Few players have burst onto the international stage as quickly as Georgia Plimmer. Still only 20, she has already written her name into New Zealand’s cricket history by guiding her team to their first-ever T20 World Cup crown in 2024. Sharing the honour of top run-scorer with Suzie Bates, she showed both maturity and flair well beyond her years. Now, her ambitions stretch further: helping the White Ferns reclaim the ODI World Cup.
Plimmer has left little to chance in her preparations. After appearing in a handful of one-dayers for New Zealand A against England A in July, she travelled to Chennai for a specialist camp at the CSK academy. The focus was clear — mastering spin and conditioning herself for India’s testing climate.
She had already been exposed to Indian conditions during the ODI series in Ahmedabad last October, and she took those experiences into her training sessions.
Facing a steady diet of leg-spin in the nets, she worked on modifying her stance and approach, “Coming from New Zealand, where the pitches probably get a bit more bounce, we learnt a lot about having to stay low in our stance and be able to get your head over the ball to be able to hit the ball along the ground.”
The biggest challenge, she explained, was not power but precision. “For me personally, it was probably just being able to find different gaps while hitting along the ground and still being able to hit hard and straight, even if the ball is turning a bit more.”
India, she admitted, demanded a different game altogether, “It was a lot different to playing something in New Zealand, where the ball might not turn or it would bounce a bit more than what it does in India.”
Plimmer’s pathway has been illuminated by role models close to home. At college, she watched the Kerr sisters, especially Amelia, transition from school cricket to the international arena. Sophie Devine, also from her school, remains another towering influence — one she credits with shaping the team’s identity.
With Devine set to bid farewell to ODIs after this World Cup, Plimmer reflects on the captain’s impact with deep admiration, “She (Devine) has just put a lot of work into our new structure for this upcoming campaign, and a lot of that’s to do with the Māori culture that we’re building into our team… I think without her, the T20 World Cup win would never have happened.”
For most of her early career, Plimmer occupied the middle order. But during New Zealand’s tour of England last year, she was handed a new responsibility: opening the batting. Initially tentative, she leaned heavily on the experience of Suzie Bates to adapt, “For her (Bates) to be able to stop the game (for you), you can reset your brain and think, ‘This is when I’m playing my best.'”
The partnership became a two-way exchange of learning, “Having a partner out there like her, she’s pretty incredible. Over the last year I’ve been able to recognize some parts of her game when she’s playing her best and hopefully, I’m reiterating that back to her so we can get the best out of each other.”
Just as she was finding her rhythm, a hip injury sidelined her for nearly half a year. It meant missing the Australia series and much of the domestic season — a frustrating pause for a player on the rise.
Her comeback could not have been scripted better. In the third ODI against Sri Lanka in March 2025, she struck her maiden international century — a fluent 112 — in a 108-run stand with Suzie Bates that sealed the series 2-0 and silenced any doubts about her recovery. That three-match contest proved vital for the White Ferns, who played only those ODIs in 2025. Plimmer emerged as the leading run-scorer of the series with 140 runs.
Over the past year, Plimmer has crammed in valuable lessons — technical, physical, and mental — to prepare for this moment. She now enters the ODI World Cup with the confidence of someone ready to make an impact.
New Zealand’s form since 2022 has been mixed. In 29 ODIs, they have managed 11 wins. Bates has carried the batting load with 851 runs, highlighted by the best of 108, while Jess Kerr has led the bowling with 30 wickets from 19 matches.
New Zealand remains among the elite in women’s cricket history, having lifted the ODI World Cup in 2000. Yet since finishing as runners-up in 2009, they have not reached the semifinals, and their campaign on home soil in 2022 ended in disappointment, with a sixth-place finish.
Ahead of the tournament, the White Ferns scheduled two warm-up fixtures — first against India A on 25 September, which ended in defeat, followed by a second game against India on 27 September. They will start their campaign against Australia on 1st October.
(Quotes sourced from ESPN Cricinfo)
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