She suggested starting games earlier in the day when there is no forecast for rain
Vishal Dikshit18-Oct-2025
Sophie Devine also suggested early starts for Colombo matches in the future•Getty Images
New Zealand captain Sophie Devine was left “extremely frustrated” after their second washout in as many matches in Colombo and has asked for better work in organising matches at ICC events.”You wait four years for a World Cup and to have rain play such a massive part in it is disappointing,” she said at the presentation. “I hope that in future editions they think about playing the games earlier in the day. We’ve obviously seen here that the rain usually comes in the afternoon, so [there is an] opportunity to potentially play these games at 10-11am in the morning and try and get a game in. Because that’s what all these teams want, is to be able to play cricket. You’ve waited for so long and you want to test yourself against the best and to be scuppered by rain, it’s a real shame for me.”All games barring one at this World Cup have a 3pm local time scheduled start, and four of the nine matches so far in Colombo have been washed out, including three of the four last four. While their washout against Pakistan on Saturday kept them fifth on the points table, New Zealand thought they were “in a decent position” after reducing Pakistan to 80 for 5. The points eventually had to be shared because of rain.”I thought we had a little bit of hope seeing the South Africa game [against Sri Lanka] the other night, where they were off for five hours, and managed to squeak a game in,” Devine said. “Look, we thought we were in a decent position, we just needed the rain to hold off and unfortunately it didn’t happen for us today.”Rain has played spoilsport in Colombo at the Women’s World Cup•AFP/Getty Images
New Zealand had opted to bowl in pretty overcast conditions on Saturday afternoon. Despite putting down two catches, they took five wickets within the first 20 overs. With two must-win matches coming up, against India (Navi Mumbai) and England (Visakhapatnam) as the semi-finals race heats up, New Zealand would have fancied their chances against Pakistan, who remain winless in the tournament.”Oh, look, to be honest, it’s pretty flat,” Devine said of the mood in the dressing room. “I mean, we wanted to play today, we were really up and about for today’s match. We just want to be playing cricket, so for us now, we know that the situation’s extremely clear. We just need to win both games, starting with India in Mumbai – so, a real big challenge for us – but we’re really excited about it. I know that the girls don’t need to be pumped up anymore to be able to take them on so, we’ll head back to India tomorrow and look forward to those challenges.”Related
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When asked if New Zealand have had any time to prepare for their next two games, Devine said: “Not yet. We’re probably so focused on these games here in Colombo that we really wanted to make sure we gave it that full focus for us. So luckily, we’ve got a few days now [till] our next game against India [on Thursday]. So we’ll certainly prepare really well and we’ve had some good experiences against them of late in terms of the [T20] World Cup last year and we’ll be calling upon those. We also know that they’re huge favourites playing at home, in conditions that suit them, and they’ve got threats throughout, but again, this is what you want to be doing.”You want to be playing against the best teams at home and putting yourself under pressure, so we’ll really look forward to that challenge.”New Zealand had started their campaign with two matches in Indore, which they lost, before going across to Guwahati for their first points of this World Cup, against Bangladesh. They then flew down to Colombo, where they got only 75 overs of action across two matches. Two more matches remain in Colombo, on October 21 and 24, when Pakistan will take on South Africa and Sri Lanka respectively.