gone up to 54% (from a pre-match 26%). Unfortunately, the Aussies didn’t panic, and just carried on accumulating runs, slowly at first, but picking up the pace for a fourth wicket stand of 57, and a fifth wicket 101, which really did the damage. Even so, with Australia on 214/5, and five overs to go, restricting them to a reasonable score was still feasible.

Or it would have been, if the new batter hadn’t been Gardner. She came in and swatted 48 off 18 deliveries, and even though those around her lost their wickets, this took them to a final score of 269/8, leaving the White Ferns a target of 270 to win.

270 isn’t an impossible target, but unfortunately, Australia also have the best bowling attack in the competition. This probably accounts for them being No.1 in the world rankings, favourites to win the competition, and so far unbeaten. Wickets fell quickly and regularly and it soon became apparent, despite a valiant effort from Satterthwaite batting at 4 and accumulating 44 runs, the failure of the top order (Devine 6 and Melie Kerr 1) meant that too much was asked of the lower batters and bowlers. Wickets fell regularly, and when Satterthwaite was caught it was pretty much all over. The White Ferns were bowled out for 128 in the 31st over.

This leaves them fourth in the round robin stage of the competition, and they really need to win their next three matches. Fortunately, they’re against England and Pakistan, who have so far failed to win a single match between them; less fortunately, they must play South Africa, who are also unbeaten so far.