SHARJAH: After taking one of the wickets against India in New Zealand's first match of the women's T20 World Cup at Dubai International Stadium, Lea Tahuhu made a heart sign with her hands looking at the dressing room.
"I thought she was doing it to me actually," joked captain Sophie Devine before adding "No, I think it was certainly for Grace back home and little Louie as well, who's only a couple of months old. Lea is a really special person to me and to this whole group," Devine said with a beaming smile on her face. Devine knows the journey the Kiwi pacer has been through to get to the level she is right now. Penny Kinsella, the former New Zealand player and women's selector would know. After all, she was one of those who saw the potential in Tahuhu and selected her back in 2011.
"So essentially, as a young bowler, she was the most challenging and aggressive of the bowlers," Kinsella told this daily from New Zealand. "She always ran in hard. She always tried hard. She was pretty erratic in those days. She bowled a lot of wides. But you don't see many women run in like she did with that kind of intent. She was going to bowl as fast as she could and she was going to try and take wickets. It's that balance between that raw kind of pace and the need to maintain economy rates was crucial," she mentioned.
Once Tahuhu made it to the national setup, it was not smooth sailing as she had to face multiple obstacles that included health concerns and being dropped from the squad. Kinsella believes that just made Tahuhu stronger. "She has been able to reinvent herself, because of what she learned, having entered into the New Zealand setup. Establishing herself also within the Canterbury setup, which was full of really strong women, who were clever about cricket and knew how to prepare, she started to find that knack of preparing herself so that she was going to get rhythm. That was her thing. 'If I can keep my rhythm going, then I can use that to enhance my ability to contribute both in T20 and 50 over cricket'," Kinsella sounded like a proud senior.
Apart from her cricket, being married to another cricketer and former New Zealand captain, Amy Satterthwaite, changed the way Tahuhu started looking at her cricket. With the addition of their two kids, Grace and Louie, the family is there to cheer for Tahuhu when she is on national duty.
"I think so because you are not living and breathing cricket all the time, you have a chance to move away from that. If you are co-dependent on cricket, to give you your identity as a professional, it's a difficult balance. You're on the edge of the sword all the time in terms of selection. And we know, because she lost her contract, that would have been devastating. And it hasn't been the devastating blow that it could have been if she didn't have those people around her," Kinsella said.
"Bring home the World Cup, Mummy," said baby Grace in one of the videos published by ICC's social media handles. If White Ferns are to do it, Tahuhu could be one of the forces behind it.