Most of her friends, it might be suggested, would be busy in a world where texting is considered dull, whatsapping, Facebooking and Insta are hip and where Zumba and pilate are fun whilst conventional sports rugged.
Where most of her friends couldn’t be blamed for spending time in chic stores, someone who’d be blaming Amelia Kerr for not following the norm- the White Ferns talent being 17- then it would be Ireland.
Amelia Kerr- the baby-faced destroyer of Ireland
Cricket has seen batswomen, ball-smashers and record-breakers.
On June 13, 2018, Ireland Women’s side met a punisher.
There’s honestly no other way to describe a teenage sensation who took to batting against Ireland a tad bit seriously, nearly horse-whipping her harmless opponents that suffered another mega defeat on home soil.
The biggest gainers were the White Ferns who’ve unleashed a terrorizing bully in Amelia Kerr.
Ireland caught napping again
Against an Ireland caught napping again by New Zealand’s Women’s side, the cuddly looking teenager creamed 232 runs and remain unconquered. With a fondness of playing shots on the front foot with reserving a penchant to avoid the lust to play airy strokes, Kerr spurred New Zealand to a great new high.
Striking 2 sixes and a brilliant 32 fours, New Zealand’s Amelia Kerr- a devil for Ireland and those who are yet to play against her but have been cautioned by the world record score- lifted the bar of contemporary cricket.
No other batswoman, whether in her New Zealand side or in any contemporary unit has been credited with scoring a two hundred runs knock in ODI cricket.
The only person who managed to strike a cricketing double hundred in an ODI was former Australian cricketer Belinda Clark.
Breaking Belinda Clark’s world record score
Amelia Kerr achieved the feat 3 years before turning 20, inside 2 years of making her T20 debut and precisely in only her 10th T20 appearance.
Those who’d love math can chew on this sterling feat endlessly.
Those who seek in T20 cricket, batting mayhem would be delighted continually.
What’s most adulatory about Amelia Kerr’s sensational feat is that by hammering Ireland Women’s on way to her beastly double-ton, she’s become the only teenager in world cricket to have struck a double-century in the 50-over format.
Her 232 of just 145 balls is, overall, the third-highest individual score in the briefer template and the highest ever score by a New Zealand woman.
A special New Zealand women’s cricketer
There’s a fitting irony in her feat as well. Hailing from a country that’s produced some heroics belters of the white ball- McCullum.
Munro, Martin Guptill- the name of Amelia Kerr shall be considered in a staggeringly good-looking troika of women’s game that includes Suzie Bates, Sophie Devine and, the Wellington-based teenager.
The Kiwis, essentially, are considered to be a different pedigree of cricketing talents.
Hardwired in their game isn’t a style of play that has ostentatious self-advertisement. They are masters of self-preservation. Here’s a case in reference.
McCullum quietly walked away from Test cricket having fired the fastest Test hundred by a Kiwi in a 5-day contest. He would evade limelight for months. Martin Guptill, when he butchered West Indies through his 237, made it seem ordinary. You saw no mega posters of exhibitionism on social media. Crowds didn’t gather in the city square back in Wellington or Auckland. The Mayor’s office didn’t declare an unusual day.
A few hours before, prior to bullying Ireland Women’s again, as Suzie Bates led her White Ferns to a world-record-breaking 490 (team score), the internet did not break down in celebration. Cricket fans world over, some in the wider world who treat women’s and men’s game equally did not bombard inboxes and messages through social-media memes or forwards.
What does Amelia Kerr’s feat mean to the sport?
There was hurrah, there was adulation but in dignity.
Now, that Amelia Kerr’s struck an awe-inspiring, gut-wrenching if you are an Ireland fan 232 not out, will things change?
Most of us at this moment may not even realize that the Kiwi cricketer, launching into a tyrant of sorts in taking her side to a massive 440 on the scoreboard may just have broken the glass ceiling for the women’s game.
If you were to simply scroll past the list of achievements that the women’s sphere of the contest has garnered in the aftermath of 2017 World Cup, you’d know the stature of their game is growing.
What Amelia Kerr’s 232 does is that it not only gives existing worldly talent a new milestone to chase, herself included but gives an enterprising bunch of hitters- Smriti Mandhana, Ellyse Perry, Alyssa Healy, Ashleigh Garnder, Hayley Mathews, Stafanie Taylor, Chloe Tryon and others- something to think about.
Whether this is a rude wake-up alarm to a world where the most admirable talents are those from an India or Australia can’t be said but what is pretty well-established now is that all teams will now take White Ferns even more seriously.
At this point in time, New Zealand’s Women’s side is peril nightmare to any bowling attack.
You’d battle them whilst reading an invisible disclaimer: material non-fragile, strong, capable of destruction.