Netball: Cool, calm Bassett soaking up the pressure

Diamonds captain Caitlin Bassett is enjoying the best form of her career and her team is on a remarkable run of form.

Caitlin Bassett in action against Northern Ireland this week

If captaining the strongest ever Diamonds team at a home Commonwealth Games is a high-pressure role, Caitlin Bassett isn’t showing it.

The 29-year-old goal shooter is enjoying the best form of her ­career and her team is on a ­remarkable run of form but she’s very focused on keeping things laid back off the court.

“It’s about keeping it relaxed. There is a lot of pressure and scrutiny, and obviously the media focus is on us and we’re world No 1,” Bassett said. “We don’t want that to consume us.”

Remarkably, the player leading this team of stars was initially reluctant to play netball at all.

Television commentator and coach Sue Gaudion worked with Bassett at club level 15 years ago and then during her early years at the Perth Orioles and West Coast Fever.

She remembers it being tough to coax the shy Blythewood teenager away from a budding musical career to give netball a try, and that Bassett found it difficult to embrace anything that drew attention to her remarkable height.

“Caitlin used to curl over a little bit, and any time we wanted to push the issue about her getting into the gym to develop her core strength she would do it but she wouldn’t do it wholeheartedly,” said Gaudion.

There was no doubting the young shooter’s potential though. She was a “deadeye dick” with a natural eye for the ring, the main impediment was strengthening her tall frame to withstand the toll that professional netball takes under the hoop.

Overcoming that aversion to gym work in recent years has taken the 193-centimetre tall Bassett’s game to new heights. She was crowned the Diamond of the Year in 2015, and won her first premiership with the Sunshine Coast Lightning in last year.

Despite this run of success, ­Basset’s selection as captain raised eyebrows. Some saw her as too nice, and a bit reserved.

“I think that the sort of captains we’ve had in the past have been a little bit of indicative of the nature of teams at that time, where they were brutally led by a captain. The captain was the leader and everyone sort of fell in line,” Gaudion said.

Instead, Bassett might be the first captain to truly encapsulate the modern Diamonds program that head coach Lisa Alexander has developed.

The team has embraced a much flatter organisational structure, with leadership shared among a group of players pushed by their coach to be ultra-professional.

Bassett insisted she was happy to take a back seat at times and let other lead the conversation before a match.

“I guess for me it’s about letting others lead as well. We’ve got so many great leaders that we’d be silly to not listen to each and every one of them,” she said.