Greenway: "areas for improvement"https://t.co/oD6SYMQRAt via @audioboo
— England Cricket (@ECB_cricket) January 28, 2014
By Rob Barnett
Approaching the Twenty20 leg of the Women’s Ashes, Lydia Greenway is unconcerned about Australia’s status as world champions.
The Ashes hosts were victorious at the last World Twenty20, during the autumn of 2012, pipping England by for runs in a thrilling final at Colombo.
Australia, who are also 50-over World Cup holders, have taken two of the three one-day internationals to reduce the tourists’ lead to 8-4 under the multi-format points system.
Just as Australia’s T20 achievements will not intimidate their opponents, England will not have any advantage from winning all three T20 internationals during last summer’s Ashes according to Greenway.
The experienced batter, whose stunning unbeaten 80 swept England to Ashes glory in August’s T20I at the Ageas Bowl, told ecb.co.uk: “I think it’s a fresh slate.
“I think we’re very aware that they’re a very good team, but at the same time we back every player in our team to stand nose-to-nose with the Australians.”
Since England won the first ODI over a week ago, when Greenway aided victory with 69 not out, they have needed to avoid defeat once to retain the Ashes.
Although Australia have prevailed in the two games since, Greenway stressed the tourists have remained confident.
“We’ve been playing with a lot of confidence,” she said. “We’ve been playing some brilliant cricket. There’ve been lots of really good individual performances as well and obviously there’s still areas where we need to improve.
“I think tomorrow, if we can go out and nail every asset of the game then we give ourselves a really good chance.”
Each of the three remaining games is the first part of a double-header also involving Australia and England’s men.
Following a positive training session today at Hobart’s Bellerive Oval, Greenway and Co are thrilled to be playing before a sizeable crowd there tomorrow.
“It was a really good session today,” she added. “I think it’s quite refreshing to know that we’ve got the new format coming up and for the whole team it’s something that we really thrive on. So we’re just really excited to be playing tomorrow.”