The Yogi, Boo-Boo of New Zealand cricket
CHENNAI: On the first morning of her first overseas tour with the White Ferns, Amelia Kerr made a beeline for the chocolate fountain at The Langham Hotel in Melbourne. Amelia, all of 16 at the time and still in school, had been called up as a late replacement for the injured Leigh Kasperek during New Zealand’s 2017 white-ball series in Australia.
Katey Martin, the wicketkeeper then, remembers sitting with Suzie Bates, her captain and close friend, when Amelia came down for breakfast. “She had ice cream and some pancakes and this chocolate fondant,” Martin, who was also Amelia’s roommate on that tour, looks back. “I remember Suzie looking over and going, ‘Oh, Melie, we’re international cricket now, we’ve got a game today and you’re eating ice cream and chocolate for breakfast.’”
That interaction, far from signalling the disapproval of a senior with a newbie, marked the start of a special relationship between Bates and Amelia. Over the years, they have become an integral pair that holds New Zealand batting together on the field. Already a bonafide legend of the sport, Bates holds a slew of records which includes being the all-time leading run-scorer in T20Is. Amelia, a once in a generational talent and a New Zealand great in the making, has the highest individual score in one-day internationals.
Together, they have won innumerable number of matches for White Ferns and in the process, developed a friendship where they are inseparable as a duo both on and off the field. So much so that they have been nicknamed ‘Yogi and Boo-Boo’ after the fictional cartoon characters from The Yogi Bear show/movie by their teammate Lea Tahuhu.
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Amelia was nine when she watched the White Ferns play the ODI and T20I World Cup finals in 2009. Going to the nets with her dad before school at Linden, she would pretend to bat with the likes of Bates, Sophie Devine, and Amy Satterthwaite in a World Cup final and make her father commentate. Bates was her idol.
Amelia vividly remembers meeting Bates for the first time during an U15 tournament. “I didn’t really talk to her. She was coaching Otago and I was playing for Wellington. I was probably thinking ‘IT’S SUZIE BATES, I better score runs today and impress her,” recalls Amelia, sitting next to Bates during a conversation with The New Indian Express last year.
Bates, too, reminisces about the tournament, noticing how talented the youngster was. They went up against each other in the domestic circuit in the years to come, but it was only when Amelia joined the national team that their friendship formed. For Amelia, it was about going up against Bates in the nets, watching her idol closely and learning from one of the best in the world. For Bates, that infectious energy drew her towards the youngster.
“I think just having someone around with that enthusiasm was really inspiring. You’re drawn to that kind of energy when you train and just talk about your goals and where we want this team to go. I’ve always found that really good energy to be around and that’s probably just where it’s grown,” explains Bates.