Anya's Sri Lanka Diary: Part Two
Anya Shrubsole has been keeping us up to date with what’s been happening behind the scenes of England’s current tour of Sri Lanka.
After winning the ODI series, England were looking for more of the same in the IT20 series. Before Sunday’s first match, Anya sent us part two of her Tour Diary:
“We were delighted to win the ODI series three-nil! It’s been a ruthless display and that’s what we’ve got to be happiest about.
“It’s honestly been so hot out here that, while it looks a comfortable scoreline, we’ve had to work incredibly hard to bring that around. The effort you need to put in in the field is immense, but that’s what we train for and it’s great to get the rewards.
“Sri Lanka are a difficult team to play against. They’re very patient and it becomes a war of attrition. They weren’t overly keen on playing too many shots with the bat and bowling against such a low-risk strategy is hard work. Especially when you’re melting! But we kept our discipline, kept our concentration and did our jobs.
“Our batters have looked in top form. Amy Jones, especially, is hitting it so well. She’s grown so much over the last year or so and that’s amazing to see.
“When you’re trying to win games you can sometimes become incredibly focused on the here and now and forget about development – you just do what you need to do to win – but Amy has improved her game and we’re really happy to see that.
“We’ve still got three T20s to come, which is important because we don’t get the chance to play too many T20s and the Women’s T20 World Cup in Australia is less than a year away. We want to find our best XI, find our way of playing and go one better from our performance in last year’s tournament.
“Hopefully we can keep up the momentum, win three more games (making it 10 on the bounce!) and come back full of confidence ready to take on the West Indies!”