Suzie Bates

Trail-blazing cricketer

Sport was Suzie Bates’ life as a Dunedin teenager, but making a life out of sport was never the plan. Then Sarah Ulmer came to town.

In 2001, Ulmer was becoming a household sporting name, but, like most of her contemporaries, she did it for medals, not money. The track cycling champion’s presence at a workshop for promising sportspeople set Bates, then in year 9 at Otago Girls’ High School, on the right path.

‘‘She got us to write down a goal and I said I wanted to play cricket and basketball for New Zealand. At the time it was ‘that would be so cool, what a dream’, not really thinking it would happen,’’ Bates recalls.

‘‘Sarah was so down to earth and made me realise that if I wanted to achieve that, there were decisions along the way that would help me get there.’’

As Ulmer won Olympic gold in Athens in 2004, Bates went all in. Two years later she played the first of her 208 internationals for cricket’s White Ferns, and in 2008 became an Olympian herself, with the Tall Ferns basketballers in Beijing. She never looked back.

Now, a decade on, Bates is 30 and one of the country’s highest-profile sportswomen. She captains the White Ferns and makes a living playing 10 months a year and starring in Twenty20 leagues in Australia and England.

This month she was named by a panel of experts in The Guardian as the world’s secondbest woman cricketer, behind Australia’s double football and cricket international Ellyse Perry. In the inaugural women’s all-star T20 game in India, Bates was player of the match.

For New Zealand Cricket’s marketing department she is a dream: accessible to media and public, engaging and sought after for selfies, autographs and coaching sessions. Just hours after being requested, Bates is on the phone from Ireland for an interview, upbeat and insightful as always.

As a girl, all she wanted was to compete with her older brothers Tom and Henry in the backyard. Father Robin, a Dunedin Crown solicitor, and mother Jo, a Family Court lawyer, had strong sporting backgrounds and started them off with tennis, but young Suzie was soon hooked on cricket.

When the Bates family moved from Macandrew Bay to the city, the kids played cricket on an L-shaped concrete lane where Tom made his sister bowl at him for hours from close range ‘‘because I wasn’t fast enough’’. When she got a turn to bat, she honed her now-favourite shot, the late cut, to avoid hitting the house.

‘‘My brothers are the main reason I’m so competitive. I was always trying to prove to them and their friends if I got a chance to play in the backyard that I was good enough even though I was a girl. That’s where my drive to be better started.

‘‘My parents supported everything I did and went out of their way to get all four of us to sport.’’

The youngest, Olivia, didn’t follow her sister into football and cricket but went for netball, and with the family sporting genes this year earned her first contract with the Southern Steel.

Playing sport in boys’ teams soon became the norm for Bates, who kept shadowing her brothers.

‘‘Because I didn’t know of any professional female athletes in New Zealand at the time I didn’t see a career. I just played because I absolutely loved it. I still worked pretty hard at school and I remember one teacher telling me to make sure I had a career outside of sport because it wasn’t going to pay the bills.’’

Studying law didn’t appeal and Bates’ parents didn’t push her. Cricket and basketball trips were far more exciting than law school. ‘‘I managed to do a phys-ed degree (it took five years) while I was gallivanting around the world doing fun stuff.’’

That included the Beijing Olympics when she was 20, after being told by a national basketball coach as a teenager that she had the skills but not the fitness to be an international. It was a jolt and a turning point, but it hit the mark.

‘‘At the time I was pretty upset but it was a moment where I’m either going to work on my fitness or not play at the next level.’’

In Beijing she gazed wide-eyed at US basketball superstars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant in the athletes’ village. Her team-mates would star-spot in the food hall and sidle up to the biggest names.

‘‘I look back with a few regrets because I was a very shy Dunedin girl and the All Blacks and Silver Ferns were the most famous people I’d seen in the flesh. When I got to the Olympics I was so starstruck and overwhelmed I just stared at people rather than talk to them or get photos.’’

Double netball and basketball international Donna Wilkins was her sporting idol, but cricket was winning the race for Bates’ sporting affection. She was New Zealand’s star of the 2009 World Cup in Sydney where they made the final before losing to England.

The name Mike Shrimpton gets a liberal mention from here on. Bates’ voice sparks up when recalling her former coach who, family aside, had the most profound impact on her career. Shrimpton died in 2015, aged 74, by which time Bates was at the peak of her cricketing powers.

‘‘He was a massive influence on me. I guess he wanted me to be as good as I could be and I hadn’t had a coach like that who invested so much time, mostly voluntarily.

‘‘I used to go up to Napier for a week and we’d just train and do drills and we got really close through that. We had the same passion for women’s cricket and how to make the game better. We’d train in the morning then have a cup of tea and sit for hours trying to solve the world of women’s cricket.

‘‘It was pretty hard when he went downhill quickly.’’

Now women’s cricket is on the rise, and Bates is getting recognised a lot more off the field. She wasn’t shy in pointing out years of neglect of the women’s game, which NZC acknowledged and tried to address with fulltime contracts and, now, business-class flights to overseas tours.

The top White Ferns contract plus match fees is about $55,000, one-sixth of the highestearning Black Cap.

‘‘From where we started I can’t believe where it’s got to. But I also want to be an advocate. There’s still further to go and more we can do at grassroots level. It’s all well and good the business-class flights but if we can spend that money on good coaching and resources as well, even better for the growth of the game.’’

For a new star like Amelia Kerr, who smashed a world record 232 not out and took 5-17 in a stunning display against Ireland on Thursday, the cricketing world is at her feet.

‘‘I have to remind the likes of Amelia ‘back in my day it wasn’t like that’,’’ Bates creaks in her best elderly voice.

‘‘If Amelia wants to she can play professional cricket around the world for the next 15 years and that’s so exciting for me, and I look forward to sitting on the sidelines watching.’’

For now, Bates labels herself ‘‘a bit of a gypsy’’, touring the world and returning to the family home when she’s in Dunedin. You can take the girl out of Otago and all that, and it always draws her back for her two months of downtime.

‘‘We used to spend family holidays at Glendhu Bay, near Wanaka, and that area of Otago you feel like you can just get away. I like getting out on the mountain bike and that’s probably my happy place, other than the cricket field.’’

After 12 years at the top level, retirement isn’t on Bates’ mind. She’s never won a World Cup, and New Zealand hosts it in 2021, which provides a tasty target for her and team-mates Amy Satterthwaite and Sophie Devine from that 2009 side.

‘‘After that we’ll see what happens. If I’m still enjoying it and my body is still well, I might play a bit more.’’

Just like those endless backyard games with her brothers, she won’t be walking away easily.

‘‘My brothers are the main reason I’m so competitive. I was always trying to prove to them . . . that I was good enough even though I was a girl. ’’