The World Blind Games is fast coming into focus, and we’ve been counting down the days in the England Women’s Visually Impaired team. Of course, I’m nervous – but I’m really looking forward to it.
A few of us did a tour of the West Indies in July 2018, but this will be the first time at least half the squad will have played against another international team. It's different having a home series and it’s a great first fixture against Australia. They’ve got a new team and they’re an interesting prospect. We don’t know quite what to expect from them. We’ve been trying to do some scouting online to get us prepared as best we can.
Our other opponents, India, have just done a bilateral series with Nepal. We’ve been keeping up to date with those scorecards and we’ve got some idea what to expect. They’re a far more established and experienced team.
Ultimately, we won’t know what the opposition is like until we get there, but we’re not going to this competition to make up the numbers. We’re going there to give it a good go.
This is the first time there’s been a women’s cricket competition in the World Blind Games. The majority of the England squad are old hands, but there are a few new faces in there too. So we have the best of both worlds: a good selection of more experienced players and a high skill level across the entire group.
The management committee picked the final squad of 15 in early April and we’ve had a huge number of training camps in the build-up. That four-month run-in has been incredibly useful. We’ve been able to get together and work on lots of parts of our game.
The hope is that events like this bring more and more women into disability cricket. When we came together earlier this year, we thought there was an opportunity to generate more interest. We’ve got a relatively small pool of players to pick from but competing at the World Blind Games will be a big help in getting a few more players involved.
Domestically, we play mixed-sex cricket and with a different ball to the international game. There are two tiers in the national league, supported by smaller regional leagues below that. We’ve a couple of hundred players, but there’s always room for more.
Excitingly, it certainly feels like we’re a bit more visible now. The England Women’s Visually Impaired team is still quite new, so we still haven’t got the levels of publicity we’d like, but it does feel like it’s a new chapter and we’re getting more on the world stage now, especially with the women’s cricket final of the World Blind Games being live streamed. It’s an exciting time to be involved.
When we walk out against Australia, I’ll be nervous, excited… but never complacent. Fixtures like this are special. They’re always something to look forward to – and I know the squad as a whole can’t wait to get started.