For nearly twenty years, Suzie Bates has worn New Zealand colours with pride. She has walked out 171 times in ODIs, 177 times in T20Is, played nine T20 World Cups, and is preparing for her fifth ODI World Cup later this month. She has captained her country, scored more T20I runs than anyone else (4716 runs), and sits just behind Mithali Raj and Charlotte Edwards on the all-time ODI run-scorers’ list with her 5896 runs.
It is a career most cricketers can only dream of. And yet, there is one dream Bates has never been allowed to chase.
New Zealand’s last women’s Test came in 2004. Nineteen months later, Bates made her debut. In all the years since, she has never had the chance to play the game’s oldest, toughest format. The current Future Tours Programme (FTP), running until April 2029, offers no hope either – not a single Test for New Zealand women.
The absence is not easy to carry. Bates admits it stings most when she sees others experiencing what she has been denied.
“The feeling (of not having a test career) is just like I’m envious,” she confessed. “Like I think I’ve said this in another interview when I watch the Women’s Ashes and even when I watch men’s Test cricket and they talk about it being the toughest game, it tests your skills, it tests you mentally, it tests you physically as an athlete and a sportsperson I want to be tested.”
Sometimes, for Bates it becomes a quiet game of imagination. “So, you sort of watch when there are women’s Test matches on and you’re like, ‘oh I wonder what I’d do in this situation or how I’d go about it’, and to not have that opportunity when others are playing it, you do want to experience it.”
She knows the reasons why it hasn’t happened. The finances. The politics. The choices administrators make. But that doesn’t make the ache go away, “But I understand the decisions and the politics of it at times,” Bates admitted. “But just as a player I’m like, ‘I’d love to have a taste of how I would handle that mentally and physically’. If it happens and I’m still playing I will be over the moon.”
For her, it isn’t just about one player’s dream. It’s about what the format can give to a generation. “I do just think for the future of the game – I think Virat Kohli’s talked about it saying that is still where you learn the most about the game and where you are tested and if young players, if a young New Zealand player gets to go over and play a four or five-day Test match in India in those conditions with the ball turning, the amount of learning that you do and that compared to a 20-over game is you just can’t compare.”
Ironically, while Bates waits, women’s Test cricket is finding new life elsewhere. The current FTP cycle has scheduled 15 Tests – a number that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
For the West Indies, it marks a long-awaited return after their last outing in 2004. But New Zealand are not alone in their absence. Pakistan have played only three Tests in their history, the last in 2004. Sri Lanka featured in just one – back in 1999 – but even that brought them victory, against Pakistan.
Bates turns 38 this month. Realistically, time is not on her side. But if the chance came, she insists she would do everything possible to be ready, “Yes, it would motivate me,” she said, “but there is a long time between now and then and I am just focused on contributing at this 50-over World Cup and then we will see what happens after that.”
Her career has been decorated, her numbers monumental, her influence immense. And yet, for Suzie Bates, the story of a missing Test cap lingers — a quiet reminder that even the greatest can be left with unfinished dreams.
(Quotes sourced from ESPN Cricinfo)
