Former New Zealand opening batter Craig Cumming has said that one cannot say his country’s women’s team competing in the ICC World Cup has been unlucky, adding that the White Ferns are simply not good enough to compete with the best in the world.
The Sophie Devine-led White Ferns are currently sixth on the league table in the eight-team tournament with just two wins and four defeats. They play their last league game against Pakistan on March 26 but their hopes of making the semifinal knock-outs are as good as over.
The 46-year-old Cumming, who played 11 Tests and 13 ODIs besides being a prolific run-getter in first-class cricket has warned that the team should find a way to improve quickly for future tournaments.
“You can’t say they’ve been unlucky at all,” Cumming said on SENZ Mornings on Monday.
“Unlucky is when you go out and the rain comes in and Duckworth-Lewis is in play and all of a sudden you lose runs. The fact of the matter is, I just think they haven’t quite nailed their game. They’ve sort of been four-fifths in one inning and three-fifths in the next innings and you can’t do that.
“The quality of the teams around us is certainly higher than I thought it was going to be. The quality of cricket amongst South Africa, Pakistan, even Bangladesh, is really good. It’s not that we have gone backward, I just don’t think we’ve quite gone forward as much as other teams,” Cumming opined.
The White Ferns came into the tournament on home soil as one of the favorites following their 4-1 decimation of India in the WODI series. They also had the momentum as they defeated six-time champions Australia easily in a warm-up game just before the start of the World Cup.
“We’re not quite as good as some of the other teams. Look at that list of the teams that are here, we aren’t in the top four unfortunately. We’re not good enough to be in the top four and we’ve just go to accept that. We’ve got a find a way in the future to get there,” said Cumming.
Cumming, who is being seen as a potential successor to White Ferns coach Bob Carter, felt that all facets of the game need to be revamped.
“We haven’t been able to nail it with the bat. We get tentative, we get under pressure we soak up a lot of dot balls. The reality is it’s a team game. You need to perform with the bat, ball, and in the field, and unfortunately for the White Ferns (that hasn’t happened) and it hurts.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘We gave it our best but we weren’t quite good enough,” he felt.
