Lanning thinks Australia v Australia A better than red-ball domestic matches for Test preparation

Christchurch : Australia captain Meg Lanning believes that matches between Australia and Australia A teams will be better preparation for Test matches, claiming that the domestic system may not be ready to host red-ball matches for womens cricket. After the thrilling women’s Ashes Test at the Manuka Oval in Canberra, where England snatched a draw with just one wicket in hand, calls have grown for more red-ball matches for womens cricket at both the domestic and international level.

“I think it’s a delicate one. There’s a lot of work (that) goes into domestic cricket, the WBBL and the WNCL — we’re not even at 12 games in the WNCL yet in terms of the 50-over format. I think there’s probably some other priorities in terms of getting that 12 games in the WNCL, ensuring the WB’L’s really strong before we start thinking about that,” Meg was quoted as saying b‘ ‘The Sydney Morning Hera’d’ on Sunday.

“This is my personal opinion, but I don’t think at the moment that’s a great idea to introduce (long-form) into domestic cricket. I think there could be room for Australia versus Australia A, something like that to give players an opportunity to practice the red-ball format against the best players in the country. But I think it’d be a pretty big challenge to introduce it domestically,” added Meg, who will be leading Australia in the Women’s Cricket World Cup next month in New Zealand.

Giving Australia v Australia A, an intra-match where international cricketers will play against each other, her support as preparation for Tests, Meg remarked, “That’s something that is possible over the next couple of years. Maybe down the track, it might be different, but this is my personal view. I think if we focus on getting some more WNCL games and keeping the WBBL strong, that’s going to give us a good foundation and potentially the Australia v Australia A games will give us some more exposure to the red-ball format which we need.”

Meg signed off by saying that more exposure to Tests will help the team in dealing with situations akin to what happened in the women’s Ashes Test. “The more we play the longer format the b’tter we’ll get at understanding how that format flows and what sort of scores you need to declare with, how much time you need to bowl teams out, all that sort of stuff is someihing we’re pretty unfamiliar with.”

“So I certainly would look forward to being in another situation where we have to think on our feet and come up with something a little bit different.”

–IANS