New Zealand all-rounder Brooke Halliday quotes 

For New Zealand all-rounder Brooke Halliday, getting accustomed to the heat in India is the biggest takeaway from the three-match ODI series in Ahmedabad last October and her ongoing two-week training stint at the CSK High Performance Centre (HPC) here.

Halliday is part of a group of 10 New Zealand women players training here as preparation for the upcoming women’s ODI World Cup (Sept. 30 to Nov. 2) in India and Sri Lanka.

“It’s really hot over here. The biggest adjustment coming from New Zealand is probably the heat and how you deal with that. If we’re in New Zealand right now, it’s probably around 10 degrees. So, just being here for two weeks, I’m sure the body is going to appreciate that kind of adjustment to the heat. And hopefully, it means that again when we come back in October, that period of adjusting won’t be as long,” she said at the CSK HPC ground.

“Then, the second part of it would just be the conditions. Just in the last seven days, I think we’ve kind of batted on four or five different kinds of pitches that do something slightly different. It means that we have to learn how to adjust and adapt really quickly. That’s the biggest thing we learned in October last year and also in this trip. Hopefully, it means that when we come back in October, we’ll be one step ahead already,” she added.

Halliday adapted to the conditions sufficiently for her to become the top run-getter in the ODI series. The left-hander scored 133 runs at 44.33 across the three matches. Talking about the differences in facing spin in New Zealand and India, she said: “You probably get a little bit more turn over here, and then the second part is the slowness. New Zealand is probably a little bit more skiddier.”

The 29-year-old said she’s been specifically focusing on batting against leg-spin in training.