Former England fast bowler Katherine Sciver-Brunt will be watching at Lord’s as her wife Nat attempts to lead her country to glory. <\/p>\n
Though she is a nervous watcher – often seen unable to watch the games through nerves during her stints on BBC Test Match Special – as a player, she was ruthlessly competitive and no team ignited her passion more so than the Aussies. <\/p>\n
“For me, I just saw it as the biggest fight,” Sciver-Brunt told BBC Sport, when asked how she approached the mental battle of playing Australia. <\/p>\n
“When you play Australia, because they are so good, it brought out an animal in me because I had to go to that place. They bring out the best in you. <\/p>\n
“But at the same time, they can defeat you before you’ve even started and I think that’s what happened with West Indies [in the semi-final] \u2013 Australia can get in your head before you’ve even set foot on the field and you can’t let that happen.”<\/p>\n
England have met Australia twice since the fateful Ashes – a six-wicket defeat at the World Cup in October and a five-wicket loss in a warm-up match before this tournament began. <\/p>\n
Despite that record, Sciver-Brunt does not think England will be dwelling on the past. <\/p>\n
“As a recent ex-player, it’s really difficult for me to switch off my feelings when it comes to England v Australia,” Sciver-Brunt said with a laugh.<\/p>\n
“I know they completely whooped us and as a player, I would be someone who latched on to that. <\/p>\n
“But my head hasn’t gone there [to the Ashes] and I honestly don’t think it’s in theirs either. What you’re seeing from England is so different now and it’s happened very quickly.<\/p>\n
“They’re riding this wave of a new start and a new beginning and they’ve got all the confidence and belief that you need to win something major.”<\/p>\n
At Lord’s, though, the stakes are way higher and this is an England team who, in the past, has been accused of being unable to handle such occasions. <\/p>\n
That is where a legend of the game steps in to steer the ship…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former England fast bowler Katherine Sciver-Brunt will be watching at Lord’s as her wife Nat attempts to lead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-509355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}