Lord’s final is the carrot for Knight

HEATHER Knight leads her England team into a home World Cup in good form having won all four warm-up games.

England completed their preparations for the tournament with a seven-wicket victory over New Zealand in Derby with Tammy Beaumont hitting an unbeaten 51 and Laura Marsh chipping in with three wickets for just seven runs.

Knight – who is fit to lead the team after recovering from a metatarsal stress fracture to her left foot – is confident her side can go all the way to the final at Lord’s next month.

And she knows England have the weight of history on their shoulders having won the World Cup on home soil on the previous two occasions in 1973 and 1993.

She said:“The girls are all really excited, it’s a once in a career sort of thing to play in a home World Cup.

“That final at Lord’s is a massive carrot, you have to play well to get there but hopefully we can make the most of home support. Hopefully playing at home will work in our favour.

“We know the conditions really well, we’ve played at a lot of the grounds over the last few years so hopefully we can use that to our advantage.

“We’ll take confidence from the fact that teams have done so well in the past.

“We had an England team dinner a couple of months ago which involved all men’s and women’s cricketers.

“We met a lot of the 1993 World Cup-winning team so we heard their stories and some brought their gold medals to the dinner which was nice and should give us some added inspiration for the tournament.”