Hope to inspire a generation of cricketers: Devine

By Sophie Devine

It’s not very often an opportunity comes around that allows us to play in conditions we know really well. It’s a huge honour for the whole squad to be involved in a competition of this magnitude, but personally it’s even more special having the chance to lead out a group of athletes I hold close to my heart.

I want to make my teammates and country proud but also my family, friends and everyone that's helped me on my journey. I hope to inspire a generation of cricketers coming through and I’m lucky as we already have a group of young players ready to make their mark out in Australia.

Players such as Lauren Down and Rosemary Mair have been very successful domestically and I believe they can be a surprise package and hold an important role at the World Cup. Every team goes into the tournament wanting to win and we are no different. Our goal is to make the final on March 8 at the MCG but we understand that we’ve got tough opposition and that the tournament is long.

We need to focus on each and every game and obviously the current world champions Australia, as well as India, are going to be massive games in our group. It’s an awesome opportunity for us to test ourselves and we want to be able to beat the best to lift that title and what better way to do that than in Australia.

I've been a part of every T20 World Cup so far and when I allow myself to reflect, it’s an awesome feeling. The fact that the first one was in 2009 is a little embarrassing knowing how far we’ve come since, but to do it alongside Suzie Bates makes it even better. We've obviously played a hell of a lot of cricket together and haven't been able to raise that trophy yet, but we've got a fantastic side to do that here in Australia.

Adding to the excitement, women's cricket is in a pretty special place at the moment with so much investment going on around the world, especially with New Zealand cricket. It's a fantastic time to be a female athlete, so I’m just enjoying every opportunity to get out on the park and wear the silver fern with pride.

We've got a massive 12 months coming up, obviously with South Africa and then the World Cup on home shores. It's pretty special when it's something that I know a lot of the girls in the whole country are going to get right behind.

You've got to earn the right to win the World Cup and we know we've got a massive task at hand, but we're certainly up for the challenge as we've been targeting this event for a while now. We've been playing a lot of T20 cricket, both here and abroad, so it's certainly exciting times for us, but it's the dream to lift that trophy come 8 March.

This article was first published on International Cricket Council (ICC) website.