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 last month, will be detailing her experiences down under throughout the winter on cricketscotland.com:
It was good to have a weekend off cricket this week, and I was able to get away with the family and have a little break.
We went away on the boat for a couple of days with my family down to Bruny Island which isn’t far from Hobart.
There’s a big group of us that went down, about four or five close family friends, and we just had a couple of days walking, and just relaxing and chilling out – when it gets a bit warmer we’ll get out on the water and do some water sports!
I’m still living at home, and I love hanging out with my parents getting up to lots of fun and adventurous things, and it’s always nice to go away and see some family friends as well.
We had a bye this weekend with New Town, but we’ve had a good start to the season. From a personal point of view I feel like I’ve been bowling well, the ball’s coming out nicely and I’m striking it nicely as well.
Most weekends we play two T20s, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and that’s really good for the girls who haven’t been playing whilst I’ve been away to get a really good volume of game time before the 50 over competition starts at the end of December.
We’re super lucky in Tasmania with our club system, we’ve got four teams in the whole state in the Premier League, and I think that’s really beneficial to help grow the local talent.
When the professionals come back from the Big Bash you have about four players per club team, so we have the likes of Lizelle Lee playing in our team when she’s available, we’ve got a young leg-spinner Amy Smith who plays in the Big Bash, and you’re bowling against players like Nic Carey and Ellyse Villani.
You’re exposed to playing against and with top quality players, and that really helps you to improve immensely.
I’m the captain at New Town, and that’s a challenge I really enjoy.
It’s my second season with this team, which is quite nice to have a similar base group with the same coach as well, which has made it a bit easier.
The challenge I’ve found is managing the different ages in my team, even though I’m young myself, we’ve got quite a young team, which provides a different challenge off-field.
I find the on-field stuff comes to me quite naturally, we had Kathryn Bryce play with us last year and that was really beneficial for my captaincy growth, and I’ll be continuing to learn off her when she arrives back in a couple of weeks.
It’s massive for me to have such a quality player and quality captain to have around to offer support when I need it, and I’m looking forward to having another little Scotland friend alongside me when Kathryn arrives!
We’ll be able to work together throughout the season now to make sure we’re ready for the World Cup Qualifier next year.
I’m super proud of the girls for the performances they put in against Ireland; I had a bit of FOMO and disappointment that I couldn’t be there, and I would have loved to have been in two places at once, but that’s not the reality unfortunately.
I was really impressed with how the girls went about it, they stuck to the game plan and brand of cricket that Craig and the coaching staff want us to play, and to be able to play a 50 over series was a massive stepping stone for some of the younger girls.
