Adams hoping to fulfil her dream of playing for England
LOUGHBOROUGH Lightning’s Georgia Adams is hoping her eye-catching form in this year’s Kia Super League might open the door to a new opportunity to fulfil her dream to play for England.
The 25-year-old batter was part of the England Academy programme from 2014 to 2017 and was selected to work with the senior players for the World Cup preparation camp ahead of their victorious 2017 tournament.
But she was not retained by the Academy programme and wondered if the chance to emulate her father, Chris, the Derbyshire and Sussex batsman who played 10 times for the senior England men’s team, had passed her by.
But some fine performances for Lightning, including a maiden KSL half-century against Lancashire Thunder at Emirates Old Trafford last Tuesday, have awakened her ambitions.
“It was a tough blow getting dropped from the Academy,” she said. “I understood why they wanted to go with developing younger players, but it did feel a little bit like ‘What now? Where do I go from here?’”
“But I’m not a half-hearted sort of person and I’ve always had England in the back of my mind. I would love to represent my country. The whole time I’m playing, whether it is Super League or for Sussex in county cricket, I train as hard as I can to give myself the best chance.”
Adams has raised her profile in this season’s KSL by playing key roles in several winning performances, notably sharing an unbroken stand of 92 with South Africa’s Mignon du Preez as Lightning crushed defending champions Surrey Stars by seven wickets at Guildford, followed by that first half-century in a win over Lancashire ultimately decided by the Duckworth Lewis Stern method when rain curtailed proceedings early.
She and Kathryn Bryce put on 82 in 45 balls for the sixth wicket, Adams clearing the rope three times in a confident display against an attack loaded with England bowlers before she was run out off the penultimate ball of the innings, attempting to run a second after the first had taken her to 50.
“It was a bit surreal and it still has not really sunk in,” she said. “With coming back for the second I didn’t get the chance to raise my bat for the fifty but Jenny Gunn had told me she was ready to run two, so it was my fault that I was out. It was just great to put in a performance.”
Her 125 runs from five innings this year compares with only 69 from seven all told last year, the contrast partly down her own improvement as a player and partly to the way opportunities have presented themselves.
“Last year was a little bit frustrating,” she said. “I was coming in at six, a role I’d had no real experience of, and we tended to build such good platforms that either I didn’t get to bat at all or else I was coming in to just try to hit boundaries.
“This time, we have lost early wickets in a few games and I have had more opportunities - I even got to bat in the Powerplay down at Guildford.
“But I am also reaping the rewards of a lot of work on technical aspects of my game with my dad and with Rob Taylor, the head coach at Loughborough, on keeping things simple and being really clear about how I want to play.”
Adams, who is captain and opening bat for Sussex in county cricket, still sees her father on a regular basis, often making the two-hour round trip to Chichester, where he is Head of Cricket at Seaford College, from her home in Brighton in order to work with him in the nets.
“Dad is very laid back and he has taken that kind of approach with me through my career but as I’ve got older I’ve gone to him a lot more, especially since I have taken on the captaincy at Sussex, for advice on tactics and in leadership areas,” she said. “He is always available if I need him.”
Unlike the international stars in the KSL and the contracted England players, Adams has to juggle playing cricket with holding down a job, and although she works in the game - she is assistant cricket coach at the Brighton Aldridge Community Academy in Falmer, just outside the city - finding the time to train at the level she wants to maintain can be tricky.
“I love coaching and we have one of the best facilities in the country on site in the Sir Rod Aldridge Cricket Centre,” she said. “But in the middle of winter between January and March, coaching until 9pm some nights and then trying to fit my own training around it was quite tough.
“There comes a time after University, though, when you have to have an income. It’s expensive to live nowadays.
“But the school have been brilliant, even though I have a full-time role, in being flexible enough to let me out to play any cricket that I need.”
“It’s great to be able to play on grounds such as Trent Bridge and Old Trafford,” Adams said. “We’re not used to having those opportunities in women’s cricket. It was good at Old Trafford to play on a pitch where the ball came on to the bat nicely.”
Another key performance there would not go amiss, especially given that Super League form is now seen as a good yardstick for which players might be capable of holding their own in international cricket.
“I know a few players have been picked up from the Super League, as we saw last year with the likes of Kirstie Gordon and Linsey Smith here at Loughborough, and Mady Villiers from Surrey,” Adams said.
“It means that even if you are not involved in the England Academy, you can never say never.”