Travel diary: From captain’s runs and net sessions to ice baths and meetings. What it’s really like on the road for the Adelaide Strikers
Senior sport reporter Liz Walsh was given exclusive access to the Adelaide Strikers as they travelled from Adelaide to Brisbane to play two WBBL games last weekend. Here’s the travel diary.
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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25:
5.45am:
Alarm goes off for Strikers cricketers Alex Price, Tahlia McGrath and Sarah Coyte. They are picked up at 6.30am by the team’s media manager Jamie Anderson and driven to Hallett Cove School, where they are interviewed on Nova radio as part of the station’s “Friday live at your school with Dylan and Hayley”. This is where McGrath went to school.
8.30am:
They leave Hallett Cove and head straight for the airport; there is a double header in Brisbane that they need to get ready for.
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9.05am:
Rest of the team as well as coaches and staff arrive at Adelaide Airport and check in separately, some head straight for the coffee shops, others for the ham and cheese croissants.
On away trips, the Adelaide Strikers entourage has the 13-player squad, three coaches – Luke Williams (head), Charlotte Edwards (assistant) and Jude Coleman (assistant) – as well as their team physio (Jim Wiltshire), strength and conditioning coach (Anthony Gallomarino) and media manger (Anderson). The team’s senior operations manager Kate Harkness travels separately.
10.10am:
Flight departs Adelaide.
12.30pm:
Flight lands and players collect their luggage as well as their oversized cricket/kit bags and head to the Brisbane Airport carpark rental where they pick up one van, two people movers and one standard car. The van carries all the team’s equipment, cricket bags, physio gear, media banner etc. The over-25 crew are the ones who do the driving, including Kiwi import Sophie Devine, coach Williams, trainer Gallomarino, media manager Anderson or Australian bowler Megan Schutt. Strikers captain Suzie Bates separates from the team and heads straight to Allan Border Field for a press conference.
1.30pm:
Bates arrives at Allan Border Field – where four games of WBBL cricket will be held over the Saturday and Sunday. The media call involves one representative from each of the four teams involved in the matches – Strikers, Brisbane Heat, Perth Scorchers and Hobart Hurricanes – followed by a photo shoot.
The other Strikers players instead check in at the hotel in the heart of Brisbane.
3pm:
Top-up skills training in the nets at AB Field starts. It’s optional, but the majority of players attend. Legspinner Amanda-Jade Wellington impresses as she bowls to English import Lauren Winfield who is preparing to make her debut for the Strikers the following day. Assistant coach Charlotte Edwards walks around with her trusty, white “wanger”, which is one of those dog toys that owners use to throw balls for their dogs. Turns out, it’s also a brilliant tool for recreating the pace of fast bowlers in the nets at batting practice.
Towards the end of the session, a group of players congregates to one side in the shade and starts playing a game devised by Devine called “The Whisper Game”, where one player has to put on headphones with music blaring and another stands in front of her and says words that the other has to guess. Turns out Alex Price is a bit hopeless at this game: as Annie O’Neil says clearly “vigorous”, Price guesses “fairy sticks”. Close.
4.30pm:
The captain’s run starts. Williams brings the players together in a circle and praises them for the hard work they’ve put in all week not just at training but in learning and reviewing their game plans. He tells them to confident in how well they’ve prepared for the next two games. Bates also speaks and then splits the team into “Adelaide City” and “The Rest” and the players have an intense game of some strange hybrid volleyball/AFL/handball/tennis sport whereby they kick a footy backwards and forward to one another, but the ball must bounce before they catch it; this is difficult given the oval nature of the ball and the fact that “The Rest” comprises two Kiwis and an Englishwoman. It goes down to the wire, but Adelaide City (comprising the likes of Schutt, Price and Ellie Falconer) wins.
5.30pm:
Recovery.
6pm:
Back at the hotel. Some of the players head out in groups for dinner, others stay in and rest.
Williams takes the coaches to a nearby Singaporean restaurant and they discuss tactics ahead of the next morning’s match against the to-date Hobart Hurricanes.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26:
6am:
Alarms go off.
6.55am:
Coaches assemble in the hotel lobby and head to the ground together ahead of the players.
7.20am:
Jamie Anderson attends a Cricket Australia/Channel 7 “broadcast meeting” where everyone involved in broadcasting the day’s two games – including commentators, producers, team media managers, Cricket Australia representatives – discuss the ins and outs of the games: when umpires need to head onto the ground, when the bat tosses will take places, when fielders and batters run out onto the field. Today the two games being played are: Strikers v Hurricanes and Heat v Scorchers.
Brissie turning it 🔛 today! â˜€ï¸ #WBBL05 #BlueEnergy pic.twitter.com/IrZCU7KQPL
— AdelaideStrikersWBBL (@StrikersWBBL) October 25, 2019
8am:
Players arrive dressed in their training kit in two vans and take their kit bags into the changerooms. Under anti-corruption regulations, their phones are checked-in and placed in a special locked box. Players and staff will not get their phones back until after the game.
8.40am:
Players are strapped if needed and warm up begins, which includes stretches, more ball games and short sprints.
8.55am:
Suzie Bates heads to the pitch for the bat toss, which is filmed by the television crew. She loses and the Strikers are sent into bat. She heads back to the team and informs them. Warm up switches to concentrate on the batters.
9.25am:
Players change into their playing kits and go through their last-minute batting and bowling plans on whiteboards in the changerooms. It’s game time and the mood noticeably shifts from relaxed to business. Sophie Devine has a mic-pack fitted by Channel 7 staff because she will be interviewed live by commentators during the batting innings.
9.38am:
Strikers opening batters Suzie Bates and Sophie Devine run through two smoke machines onto the field, as two fire jets spike flame into the air on the other side of the ground.
9.40am:
Game starts with Hurricanes’ Belinda Vakarewa opening the bowling.
9.54am:
In the fourth over, Bates is caught at first slip with her score on six, after driving a Tayla Vlaeminck length ball. She walks off the field and heads straight into the changerooms.
10.59am:
Tailender Sarah Coyte – who’s just bashed a quick-fire 24 runs from 13 balls (including four boundaries) – is bowled by Nicola Carey on the last ball of the innings and the Strikers finish with 8.113. The batters come from the pitch and the bowlers and fielders run on for a 15-minute warm-up with their coaches and assistants.
11.15am:
Bates calls the team together into a tight circle for one last pep talk before they run out onto AB Field through the smoke again and Megan Schutt is handed the ball to open the bowling.
11.58am:
In the 10th over Tahlia McGrath takes the ball and with her first ball to English heavyweight Heather Knight she leaps into an appeal for LBW. As the umpire raising his finger, the coaches and crew watching from the sidelines leaps out of their seats! And the Hurricanes are 3/53. The game hangs in the balance.
12.35pm:
Sophie Devine takes the ball for the final over of the game, with Hurricanes needing 11 runs from it to take the win.
12.37pm:
Devine bowls to Nicola Carey who slogs a mistimed shot to long on, and she’s caught by Katie Mack on the boundary. The game is over one ball later and the Strikers celebrate at thrilling three-wicket win. The team comes off, high-fiving each other and the coaching staff. This was a great escape!
12.39pm:
Coyte accepts her player of the match accolade and is interviewed by media.
12.40pm:
Ice bath recovery at the nearby National Cricket Centre.
5pm:
Team meeting at the hotel to debrief the win and preview the next morning’s game against Perth Scorchers.
6.30pm:
It’s dinner time and the players are free to do as they wish. Six players including wicketkeeper Tegan McPharlin – who will play her 50th game for the Strikers on Sunday – and batter Bridget Patterson head to a nearby Italian restaurant for dinner and then walk together to Gelato Messina in South Brisbane to taste a sample of the famous ice cream. They only get mildly lost ... and not for very long.
9pm:
Bedtime.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 27:
The same routine – almost to the minute – precedes the game including broadcast meetings, warm-ups, bat tosses and game times.
9.38:
But as the team waits to run out onto the field, Alex Price finds the time to show off her dance moves to team-mates. It’s caught by Channel 7’s cameras and she’s turned into a GIF on social media.
Pre-game warm ups, @AlexandraPrice5 style 💃 #BlueEnergy #WBBL05 pic.twitter.com/Gmzwj2XcKj
— AdelaideStrikersWBBL (@StrikersWBBL) October 28, 2019
This game is much less stressful for coaches, with the Strikers having an easy win over the Scorchers – reaching their total of 9/115 in the 15th over having lost only three wickets.
12.40pm:
After the game, the players go through “top-up running”. Each player’s shirt has a GPS tracker and it tells trainers how far and with what intensity they ran during a game. For those who ran less, they will do post-game running to make sure their fitness levels stay at a certain point. Suzie Bates gives herself extra running to do as a “fine” for being caught behind on eight.
2pm:
Players head to the National Cricket Centre for an hour-long strength and conditioning session in the gym.
3pm:
Ice bath recovery and once finished, some play table tennis, talk to their families back home or head to the pool.
4.30pm:
The team heads to Brisbane airport. Once checked in they relax in the Qantas lounge as a team. The players are jovial, after all, they are leaving Brisbane with two big wins, rounding out the weekend atop the WBBL ladder.
7.15pm:
Flight leaves Brisbane.
10.22pm:
Flight lands in Adelaide. Team members and staff collect their luggage and kit bags and head their separate ways, with the Strikers’ international and interstate recruits heading off in a large taxi van together headed to the city hotel they call home during the WBBL.