TORONTO
\nA stress fracture is a bowler\u2019s worst nightmare and Freya Kemp has had two of them before the age of 19.
\nThe England all-rounder will make her major event debut at this month\u2019s ICC Women\u2019s T20 World Cup but only after two years of hard graft to come back from serious injury, says a ICC release issued here Friday.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a huge honour to be picked in any squad, but especially for a World Cup,\u201d said Kemp. \u201cIt\u2019s even more special given I missed the last one. It\u2019s been a tough two years, but it makes it even better having had a slightly harder journey to get here.\u201d
\nKemp played her club cricket for Fletching in East Sussex and has an older and a younger brother. \u201cWe used to play all sports in the garden, and they didn\u2019t hold back, I can tell you that,\u201d she remembers. \u201cIt was the same at the club, playing with my brother and all of his friends, it toughened me up.\u201d
\nA prodigy, Kemp made her senior debut for Sussex in 2019 while still playing for U17 and U15 teams and was included in the England Women\u2019s Academy program as a 14-year-old. She benefited from the counsel of two true greats\u2013Sarah Taylor, a coach while Kemp was a pupil at Bedes School, and Charlotte Edwards, who took her under her wing at Southern Vipers.
\n\u201cI watched Lottie while I was growing up, she was one of my idols,\u201d said Kemp. \u201cShe has been a massive support to me throughout my career. She picked me up quite young and she has really helped me and mentored me through the last few years.\u201d
\nKemp broke through with breathtaking performances against the white ball in 2022, particularly with bat in hand, rewarded with a maiden T20I call-up and a place at the Commonwealth Games.
\nA seamless rise to the top looked set to follow, in a similar fashion to her team-mate Alice Capsey and others before her. But a couple of weeks after being awarded her first ECB central contract, disaster struck in the shape of a first, dreaded stress fracture in December 2022, ruling her out of the 2023 ICC Women\u2019s T20 World Cup.
\n\u201cIt was tough and I didn\u2019t really know what it meant,\u201d said Kemp. \u201cI was in the dark, but I knew it was going to take six to nine months\u2013and the rest\u2013to get back. \u201cI was gutted to miss out on the World Cup and it was something I had to deal with.\u201d
\nKemp dug in and fought her way back to excel in the 2023 season as a specialist batter and bowled her first international ball for more than a year on the tour of India in December. Cruelly, on her return to England, she went for a scan and was diagnosed with another stress fracture.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s very hard, there\u2019s no beating around the bush,\u201d said Kemp. \u201cIt\u2019s very hard to trust your body and I\u2019m just trying to break that cycle. I have to trust it and the people around me.\u201d
\n!Kemp has reworked her run-up and her workload is being very closely managed, limiting the number of deliveries she bowls each week, a delicate dance choreographed by England\u2019s sports science and medicine team.
\n\u201cI\u2019m just thankful for all of the people around me, my family, my friends, my team-mates and all of our support staff,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t do it without them and they\u2019re in this process with me.\u201d
\nKemp has all of the tools to be a key contributor for England as they bid to capture the ICC Women\u2019s T20 World Cup title for the first time since the inaugural edition in 2009. She is still relatively inexperienced at touring, with trips to West Indies and India under her belt, sharing a flat with seasoned seamer Lauren Bell in the UK.
\nFlatmates Kemp and Bell are the only two frontline seamers named in the squad because Jon Lewis and team have tooled up for spin-friendly conditions, adding left-armer Linsey Smith to the formidable trio of Sophie Ecclestone, Sarah Glenn and Charlie Dean.
\nStoked by the struggles of the last two years, Kemp is ready for whatever is thrown at her.
\n\u201cObviously Dubai and Sharjah can be quite different as venues,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re relatively similar but there are differences, so it\u2019s just getting used to those, adapting quickly and assessing and communicating well as a team.
\n\u201cWe want to play to our strengths and put our own spin on it. I just want to be there when the team needs me and to try to make an impact.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TORONTO A stress fracture is a bowler\u2019s worst nightmare and Freya Kemp has had two of them before the age of 19. The England all-rounder will make her major event debut at this month\u2019s ICC Women\u2019s T20 World Cup but only after two years of hard graft to come back from serious injury, says a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":70808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70810,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70796\/revisions\/70810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}