Within a month of touching down in Ireland for a change of scene, Auckland Hearts all-rounder Arlene Kelly was shocked to be called into the Irish cricket side to play six games against South Africa. She tells Kristy Havill what it meant to family both here and there.
At the end of New Zealand's cricketing summer, Arlene Kelly felt the winds of change in the air.
It had been her 10th season representing her beloved Auckland Hearts, and arguably the toughest of the lot - both the Hearts and Auckland Aces men’s team had endured a heavily Covid-interrupted summer.
Kelly was also in line for a promotion at work.
But deep down, she knew she was looking for something different instead of another winter juggling her constant work and cricket commitments.
So she had a chat with her Northern Districts opponent, Ireland international Eimear Richardson in March about going over to play a season in the Emerald Isle. Then Kelly’s mind was made up.
The 28-year-old has an Irish passport, as her mother and all four grandparents are from Ireland, so it was an ideal opportunity to go over and connect more with family she hasn’t spent a lot of time with (or even met before). And she could play a bit of cricket at the same time.
A couple of phone calls later she was locked in to play for Malahide Cricket Club. So she resigned from her job as a key account manager with a human resources company and packed her bags.
When she boarded a flight to Dublin at the beginning of May, Kelly had no idea how much her world was about to change.
Fast forward one month, and Kelly cuts an excited, but relaxed and somewhat disbelieving figure chatting to LockerRoom.
“I’m still wrapping my head around it all to be honest,” Kelly says, a huge grin on her face.
Just two days before our chat, Kelly was awarded her debut T20 cap for Ireland for the first match of a three-game home series against South Africa.
Her day only got better from there, as she took two wickets in Ireland’s victory over the Proteas.
“It was unreal, a very special day” she says. “It was only the second time we’d beaten South Africa in a T20.
“The coolest part for me to see coming in fresh was the belief the team had from the get-go. We stayed in it throughout, which gives everyone a lot of confidence.”
It had never crossed Kelly’s mind to head over to Ireland sooner in her career and try to crack the national side.
Kelly has been a mainstay in a very successful Auckland team since making her debut in 2012, winning four one-day competitions and one T20 title.
Her best bowling figures in either format for the women in blue is 4-28 in a T20 match against the Central Hinds, while she also holds the honour of scoring 110 against the Northern Spirit.
Making the White Ferns was always an aspiration, having spent time in training camps with the New Zealand side over the years.
“But then again, I’d tried to never have any expectations around selection – I’ll go out and give it my best shot, and if that meant I got selected for New Zealand then that’s great,” she says.
“The special thing is wherever I’m meant to be, I can take what I learned through that experience and pathway, and come and share that here.”
Her words reflect her calm and collected approach to life, and she had the same mindset when it came to donning the Ireland shirt.
“There was no expectation, nor any pressure to play for Ireland,” she says. “I knew I was eligible, but cricket teaches you a lot over the years that you can never expect anything in sport.”
So just exactly how did she go from not even being on the Ireland selectors’ radar, to becoming a frontline member of their bowling attack so rapidly?
Within a week of landing, Kelly was suiting up for the Dragons in the 2022 Super Series, Ireland’s domestic competition.
Against her first opponents, the Typhoons, in a 50-over match, Kelly scored 60 runs and took three wickets. Understandably she had the Irish selectors’ sitting up a little straighter in their seats.
While the head honchos at Cricket Ireland would have preferred her to settle in a little longer and get some more cricket under her belt before bringing her into the fold, injuries to other players and a busy exam period meant Kelly got an unexpected phone call.
A week later, she was in camp with Ireland, and a few days after that was receiving her first international cap.
Kelly can be forgiven for still trying to wrap her head around the whirlwind she finds herself enveloped in. Needless to say, it was a special day for Kelly and her family when she made her debut at Pembroke.
Her parents and brothers eagerly watched the livestream back home in New Zealand in the early hours of the morning, proud as punch as Kelly was rewarded for the years of hard work and dedication with an international cap.
“They know how much this means to me and how excited I was for the opportunity, and were just stoked to see me get a chance to play the sport I love and have been working on for far too long now,” she says.
When asked if her Irish family contingent turned up in force to watch in person, Kelly chuckles heartily.
“The family here are still wrapping their head around what cricket actually is,” Kelly laughs.
“It’s obviously not as prevalent here as what it is down in New Zealand, but the family WhatsApp group was definitely pinging - one of my cousins came and watched though.”
Having grown up with the strains of God Defend New Zealand drummed into her, there was the tricky prospect of the Ireland national anthem to negotiate. Kelly knew it, but had to turn to a reliable source to make sure she had it down-pat before game day.
“There’s a lot of rugby back home where the Ireland national anthem gets played, so I was familiar enough with it,” she explains.
“Did I spend the odd time listening to it on Spotify to make sure I knew the words? Of course I did.”
Ireland went on to lose the T20 series 1-2, as the South Africans got out of second gear and hit their stride. Kelly played in each of the three matches, taking another wicket in the second T20.
But the good news kept coming. Kelly was then rewarded for her promising T20 series with her debut one-day international (ODI) cap in the first of the three ODI matches against South Africa that followed.
She played in all the ODIs (South Africa won all three) and now has her first ODI wickets, taking 2-40 in one game.
The ODI series marked Ireland’s first matches after being announced as one of the two new teams (Bangladesh the other) in the 2022-2025 edition of the ICC Women’s Championship (IWC). That's qualifying tournament running from now until 2025 to determine automatic qualification for the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup that year.
Teams who finish in the top five of the ICC Women’s Championship secure their spot for the World Cup straight away, while a sixth spot is reserved for the hosts. The other four teams are then determined in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup qualifier.
While the Irish may be at outside odds to clinch one of the top five spots, it’s the promise for regular cricket against high quality opposition that’s exciting the players.
Each team in the championship is guaranteed to play eight three-match series over the next three years – four at home, and four away.
It’s a lot more than Ireland will have played in the same period of time throughout their history, and provides frequent opportunities to pit themselves against the world-class teams and players.
As well as currently hosting South Africa, they will also welcome England, Australia and Sri Lanka to their shores, and will travel to Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the West Indies for their away series.
Couple that with Cricket Ireland investing €1.5m (NZ$2.5m) into the women’s game in 2022 - tripled from pre-pandemic years - including 20 contracts for the players and more full-time coaching resource, and you get the feeling the future for Ireland on the world stage is bright.
“The girls are really looking forward to the opportunities that lie ahead,” Kelly says.
“They’re a professional unit now, they want to learn and want to develop and this will be their chance to do that.”
Kelly’s stint in Ireland is scheduled to go through until September, but her plans at to return to New Zealand for another domestic summer are still not set in stone. It could, of course, depend on how things pan out with her new national team.
Ireland host a T20 tri-series at home with Australia and Pakistan next month, which may provide her with another opportunity to cement itself in Ireland’s future plans.
When asked if she’ll be home in time to suit up in blue again and add to her tally of over 150 matches for the Auckland Hearts, she’s very emphatic: “Your guess is as good as mine.
“I would love to follow the sun around for a bit, but we’ll just see what happens. The way it’s all worked out, I’m here for it.”]
*The Cricket World Cup in New Zealand earlier this year has smashed viewer records - becoming the most viewed women's cricket competition in history. It racked up 1.64 billion video views - the third most digitally engaged ICC event ever, behind the ICC men's World Cup in 2019 and the 2021 men's T20 World Cup. Those figures were 16 times higher than the last 50-over women's World Cup in England in 2017.
