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:
We had a really good win with New Town at the weekend; we won the toss and batted first and put on 215, which on that wicket and in those conditions, we probably thought we were a little bit short and little bit behind par.
But the first ball Brycey (Kathryn Bryce) bowled, she got their best player, and then it was pretty much just a domino effect, we had the momentum with us and we rolled them for 30 which was a great feeling, there was a great energy about the group.
That win puts us top of the table, ahead of second by six points, with four games left of the round-robin before the finals. I think we’ve got to win one more game to get there, so we’ve set ourselves up really well for a good back end of the season, which is exciting.
I’ve started my placement this week at the critical care unit, and I’m loving the work that I’m doing and the ward that I’m with at the moment.
Critical care and ICU is a specialty that I’ve always been fascinated with, and I’ve always pushed to try and get myself into a placement like that. I originally wanted to do para-medicine at university, and having those similarities in attending critical care events gives you that same rush.
It’s been a busy few days, and I’ve been to three medical emergencies already, all in one day, which was a great experience and a real test, but I’m getting lots of great teaching and help from the cardiologists and nurses at the hospital.
It can be demanding having to concentrate for those long periods of time, and making sure that when a medical emergency does happen you’re switched on and ready to assist; although as a cricketer, I’m used to spending all day on my feet!
It is very different to the placement I had at the palliative care ward at the end of last year, but there are still so many skillsets that you can take from palliative care to critical care that probably not a lot of people think about.
I’m super lucky to have had that placement which means I’ve seen things that maybe make me re-think about person-centered care and really putting the patient first, even when you’re in high-stress situations.
I think when you’re in a critical care unit, and there’s lots of buzzers going off and people moving about frantically, you’ve just got to stay calm and remember it’s all about the patient.
When I had some down town in the evening earlier this week, we went up to watch Australia Women take on South Africa at Blundstone Arena in the T20s. It was a competitive game of cricket and probably got a bit close in the end compared to what the Aussies would have liked, but it was a fun evening.
They’ve got the test match coming up as well, which is off the back of the test they played in India before Christmas, which I think is exciting for women’s cricket.
It’s a completely different game compared to what we’re used to, especially when we don’t get to play multi-day games regularly from the age of 16 like the boys do, but I think over time we’ll see real improvements in the longer-format game, and I think it only help women’s cricket develop further.
