I WISH...

SUZIE BATES

It’s been almost 17 years since White Fern Suzie Bates pulled on the pads for New Zealand for the first time. In all the overs faced since then, the 36-year-old has racked up almost every award, stat and accolade going, including becoming the leading T20 international runs scorer in the world earlier this year when she surpassed India legend Virat Kholi. Although, she says, it was the bronze medal win at the 2022 Commonwealth Games that was “the most special moment” she’s had in the White Ferns.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, Bates also represented New Zealand in basketball at the 2008 Olympics.

As the White Ferns prepare for the start of the 2023/24 season here at home, Bates is still learning. Usually an opening batter, she was moved to number six for the Sydney Sixers in the Australian Women’s Big Bash League earlier this year, and it was a change that shifted her mindset about the way she approaches the game she’s been playing since backyard hit-outs as a kid growing up in Dunedin.

“Initially, I was pretty gutted,” she says of the move down the order. “You’re here to do a role, and it felt like being dropped – that’s never nice as an overseas player, or in any team. But once I got into it and accepted that it was going to be my role, it’s amazing how different my mindset was before the game. I probably took it for granted, but when you go out to open [the batting], the situation is always the same, you can prepare for that before the game starts…Whereas at number six,

I don’t think about the game until I get there because it unfolds and I could be in a different situation every time. I probably didn’t even realise that was the nature of how I prepared, so it’s been really refreshing.”