The White Ferns captain did her best to outline the positives, but the body language offered more of an insight into how the camp must be feeling.
Barring the utterly unlikely occurring, the White Ferns will be bundled out of the Women’s Cricket World Cup regardless of the result of today’s game against Pakistan at Hagley Oval.
That bitter reality has been percolating since the tense loss to England last weekend.
The White Ferns entered the tournament with such high hopes.
They were fresh from a 4-1 series win against India.
There was a stunning win against Australia in a warm-up match to further bolster the side’s confidence.
All signs pointed towards the White Ferns booking a semifinal berth without much fuss. Huh. What actually happened was the White Ferns were not able to capitalise on some good starts with the bat or hold their nerve at the end of some very close games.
That was the scaffold supporting Devine’s long face.
‘‘We do know this is likely our last game here and that is how we want to play it.
‘‘We still have so much passion and pride that we want to make sure that we go out and really put on a performance that we are certainly proud of, but also all our friends and family and the rest of New Zealand are really proud of as well.’’
When asked to reflect on what had gone wrong for the home side, Devine blamed the batting.
‘‘In all honesty we have not scored enough runs. There has been a number of games if we had scored 20 more runs then I think the results would have been a little more easily to come by.
‘‘[Today’s game] is our big focus but all those reflections and reviews will happen, but certainly run-scoring has been an issue for us.’’
Devine is off the hook on that count. She has scored 297 runs at an average of 49.50 and a strike rate of 90.54.
Melie Kerr (177 at 35.40) and Amy Satterthwaite (175 at 35) chipped in. But runs came too slowly in the middle, which created pressure at the end of the innings and the White Ferns turned up rocks, not diamonds.
There is good news, bad news on the injury front. Fast bowler Lea Tahuhu has not recovered from the hamstring strain she picked up during the game against England and has been ruled out.
Her spot will likely go to Hayley Jensen or perhaps Rosemary Mair will get her first start of the tournament.
Devine had back problems in the loss to England and needed medical attention before resuming her innings. But she trained yesterday and is hopeful of taking her spot at the top of the order.
‘‘We will certainly miss [Tahuhu’s] experience. I thought she has been fantastic with the ball this competition and we will miss her leading that pace attack.’’
