Tammy Beaumont column: It's been a challenging build-up, but we're ready for Australia

TAMMY BEAUMONT: I'm feeling really positive that we can go toe-to-toe with Australia, put them under pressure and see what happens. It's a really good opportunity to test ourselves and take them on

Since arriving in Australia, we've had quite a bit of adversity thrown our way so far – mainly down to Covid.

It has even brought back memories of our Ashes tour in 2017, where our entire prep week was washed out in Brisbane. We turned up to training on the first day and it was pouring down, but I think we're doing as well as we can, with what we've gone through in the last couple of years.

In 2020, we didn't play any cricket for months, but we quite quickly got ourselves back up and running against West Indies. So, we're used to maybe not having an ideal lead-up and just having to roll with it.

We practised red-ball cricket and 50-over cricket in Oman and didn't practise T20s, but now we're starting with them after the schedule changed. That's part of what we've prided ourselves on: being able to adapt well.

A lot of us have done 14-day quarantines before, so safe-living in the UK before flying out to Australia wasn't too bad. What was harder was the fact that initially on arrival we weren't allowed to eat out, and we weren't sure we were going to be able to for the whole trip. It was a very flat team meeting when they told us the restrictions had changed while we were in the air. Now that the group is secure, we have been allowed to eat outside in small groups of three to four and that was an important change for us.

I've found it difficult because they've allowed a support person or a partner to come along, and obviously they didn't necessarily sign up for being locked in a room constantly in Australia, so the initial restrictions were difficult.

^{The Women's Ashes series begins on Thursday (Mark Brake/Getty Images)}

When we had the warmup games, my fiancé, Callum, couldn't get in a car with any of us, so him and a few others walked an hour and 40 minutes to come and watch the game.

They sat on the bank but because we were at a small venue and had to be so Covid-safe and separate there was no shade, no toilet and no water for those who had come along to watch. They're pretty dedicated! He can walk around Adelaide, the beach or the botanical gardens, and we've got cars for them now so it’s all getting a bit easier.

We've been cautious like this for a while now, though. Over Christmas, when we were safe-living to avoid Covid, we literally had mums feeding bowling machines, dads facing up to their daughters for the first time in years, partners batting left-handed so the bowlers could practise.

Callum has started to use a slinger. He comes from a military and rugby background, which aren't known for throwing – there were a few beamers in there! But he also wanted to have a bat, so he had a bat against the Merlyn bowling machine. It's the one that has a silhouette of a bowler, and it was Nathan Lyon. He pulled out this sweep-shot from nowhere and he was like: 'Get me in for the fourth Test!' He had a great time, like a kid in a candy store.

I've played enough games of cricket now to know that just facing the bowling machine isn't necessarily going to make me a worse or much better cricketer. I just try to make the most of the batting sessions I have without stressing too much, knowing that there's enough to fall back on with what I've done over the years. You just have to give yourself a bit of time to relax into it.

^{Beaumont ended the summer with a century in the final ODI against New Zealand (Christopher Lee/Getty Images)}

I probably wasn't thinking that during the warmup games the other day when I didn't get a score, but that's one of those things.

Warmup games are a difficult one. People are always at different places – the England A girls are really playing for something in that game. Their openers are looking across at me and Danni Wyatt, wanting our spots. They're massively up for it. It was great to see them really perform, and it keeps you well aware that there are some good girls coming up around us, so we have to keep on pushing.

Sometimes as a senior player, that's where you have to be professional in getting yourself up for it and really trying to get the most out of it. It's really tough sometimes – I'd had two batting sessions on grass before that, so you do feel a bit rusty. And then, you're playing a T20 and you're supposed to go out and smash it in the first six overs.

It's about getting that balance right between using that time in the middle to make yourself feel better and also playing the game as it needs to be played. I don't think I quite got that balance right, but hopefully it will be okay come Thursday.

Fortunately, as much as this preparation has been challenging, we can take all the confidence we got from the nine T20 games last year into this series. We've been a very good side for a long time. In the past few months, we've had a big 50-over focus, with the World Cup coming up, but we've got a formula that works really well for us in T20s. We just have to go out there and get stuck in – we know that when we take the attack to the other team, we play really well.

^{England faced England A in warmup games ahead of their departure for Adelaide (Image credit: ECB)}

I'm feeling really positive that we can go toe-to-toe with Australia, put them under pressure and see what happens. It's a really good opportunity to test ourselves and take them on. I hope that we really do. I know I felt this way before 2019 and it didn't quite come off, but hopefully we're more resilient now and we can fight our way out of things a bit better.

I don't tend to think about the last Ashes too much, if I’m honest. As a team, we've evolved quite a lot. Australia have had a couple of quite big injury losses and they've come off a really tough series against India, so it might be a good time to be coming over here.

That means the World Cup is on the backburner. We're playing against the best in the world out here. At the moment, this is all we're thinking about. We've also got to try to beat Australia in that World Cup if we want to win it, so in my eyes this is a good starter for the main event.