Our long standing brand ambassador, England cricket star, Tammy Beaumont is currently in New Zealand representing England in the 2022 World Cup. We put some questions to her on lessons learned from the Ashes tour, her confidence in the rest of the competition and her personal highlights so far:
1) What are your personal takeaways from the Ashes tour looking back at that series now?
Looking back at the Ashes it was a disappointing tour for me personally, but the big thing I learnt was to have more confidence in my technique, and remember that it has brought me success in the past. Also it showed the team that we can go through a lot in terms of off-field distractions, such as constantly changing Covid protocols, restrictions and travel plans.
2) It’s been a tough World Cup for the team especially off the back of the win in 2017. How confident are you for the rest of the World Cup campaign in comparison to 2017?
I think our preparation was potentially a little bit more thorough before 2017. This time around Covid and quarantines and all the uncertainty have really affected the amount of training sessions and warm up games but that’s why we’ve just had to be smarter and remember that we’ve done a lot of work over the last five years. For me a lot of confidence comes from training and playing so in that regard it’s been tough, but the last couple of games have felt good for me personally, despite the disappointing results. We’re certainly making it hard for ourselves, but we’ve got to maintain our confidence for the remainder of the competition.
3) How important is that experience of having won the trophy before to yours and the team's mental preparations?
Winning the trophy in 2017 does help going into a new competition. It’s good to know that we’ve got people that can stand up on the big stage. However, at the same time we have quite a different team-as lots of the players weren’t in the squad in 2017 - but I think new blood is good for morale. Also looking back at 2017 the memories tend to be very reflective, and you think it was the perfect tournament. But when you really look back at it, you remember that we lost our first game and then won a number of games by less than 10 runs so it relieves some of that pressure that it has to be perfect from the start.
4) Away from the cricket, what have been the highlights on the tours to Australia and New Zealand so far?
The highlight of Australia for me would be that it’s the first tour where our partners have been able to come with us. Seeing the way the group of partners and families got along, even coming up with new songs and chants for each player during the test match was so great and really good at lifting the team’s morale. In New Zealand it would have to be spending a couple of days off in Queenstown and getting to do some things we don’t normally get to do on tour, like hike up the mountain, Ben Lomond or go on a nice bike ride around the lake.
5) Looking ahead to 2022 as a whole, what are some of your personal goals?
My goals are to keep contributing to the team in the World Cup and Commonwealth Games coming up in July, but also to just enjoy my cricket this year, as there’s a lot of exciting things coming up with the Hundred, a Test match against South Africa in addition to a series against India.
