Georgia Elwiss' World Cup Diary: It ain't 'alf hot... but warm-ups are essential
It's been very hot in Chennai over the last few days so it's been really important we have got our nutrition and hydration practices right to help our training.
We have had a great few training sessions at the stadium here and played two warm-up games against New Zealand, writes England Cricketer Georgia Elwiss.
Our first was a 7.30pm start under lights which gave us the chance to play in the conditions we will face in some of our warm-up games.
New Zealand have had a great run over their last few T20 games and have a couple of world class players so we knew we would have to hit them hard to be in with a chance of winning.
We bowled first in the first game and restricted them to 130. Sarah Taylor batted brilliantly scoring her fourth T20 50 in a row and after a nervous finish a calm head from Nat Sciver ensured we hit the winning runs off the final ball.
We played the next game in the high heat of a summer afternoon and this time batted first. We only managed 127 this time but a great effort from the bowlers meant we won by 20 runs in the end.
We then played a Super Over in the eventuality that there would be a tie in one of the group games and knocked off the 10 runs we needed. We're claiming that as another victory and take the warm-up series 3-0!
We've had a day off on Saturday which has meant time in the pool and the gym, recovering. In the afternoon a few of us wanted to take a trip out to a temple which proved quite difficult with all the security around the tournament.
In the end we were taken up the famous lighthouse in Chennai. I'm not sure the locals were impressed when our police escort allowed us to skip the queues and clear the whole tower just so we could enjoy the views!
We then were taken to a local mall and enjoyed shopping for an hour or so with armed guards surrounding us. Needless to say we got a few strange looks!
Our final day in Chennai yesterday brought our final warm-up game against South Africa... a team we know well – and the girls did fantastically to win.
We now travel to Bangalore to play our first group game against Bangladesh, which is live on Sky Sports from 9.30am on March 17. Until then!
