Suzie Bates is one of the most decorated cricketers in the world. No one has more international caps in the women’s game, no one has more runs for the White Ferns, and last year she raised the T20 World Cup for the first time, almost two decades after making her international debut. Now, approaching her 38th birthday, with her sights on the 50-over title in a few month’s time, she speaks to Wisden.com on why a season spent in the North-East of England has been the perfect preparation.
‘Fresh’ has been the buzzword across the women’s game in England this summer. A new head coach and captain for the national team, and a brand new structure for the domestic game with expanded numbers of professional players and brand new county sides competing in brand new competitions. Of all those strands, the first-ever women’s professional side at Durham – who beat Yorkshire to host the northernmost of the eight Tier One counties – provided the most opportunity for recruitment to entice domestic players away from their previous hubs, and sign exciting overseas players. A phone call from Marcus North, Durham’s director of cricket, set the wheels in motion to bring Suzie Bates, with her wealth of experience, to the county.
“It was just last year that for the first time ever I played at Chester-le-Street for New Zealand against England,” says Bates. “We’d never played international cricket [there], and we stayed in Newcastle and I’d heard Durham was really beautiful, and I liked the place. But for me it wasn’t really about the location, it was about the chat I had with Marcus about what his vision was and what they were trying to build and the fact that they wanted me to be a part of that got me really excited.”
Alongside wanting a new challenge to fuel her final few years as she prepares to enter her third decade as an international cricketer, a young group of players at Durham have been key to keeping 37-year-old Bates across that theme of ‘freshness’.
“I knew a couple of the players [at Durham] but not many of them,” she says. “There are some really young players in the group that keep me young and teach me lots of things about what’s going on in their world, which is faraway from what I remember it to be like when I was an 18 year old. Stuff like the lingo, TikTok things and how to use ChatGPT, I’m a bit of a boomer I guess.”
Beyond learning TikTok dances, there was a practical side to Bates’ keenness to play for Durham. The winter in New Zealand would consist of indoor nets with the White Ferns and individual training. With Project Darwin up and running, county sides littered with high profile overseas stars, and England players set to feature heavily in the opening rounds of competition, the opportunity to build-up to a 50-over World Cup in that environment was a no-brainer.
“I knew as soon as Charlotte Edwards got the England job that the England players would potentially be playing in the 50-over comp,” says Bates. “I played Lancashire and Kate Cross and Sophie Ecclestone were playing so they had close to an international bowling lineup. It felt like a really strong competition.
“England just plays so much cricket. I had a coffee with Ellyse Perry the other morning and we were just talking about how much they play over here. In New Zealand, Australia we play 10 one-dayers domestically and they’re in a weekend or close together and there’s long breaks between those games, where week in, week out the players over here have the ability to play second eleven cricket, there’s other competitions, there’s just so much cricket.
“What I’ve seen this year is how much depth there is coming through and, as an overseas player, that’s a little bit daunting for a little place like New Zealand – just the numbers and depth they’re starting to create through the professional environment here.”
That volume Bates refers to has come under criticism this summer, with players voicing concerns about back-to-back fixtures affecting performance, and the dangers of late night, exhausted post-game drives home. But, for Bates, that volume is welcome in comparison to the domestic situation in New Zealand.
Despite having won the T20 World Cup last year, a fairytale moment of magic for the eternal underdogs, New Zealand do not have a full-time professional domestic set-up. There are more professional female players in the Surrey dressing room than there are in New Zealand, and Bates has played in more than double the matches in England this summer than she did across New Zealand’s 2024/25 home season.
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“In all the time that I’ve been playing cricket around the world, as soon as the domestic game is professionalised that’s when you make the biggest movement in terms of depth,” says Bates. “We saw it in Australia first with the WNCL contracts and having those domestic players being able to train full time. In England, although they started slowly with a few players in each county, the fact that they’ve got nearly 15 players in each county that are fully professional, in New Zealand we only have 17 cricket players in the entire country that are able to be professional and train full time.
“Unfortunately, the players’ association in New Zealand cricket came to an agreement with our MOU and that was set in concrete for five years, where our female domestic players were on retainers which still considers them semi-professional. We’re nearly into the third or fourth year, I’m not exact on the timings, so we’re at least two years away from reassessing that and being able to change those contracts and see if we can get them closer to full time.
“But we also need to remember that men’s professional cricketers are still only nine months professional [out of the year], they’re not completely full time, but their contracts allow them to fully commit to cricket. At the moment unless you’re among those 17 [women’s] players in New Zealand, you have to juggle study or part-time work alongside your cricket.”
For someone like Bates, who has seen the women’s game transform across the world over the course of her career, that progress has been so slow in New Zealand, all while the White Ferns have fought to hold their status among international sides, must be a frustration. On a personal level, her status as an all-time great affords her opportunities around the world to take advantage of franchise leagues and overseas contracts, but those chances are largely not available to the generation of her compatriots set to inherit her and other senior White Ferns’ legacies.
The handover of that inheritance draws closer and closer with each tournament, and each bilateral series. Many expected Bates to head off into the sunset, T20 World Cup aloft arm-in-arm with Sophie Devine at the end of last year. Instead, she’s gearing up for another push at silverware.
“I probably thought that after winning a World Cup I may struggle for motivation, but in a funny way having that feeling of winning a world title almost gave me more motivation, knowing that the 50-over World Cup is just around the corner,” says Bates. “Honestly, I’ve never stopped wanting to get better and I think as the game’s evolved that’s driven me even more to almost keep up and try to get better and grow with the game.”
While the unpredictability of the T20 World Cup evens the playing field between the haves and have nots, the 50-over tournament is different. New Zealand haven’t qualified for the knockouts since 2009, and came sixth in the last edition. They were at risk of failing to qualify directly for this year’s tournament, only edging out Bangladesh in the Women’s Championship on NRR. With the international calendar as it is, major tournaments coming almost every year and the prospect of an Olympics down the line, there will always be a carrot to look towards.
“I know I’m close to the end,” says Bates. “At 50-over World Cups, I always get to the end of those campaigns and reassess where I’m at and where my motivation is.
“I know when I’m done I’m going to be done for a long time. I love every minute of it still, and the body’s going OK. There are some younger people charging around that sometimes I look at and go ‘ooh, I’m getting old,’ but I just love it, and I love trying to get better and keeping up.”
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