2022 is a great year for women’s sport in New Zealand. Thanks to the depredations of Covid-19 both the Cricket World Cup (One-Day Internationals) and the Rugby World Cup will take place there, some six months apart.
On 4 March the cricket will get under way. But the visiting squads will be subjected to ten days of complete isolation before a ball is bowled. However much they may be steeling themselves for the ordeal – and most will have past experience – it will be no sort of preparation for such a momentous occasion. Covid restrictions are at full blast. You might find yourself imagining special uniformed police patrolling every corridor of every hotel waiting to catch any glimpse of a door opening.
Financially, New Zealand Cricket is hardly in a position to offer special terms to the six teams involved, where they could practise out of doors still in complete isolation.
For the English there are added burdens. They are coming off a winless Ashes tour of Australia; neither the first nor the A team managed a single win in any of the three formats on offer, a test, ODIs and T20s. Somehow the staff has to revive them from the psychological blow those reverses delivered. Ten days trapped in your room isn’t the perfect pick-me-up.
Squads consist of 15 players with three reserves permitted to travel. Before you look forward to a paid holiday in Aotearoa, consider the thought of that 10-day confinement plus the near-certainty of not getting to play a single match. The reserves who choose to accept the offer are made of stern stuff.
And next October…
By the time October comes around New Zealand Rugby, not to mention the NZ Government, must be hoping against hope that the current restrictions will have eased – or better still, removed completely. Part of their promotional plan for winning the right to host the event offered the twelve teams 4-star hotel accommodation in (and around?) Auckland. Fitness centres and practice areas were essential add-ons.
For the players the restrictions to be placed on the cricketers would be just as unwelcome. A much applauded innovation was to extend the tournament to 35 days. That is excellent, till you add on a preliminary ten days of isolation.
Fairness
Then we come to the question of fairness. Nothing is fair in love or international sports tournaments.
But will the New Zealand cricketers have an even better chance of winning than with normal health conditions prevailing? They have just taken a 2-0 lead in their ODI series against India in Queenstown. Or even, do the Indians have an advantage, after their organisers were clever enough to lay on a series in the country immediately before the World Cup, thus placing the dreaded ten days long before the big event?
