Star batter Kate Anderson is the new name in the contracted White Ferns cricketers named Wednesday morning. She speaks to Kristy Havill
From full-time accountant to full-time cricketer, Kate Anderson’s life changed with a phone call. Her monumental decision to move south last summer has paid off, and now she’s a contracted White Fern.
“Are you moving to Christchurch to play cricket yet? We’ll get you in the White Ferns.”
That was the pivotal message Kate Anderson received one year ago from the Canterbury Magicians’ management.
Today, the 27-year-old accountant has been given a contract with the White Ferns for the first time.
After eight seasons playing for her beloved Northern Districts, Anderson’s move to play in the red and black was the big story of the domestic off-season last winter.
It wasn’t a switch she was actively considering at the end of the 2021-22 season, but the message stopped her in her tracks and prompted her to reassess what she wanted her future in the game to look like.
After seeing Anderson miss out on a White Ferns contract for the 2022-23 season, it was a Magicians brains trust meeting between coach Rhys Morgan, captain Frankie Mackay and assistant coach (and former White Fern and Magician) Rachel Candy that set the wheels in motion to reach out to Anderson.
“Frankie had done some work with her at White Ferns camps in the previous couple of years, and I’d worked with her in the development programme,” Candy recalls.
“She’s a hugely talented player who is so eager to learn and work hard to get better.”
It was Candy who fired off a couple of messages to Anderson to gauge her interest in a move, and Morgan followed up with a phone call shortly after.
Anderson credits what followed as the catalyst to taking her love for the game to new heights, winning a swag of national awards, and supercharging her goal to become a full-time professional cricketer – and ultimately achieving it.
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White Ferns head coach Ben Sawyer rang Anderson to offer her a White Ferns contract.
Working from her Hamilton home in her role as an accountant for PwC, she wasn’t expecting that sort of phone call.
Amid the excitement and happiness, there was a lot of satisfaction for Anderson after uprooting her life and shifting to Christchurch for the summer.
Not only is she reaping the rewards for the hard work she’s been putting in, but she’s going a long way to fulfilling the promise made to her by those who brought her to the garden city.
In case you missed how Anderson went about putting the White Ferns selectors on notice, let's recap her season.
After walloping 83 not out on New Year’s Day in the Super Smash against a vaunted Wellington Blaze line-up, she peeled off T20 scores of 92*, 74*, 59 and an astonishing 95 in the Super Smash final to lead the Magicians to the title victory.
All of those scores - except for the 59 against Otago down in Dunedin, and a third career Hallyburton Johnstone Shield (HBJ) one day century - came on her new home ground, Hagley Oval.
She also added two half-centuries to her one day career tally, finishing with 343 runs from nine innings, at an average of just under 43, in what was her best one day season for runs scored.
In T20s, her 536 runs was more than double her previous best for runs in a season, 59.55 nearly triple her previous best average, and her five half-centuries blew her previous best of one in a season out of the water.
As a testament to her stunning summer, Anderson was rewarded at the Canterbury Cricket awards with Magicians' batter of the year, player of the year and players’ player, while her knock of 95 in the Super Smash final was voted the supporters’ performance of the year.
A trip to the New Zealand Cricket Awards soon followed, where she also claimed the Ruth Martin Cup for domestic women’s batting, and was named not only the women’s Super Smash player of the year, but the women’s domestic player of the year to boot.
Since the season has finished, and she’s moved back home to Hamilton, Anderson has been able to reflect on her accomplishments and the different factors contributing to her going from having good seasons for ND to having an outstanding one for Canterbury last summer.
“I really benefited from being around the centralised group,” Anderson says. “I was training with the coaches multiple times a week, and we had 15 or 16 people at every training who are all there wanting to get better.”
Due to the spread-out nature of the ND region, receiving coaching and having high attendance at trainings isn’t always possible when player locations range from Tauranga to Hamilton and up to Northland. As Anderson points out, it made it difficult to build and sustain a strong team culture.
“We’d only see each other 10 times a season when we had games, so a lot of our time was just catching up with each other,” Anderson shares.
“And if a new player had been called into the squad, you’d only be meeting them for the first time the day before a match or on match day itself.”
Being in and around the Magicians environment several times a week, as well as turning out for Lancaster Park in club cricket, took Anderson’s enjoyment of the game to a whole new level.
“I just had so much fun, I was really enjoying myself. The girls really got around me and we had a good team culture. Everyone wanted the best for each other, and we wanted to win at the same time,” she says.
Shifting teams isn’t nearly as common in women’s domestic cricket. It’s not like men’s cricket, or Super Rugby or ANZ Premiership; one or two make the switch every so often, usually due to personal circumstances.
But in terms of a player shifting from one team to another to seek more playing opportunities or have a change of environment? It doesn’t happen regularly enough for it to not warrant a level of intrigue and a debrief about it at winter training – the sporting equivalent of water cooler chat.
For those struggling to take their game to the next level, or who don’t have a regular spot in the playing XI, a shift can be a game changer, like it was for Anderson.
Half the battle is being brave enough to take the leap.
“I had kind of been thinking about it, but it’s not something that’s common. The thing I thought about was do I want to be a good domestic cricketer or do I want to be a really good cricketer?” Anderson recalls.
“Was I playing to have a few trips away at the weekend, or was I playing to win games and win titles as a result?
“It was also a little bit of did I want to be the senior player in a young team, or did I want to come into a new team and have direction from others instead of feeling like it was all on my shoulders.”
The move wasn’t without its doubts, particularly after the Magicians’ HBJ campaign got off to a stuttering start at Mainpower Oval in Rangiora against the Wellington Blaze.
The first match was abandoned due to rain, before Canterbury were bowled out for 51 in under 20 overs chasing 178 for victory. This was all compounded by a season-ending injury for captain and allrounder Mackay.
Anderson was the top scorer for the red and blacks with 17 runs, but that was little solace as the Magicians’ season got off to the worst possible start.
“I got home on that Sunday night and I think I cried, and I thought why have I done this?” Anderson remembers.
“Why have I shifted my whole life to then get bowled out for 51? I had to do my soul searching and realise we’re still a good team, and I’m not a bad cricketer.
“Then I remembered we were due to play my old team the next weekend and thought ‘Oh god, we can’t lose to them’.”
Thankfully for Anderson and the Magicians, their respective seasons soon roared into life – and the rest is written in the famed NZC annual Almanack.
It wasn’t so long ago she’d never played alongside Mackay, Amy Satterthwaite and Lea Tahuhu, but she subsequently shared a changing room with the trio for a season while also partnering Suzie Bates at the top of the order for the South team in the revitalised North v South series.
Anderson views training and playing alongside four stalwarts of the sport as invaluable, and a huge part of her continued development as a cricketer is a result of the conversations and experiences she shared with them all.
“It was a huge drawcard for me to shift down in the first place, being in an environment with Frankie, Amy and Lea and being able to learn from them,” Anderson shares.
“Getting to bat with Amy and seeing how she goes about it, how easy she makes things look and how particular she is, there was a lot to take from that.
“My biggest lesson from her was she’d walk out to bat in a T20 and just dead bat her first three balls. And I’d be up the other end thinking ‘what are you doing Amy?’. Then she’d hit the last three balls of the over for four and we all of a sudden have 12 runs from it, at low risk. Whereas I’d face three dot balls and be swinging across the line to cow corner.”
Underneath the success and the statistics of Anderson’s season is a big what if: What if Canterbury hadn’t reached out first?
Anderson’s response to the message she received back in June 2022 is a telltale sign of the need for trustworthy people to help our female athletes advocate for and make positive decisions for themselves and their sporting aspirations.
“Surely you set it up, I wouldn’t even know where to start,” was Anderson’s response.
In a world where the ever-increasing resource and investment pouring into women’s sport is being matched by an explosion in broadcast revenue rights and ticket sales, the landscape in which the amateur or semi-professional game (and even the professional level) operates is changing every day.
With more franchise tournaments being added to the women’s cricket calendar, it’s not just presenting more opportunities for the top White Ferns players to clinch overseas squad spots and play nearly all year round.
It could also soon have a flow-on effect for eye-catching players like Anderson who don’t yet have the same level of playing commitments that could clash with franchise competitions.
But the first step to getting drafted or picked up overseas is putting your name out there.
“I would love to travel the world and play in different environments, but I probably need to put my name in the hat to begin with,” Anderson laughs.
“It comes out so far in advance, like we were being asked in the middle of the Super Smash to put our names forward for The Hundred which is in August. It was the last thing on my mind at the time, but then you miss out.
“No one ever thinks they’re good enough, especially as women, so if I think I’m not good enough then I’m not going to put my name in. But you never know unless you try.
“You definitely need that person to push you into those things and encourage you, and keep an eye on when things such as draft registrations are happening.”
In the meantime, representing her country is the next big goal for Anderson once she navigates her way through surgery for a finger injury she sustained in the Super Smash final, keeping her out of contention for the White Ferns tour to Sri Lanka this month.
And she’ll be doing so as a full time professional cricketer.
