Staffs women looking for an inspirational season 2011

The sound of beep bop music reverberating around the indoor centre marks the start of the new cricket season for Staffordshire’s women’s cricket team.

After a winter of reconstruction in the managerial side and a combination of fitness training, technical coaching and tactical drills for the players, they are full of confidence to play ‘tough, hard cricket’ and are raring to go to try to fulfil the two aims of their new coach Chris Guest. These are to win promotion at the third attempt and to ‘play with a smile on their face.’

He said: “Our goal is about being promoted, that is our aim this season.”

Staffordshire missed out again on promotion out of the Women’s County Championship division 3 by 0.19 point at the hands of Wales last year. The last two games were very costly, losing them both and the last one especially so; failing to chase down Wales’ modest target of 76, collapsing to 55.

Even though Guest, who has worked with the men’s England head coach Andy Flower, has only seen the players in preseason despite no new additions to the squad, he has full confidence in them achieving promotion this season.

Guest continued: “With the players at our disposal, with the experience they have and the training we have done through the winter it’s a realistic goal and one I think we can achieve, if we go well and stick to the game plan.”

Guest has had to find a new captain for this season as Georgia Elwiss has moved to Sussex in an attempt to relight her England career. He has chosen Kate Dicken who has plenty of experience behind her, captaining England’s indoor team and he hopes she ‘leads from the front.’

Dicken has an idea about what the game plan is for the forthcoming season: “We have a strong squad, and throughout the winter we have worked hard on more specific things so hopefully we can apply that. It’s really about batting in partnerships. That is where we fell short last season and it’s where we are looking to improve.”

She doesn’t believe that too much emphasis should be put on the fact that they have lost their captain and opening bowler.

Dicken said: “It is a big loss, she’s a good player, opened the bowling and was captain but the rest of us will just have to step up to the plate. She’s gone on to bigger and better things.”

The loss of Elwiss and Overseas professional and New Zealand wicketkeeper Rachel Priest has led Guest and coaching staff Leigh Rees and Bob Askey to look at this season as being one to rebuild and be a learning curve for the girls. Last season there was a thought that there was too much responsibility on Priest and England all rounder Danielle Wyatt. Between them they hit 50.3% of the runs.

Rees said: “A problem with having players like Danielle and Rachel is that you can become over reliant on them.

“Last year on the batting side we did become over dependent on Danielle and Rachel. Nobody hit more than 50 in a game other than those two, there were just little cameos. For the run scoring we were relying on them.”

They haven’t been able to replace Priest, but there are a few on the radar. However Rees doesn’t see it has a huge inconvenience to achieve promotion.

He continued: “I don’t think it will be a bad thing and would be quite character building for the squad to stick with what we have got. They will have to take responsibility this season as we won’t be able to rely on Danielle being there every week because she is in the England squad. I think it will help the players to evolve and become better players.”

However they are looking to Wyatt to lead from the front with the bat from her experience at the highest level. Guest said: “Of course we are hoping that Danni’s experience will help she’s played at the highest level, but we can’t just look to her.”

Not only are the girls hoping to have a strong season in the County Championship but also in the Tweny20 competition. This year they will be competing in the Midlands and North division 1 after they won the second division last year on net run rate. Staffs will be facing County Championship division 1 outfits Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, and second division Warwickshire.

Rees knows it will be tough for the girls saying: “Even though we didn’t get promoted last year in the County Championship, we won our Twenty20 group easily. Now we have got play against teams like Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, all are good teams and it will be very hard and be a good test, but we will look to compete with them and do well.”

Staffs have got a long summer ahead, but there’s one thing that is on the coaching staff and player’s minds. Promotion, and they will do anything to achieve this.