If you’re a cricket fan, SENA Countries is a term that you’d have heard a lot. It’s used extensively to gauze player’s performance and at times even scenes of debacles when presenting who would suit the team requirements better. But what is SENA in cricket and why does it matter for cricket players and fans alike?
SENA country is an abbreviation that means South Africa, England, New Zealand, and Australia, the four top giants of the cricketing world. SENA countries have different terrain and pitch conditions to that of the Asian Subcontinent and hence, records made on such foreign soils carry much value.
For ages, Asian players’ top credentials are judged based on how they perform in these conditions. And it’s no surprise you’ll often see the records being compared say, XYZ player in Asian Subcontinent vs. SENA country. Let’s read through these four SENA countries and explore why performance in these conditions is much valued.
SENA Countries
| SENA Countries abbreviation used for four countries in cricket. The names are South Africa, England, New Zealand, and Australia, the four top giants of the cricketing world. |
What is SENA in cricket?
1. South Africa
The first letter of SENA countries stands for South Africa, a prominent test and limited overs cricket team that for years has been the top-ranked nation with numerous exceptional players. The pitches in South Africa are pace-friendly and rightly favor the fast bowlers. Couple that with the exceptional bounce, it’s a heaven for a hit the deck bowlers.
Asian batsmen are not much experienced in playing in these bouncy and fast pitches and often have a turbulent time there. There have a very few Asian teams to come out with a series victory in South Africa in the last few decades.
2. England
The second letter of the SENA is for England, the country that gave birth to cricket. England is credited as the nation to spread the game of cricket to the globe with the Commonwealth regions mainly going on to become cricket frenzy nations. English pitches are accustomed to being swing and face-friendly aided by the cold weather and breezy winds. The pitches are often laid out as green as possible to favor the home swing bowlers. Hence, most Asian batsmen tend to face a hard time batting and making big scores there.
3. New Zealand
The island nation, of New Zealand, despite its small size and limited population, has been a fascinating place for athletics and sports. Cricket and Rugby are major games over there and you’d see a great variety of cricketers coming through here. The conditions in New Zealand are again seam and swing-friendly with a lesser focus on the spin pitches.
The games tend to heavily side on the swing and pace bowlers with bowling attacks largely made on the back of off-swing, in-swing, and seam triumvirate along with supporting medium pacers. The games as such over here are often a testament to batsmen where their technical strokeplay and skillset all come into play.
4. Australia
The mighty Australians as people know them for their top-tiered performance for years and host of World Cup trophies make up the fourth nation of SENA. Australia has been an incredibly top-performing team for decades and any team playing against them has to be on top of their game to beat them.
This has resulted in many memorable clashes between Australia and other nations. But time and again, Australia seems to win them. The pitches here are fast and bouncy much aiding the swing and pace bowlers. Asian teams often have a very poor record in terms of performance in Australia due to a lack of experience in playing these fast and bouncy pitches.
Asian conditions are spin-friendly and more of low-bouncy pitches where the ball doesn’t come to the bat at such high speed. This often gives batsmen more time to play their shots and eye the ball well before setting themselves for the perfect position to handle the ball.
These pitches do make good spin-handling batsmen but often lose out on valuable pitch experience like that of SENA countries. That’s why the performance of batsmen inside the Asian subcontinent and in SENA varies a lot. A lot of top Asian batsmen have had to prove their performance in SENA countries to be regarded as the top batsmen in the world.