Scotland international Chloe Abel is spending the winter in her home state, Tasmania, continuing her cricket development alongside her university education.
Abel, who made her debut against Italy in the Women’s T20 World Cup Europe Qualifier in September, will be detailing her experiences down under throughout the winter on cricketscotland.com:
Over Christmas we went up to Norah Head, which is just north of Sydney, to my Uncle’s beach house for four or five days which was really nice.
I think Christmas for us is pretty relaxed, when we’re up in New South Wales we usually do the park run on Christmas Day morning, and then have our Christmas dinner in the early afternoon.
Preparation for that normally starts 24 hours before, we have the usual turkey and stuffing, but we usually have some seafood as well, such as prawns and crayfish, which is pretty different to the UK; my role is making the gravy!
Boxing Day is quite an exciting day in Australia, with the Boxing Day test starting, and then we have the famous Sydney to Hobart yacht race which starts on the same day, so we usually sit down and watch those two events; I love Boxing Day, it’s probably the best day for me!
We were back in Hobart to see the boats coming in, they usually start coming on the 27th and it continues for a few days, and it’s a really fun time to be in Hobart, there’s lot’s of people out and about enjoying the race, which is super cool.
We celebrate New Year’s Eve down at the docks with all the boats, which is really nice, and then on New Year’s Day we went away for a few days to Sloping Main.
It was really lovely to hang out with a few family friends, just kind of mucking about on the boat doing a bit of fishing, jet skiing and enjoying the water!
I did my first ever 10K race a couple of weeks ago, which was my first ‘proper’ race that I’ve done, and it was quite warm, and it wasn’t a very flat race, so it’s a bit tricky for a tall girl like me to run up the hills, but I was happy with my effort.
I’ve had multiple conversations with strength and conditioning coaches over the last few months, and longer distance running isn’t something your normally see from professional athletes as part of their cricket programme, it’s more sort of short, sharp running.
But for me, I think having that aerobic capacity to run longer distances has actually really helped me to feel fitter when I bowl, particularly during those longer spells in the heat, and I feel comfortable now being able to settle into those spells and maintain the same level throughout.
This weekend we got back to our cricket with New Town, and we won quite comfortably which always makes it fun! I took four wickets which was really pleasing, and I had a little stint with the bat with Brycey who made 78, so that was great from her.
I restart university in two weeks time, which will be my final year at university, which is really exciting. The final year is more practical focused, and my first placement starts straight away and lasts six weeks, and then we have a seven week placement at the end.
This placement is at the Hobart Private Hospital in the critical care ward, which is an ICU ward, so I’m really looking forward to that opportunity, and it’s going to be slightly different now with the longer placements, and I’ll really have to focus on getting that balance right with my cricket.
