Double internationals like Jeff Wilson (BLACKCAPS, All Blacks) or Phil Horne (BLACKCAPS, Commonwealth Games badminton team) are rare these days in the men’s game. In the WHITE FERNS almost every second player can claim sporting honours in more than one code.
Captain Suzie Bates represented New Zealand in basketball at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Amelia Kerr was playing indoor cricket for New Zealand from the time she could breathe. Former WHITE FERN and wicketkeeping legend Rebecca Rolls swapped her gloves for being the goalie in the Football Ferns. Pace bower Hannah Rowe’s got a secret life as a netball shooter who’s represented the Manawatu Under-19s and Sophie Devine and Liz Perry have both played hockey for the BLACKSTICKS.
Air Suzie: Bates was a Tall Fern as well as a WHITE FERN. PHOTOSPORT
So lifting their game to the top is nothing new but, says Perry, you’d be wrong if you thought that meant all they think about is sport 24/7.
“For me, balance is actually the key,” says the woman whose twitter profile says she dabbles in sport, anthropology and lurking. The lurking may be playful, but the anthropology is for real: the 29-year-old has a Masters in the Anthropology of Sport with honours.
Her studies focussed on cricket, specifically the experiences of New Zealand and Australian women "migrating" to play cricket in England: how they adjusted to cultural and social differences a long way from home, often in a financially harsh environment. It was a new area of academic research, untouched by academics previously.
She herself was in the midst of two seasons spent playing County cricket for Yorkshire (skipping New Zealand’s home 2012/13 summer), and now Perry is hoping to go back to England on the ultimate sporting ticket as a member of the WHITE FERNS World Cup squad.
Liz Perry has relished being back in black playing alongside WHITE FERNS legends. PHOTOSPORT
If Perry makes the cut, there’s no doubting what it will mean to her after a career of many twists and turns, not to mention detours into academia.
“I’ve got one goal at the minute and that’s to walk off Lord’s as World Cup winners.”
It started in earnest in 2015 with a recall to the WHITE FERNS following shoulder surgery for the Wellington Blaze captain, who is also one of a small club of women to have played more than 100 one-dayers in New Zealand representative domestic cricket. She headed into this season with a WHITE FERNS 2016/17 contract.
If the dream comes true, it will be a long way from the Lansdowne Cricket Club in Masterton where she started playing junior cricket as a wee dot, before progressing to the Wairarapa U14s and Central Districts U14s, where she played alongside Rachel Priest.
Perry’s first taste of international honours came when she was just 18 and selected in the 2005/06. New Zealand A side, but it wasn’t in her current guise as a specialist batsman — in those days she was very much a specialist bowler with best figures of 3-4 off 7 (including 5 maidens) against the Canterbury Magicians in 2006/07. Having moved to Wellington, it was then Blaze Coach Robbie Kerr who spotted her ability with the bat and moved her up the order untll she scored her first half century in 2010/11 against the Hearts.
Liz Perry first started catching attention as a bowler. PHOTOSPORT
From Lesley Murdoch to Debbie Hockley there’s been quite the history of WHITE FERNS also representing their country in hockey, and since it’s generally been the good batsmen who do so, perhaps it was a latent talent all along. But with the increasing pool of quality players at the national selectors’ disposal Perry has also been challenged to maximise those talents just to secure game time to press her case.
Balance? It comes in the form of family and friends, and her alternate career as a consultant at Global Elite Sports, a sports recruitment and consultancy agency where one of her roles is working with her other employer, New Zealand Cricket, to help players prepare for life after sport.
If it sounds busy, it is, but the Perry blend of maturity, intelligence and sporting drive means the eyes are firmly on the goals. Just not ones of the hockey variety anymore.
