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[with Clare Connor]

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This is the fifth in a series of interviews CricInfo will conduct during the tournament build-up with the leading players from the participating nations.

From playing for England as a teenager, Clare Connor has risen up the ranks to lead her country by the relatively young age of 23. She assumed the mantle after predecessor Karen Smithies stood down in the middle of a difficult tour down under to Australia and New Zealand.

As an 18-year-old debutant, Connor couldn't have kick-started her international career much better when she managed the remarkable figures of 2-1 off 6.5 overs against Denmark at Dublin in 1995. In 1999, she took a One-Day International hat-trick as part of her career-best bowling figures of 5-49 against India at Northampton.

Originally, Connor played predominantly as a left arm spinner but has recently ventured higher up in the batting order. She has only met with limited success in this foray, though - perhaps a result of also having to juggle it with her bowling responsibilities along with her role as captain.

Career Record (up to and including 1 July 2000):

BATTING M I NO Runs HS Ave 100 50 Ct St Tests 5 8 1 97 41 13.85 - - 2 - One-Day Internationals 37 24 3 183 31 8.71 - - 10 - World Cups 6 2 0 4 3 2.00 - - 2 -
BOWLING O M R W Ave Best 5w SR Econ Tests 75 26 198 4 49.50 2-56 - 112.5 2.64 One-Day Internationals 210.5 21 752 25 30.08 5-49 1 50.6 3.56 World Cups 32.2 6 70 3 23.33 1-14 - 64.7 2.16

CricInfo UK's Kate Laven caught up with Clare to chat with her about the forthcoming CricInfo Women's World Cup, to be held at Lincoln and Christchurch from 29 November to 23 December 2000.

Listen to Full Interview Audio

[Duration: 16 minutes 6 seconds]

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KL: Clare Connor, captain of England women's team, you are just about to head off to New Zealand to make a challenge on the World Cup but before we talk about preparations and the competition itself, no conversation about cricket at the moment can go without mention of the match-fixing allegations. We are hearing that it is quite prevalent in men's cricket but is it something that you have ever come across in women's cricket?

CC: No, not at all Kate. I have never heard of it from any country in women's cricket. It is interesting when you say about whether it is a black and white issue or whether there are grey areas because you can go to look at a wicket and casually say it looks a great wicket, the groundsman says it's a great wicket there's been a thousand runs scored on it in the last week. If you give that information to someone, by the by, is that the wrong thing to do. It has made me start to wonder how much you are allowed to say.

KL: In New Zealand, people will ask you questions about the team and about the pitches. What will your reaction be?

CC: Well now, in the light of what has come to light in the past year, starting with the Hansie Cronje affair in March, our guidelines are going to have to be quite stringent as a squad. We are not going to have to reveal anything about our side until the morning of the game or any revelations about the pitch, about what it might do early on even if the groundsman has told us casually. There might have to be a policy that nothing is said.

KL: Have you heard of any betting on women's cricket?

CC: Never. Absolutely never. One of my colleagues at Brighton College where I teach went down to the bookmakers and asked for some odds on the Women's World Cup around six weeks ago and they weren't in a position to give him any information. There probably is betting or spread betting in women's cricket but I have never come across it.

KL: Do you think women's cricket could become a target at any stage?

CC: Yes I do actually. Having thought about over the last few weeks I think women's cricket would be easier to target than the men's game because of the score differences, the amount of extras etc. It would not take a rocket scientist to do some research into women's cricket and be able to come up with some safe areas to bet on but lets hope it doesn't start happening in our game.

KL: But you will be issuing instructions to your players to keep an eye out?

CC: Yes I think so. I think it will be a case of a quick team meeting as we set off or at the hotel before we fly out to say there could be people asking us what will we do if we win the toss, what is the wicket like, are we going to go in three spinners or no spinners. If we are not aware of the situation, these kinds of things could lead to something unnecessary or tricky.

KL: Coming onto the World Cup, many of the women in the side have full time jobs - you are a teacher in Brighton - how have you been able to juggle your time between preparing for this and your profession?

CC: I have been very fortunate. The school I teach at is the school where I was a pupil and they have been very supportive. For this term, I have had two afternoons off a week to train so I have been given some time away from the hockey coaching as well as teaching English but the lottery funding through the World Class performance plan has helped a lot of our players. We have been given personal subsistence awards for six months leading up the World Cup so a few players have been able to go part-time which has been invaluable. Come January, we will find out if we have been successful in a new ten year bid. If we have met our targets from this six month plan, the next bid could change the face of women's cricket because we could become semi-professional.

KL: Is winning the World Cup one of the targets?

CC: No, we had to set individual fitness targets and technical targets for bowlers and batters via their individual coaches. We also had to set a target for the World Cup which is to be semi-finalists so that is the target that has gone down in the plan.

KL: What kind of time have you been able to devote to training?

CC: I have been netting twice a week with a specialist coach in Hove - at the County Ground. I have also been bowling up at school against some of the lads and have been doing regular fitness sessions.

KL: So what about your fitness. Charlotte Edwards was telling me the other day she thinks she is fitter than she has ever been?

CC: She certainly is. She has been fortunate in that she has been able to give up work for the last month so she has been able to spend two or three hours in the gym every day. I am as fit as I have ever been but not fitter. I have had a health problem with some undiagnosed stomach pains and have had a few scans and that has been resolved. The pain came on most severely when I was training which is a pain, but it means I am three weeks behind on what I would like to be at this stage. But hopefully over the next week and the two weeks in New Zealand, by the time the World Cup starts I will be on top of it all.

KL: Is this a concern to you?

CC: It was because it was undiagnosed and because it only came on during training. It was very severe. At first I put it down to a stitch and let it run its course for two weeks without doing anything about it. Then it became more of a concern so in the last two weeks I have lots of tests and scans and antibiotics. It is one of two things - either a bowel inflammation or a deep muscle problem under my ribs so whatever it is, it will not get any worse I hope, and my training is back on schedule.

KL: England have had an up and down success rate in the World Cups and the last World Cup in 1997 was the first time we had not made a final.

CC: Yes that's right. I was not part of the successful side in 1993, I had not started playing women's cricket then but I was part of the side that got knocked out in the semi-final in Madras in 1997 which was a game that we threw away to be honest. We did not make the most of a winning situation but it was devastating to see 60,000 people at Eden Gardens watching New Zealand and Australia in the final. It was galling. Hopefully that won't happen this time.

KL: Some are saying this one will be an Australia-New Zealand show. How do you feel about that?

CC: I would completely refute that. I think there are five sides that are capable of getting to the semi-finals - Australia, New Zealand, us, South Africa and India - and I think that if we come first, second or third by the semi-final stage, we would avoid playing Australia until the final. In a series situation where we had to play five internationals against Australia it might be a different story but in a one-off One-Day International, there are never just two teams in a tournament.

KL: So are you backing yourselves to win?

CC: I am backing us to make the final. Hopefully if we came first, second or third, we would play New Zealand or India then in a one off situation against Australia in a final, it could be very interesting.

KL: We had a relatively successful summer against South Africa following a pretty awful winter last year. How much of that was down to your captaincy because you took over from Karen Smithies last winter and England seem to have done quite a lot better since then?

CC: It has not been necessarily been down to my taking over the captaincy but in the last eight months or so we have made great strides as squad - how we talk through our cricket, how we are much more open, much more open to criticism, more aware of a game plan. Everyone is starting to take on responsibility in that game plan rather than it be just a captain-led machine. I would like to think it (my captaincy) had a considerable part to play in the summers success. We should have beaten South Africa more convincingly but the most important thing this summer was for us to win after a horrific winter away. It was a real baptism of fire taking on the captaincy when I did and it was hard to assert myself as a captain because of my lack of form as well over the winter. People's confidence was low, people had not been performing and socially, things in the group were becoming delicate. But this summer, we made such progress. People were more aware of their roles and new members were introduced in the side. The team meeting situation was more honest and open. We have just spent four days in Snowdon which comprised group exercises and logical mathematical problems to solve and we really got to learn about each other in pressure situations - who was prepared to take a back seat role and who pushed themselves forward and was prepared to take on more responsibility. We learned a great deal that we can apply to the cricket pitch.

KL: So with your approach to captaincy and with all this training, team spirit is in good shape?

CC: Yes definitely. That is undeniable and hopefully we can carry on this very honest and open environment and the relationships between ourselves into New Zealand.

KL: But some might say it is all very well and good the girls getting on well but when it comes to a World Cup, success often comes down to the preparation and the research you have done on the other teams. Do you feel that you are prepared in terms of what you know about the other sides?

CC: Yes I think so. In the two weeks before the World Cup, we will spend some time having more analytical meetings and talking about key players in opposing sides. We have only just played Australia and New Zealand. We will be playing three internationals against New Zealand before the tournament starts. We know the Australians. They have had no cause to change their sides in the last four years because they have not lost a game. But you can talk about the opposition too much to the extent that you talk about their strengths rather than focusing on what we have to do to overcome them. We played South Africa this summer and they could be a very good side, a side to watch for the future. We have video analysis which we will be taking with us, and we played India last summer. So I think that we have enough information stacked up in our minds and it is a case of having some discussions when we arrive and getting some things down on paper, having some conversations about how we will tackle this off-spinner or where we will score off this in-swing bowler. Where we are going to set a field against this batsman - these are all things we can do when we get to New Zealand.

KL: Both Australia and New Zealand have got two very experienced players in each side but are there any younger players that you are targeting for special attention?

CC: We know the New Zealand opening bowler Pullar is very good from the winter. She was quite a shock to us and that she can be dangerous early on with the new ball. There may be other players that we don't know much about but there is the argument for our side as well - people like Jane Cassar, Barbara Daniels and Clare Taylor played in the 1993 World Cup at Lords and we can draw on their experience and focus on us rather than their experienced campaigners.

KL: And Clare, what about your own form. You had a difficult and frustrating time last winter with both the bat and ball. What are you predicting for yourself this winter.

CC: My focus will be on my captaincy and my bowling and I will slot into the batting order wherever is appropriate on whatever day. I have been working very hard on my batting because I have to - my bowling comes naturally - and I have been working hard on the captaincy, trying to envisage scenarios, setting up situations on paper and deciding what I would do in certain situations, talking to players and that sort of thing. So it is my bowling and captaincy that are the most important parts of my game, as I see it, for the World Cup.

KL: So we might see you batting in the middle order?

CC: Yes, seven or eight probably.

KL: The World Cup over the years has become bigger but has it become tougher?

CC: This World Cup will be tougher than the last because there were only eight sides in it and the likes of Pakistan, Denmark and the easier games were great for batsmen wanting to score big hundreds but they were no preparation for the big games. This will be tougher. We have seven games before the semi-finals. We will already have played three internationals against New Zealand. There will not be many easy games and while we will win the matches against Holland, Ireland and Sri Lanka, we may use those games to rest key players. It will be those games that will give our younger players confidence in the bigger games and it will be those games that will give batsmen and bowlers confidence to do their stuff against the Australians or New Zealanders.

KL: And what would it mean to you to win it?

CC: It would mean everything. Although I am realistically positive about reaching the final, it is almost too much to imagine the idea of lifting the World Cup having beaten Australia - who I am convinced will be in the final - would be beyond anyone's wildest dreams. It would be a dream come true.