Interview Suzie Bates | Michael Jordan and Sachin Tendulkar used to make me stop and watch Premium

Suzie Bates, a cricket legend with record-breaking runs, reflects on her career and the evolution of women's cricket.

No batter, not even Virat Kohli, has scored as many runs in international T20 cricket as Suzie Bates. The New Zealand all-rounder has 4231 runs in T20Is and 5673 runs in ODIs.

At 36, she continues to be one of stalwarts in women’s cricket. And she is a double international, having played for New Zealand in basketball at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

She spoke to The Hindu over phone from Hamilton. Excerpts:

A: It was one of the most exciting finishes to a game that I have bowled in. It was pleasing to be able to get the win after a tough start to the series. So yeah, it was super exciting. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to beat them again, but it felt great to be able to do a job with the ball.

Initially I never expected to be a professional athlete. It was something I loved to do, playing sport. And I played a lot of sports growing up, and I got picked for the New Zealand women’s cricket team at 18, and I didn’t even think about getting paid for or even the potential to be paid, so it was all about loving playing for my country and getting the opportunities to go to World Cups.

I saw it as a privilege not just to go to those World Cups and not have to pay for them and get paid to travel the world with my friends. So, it’s a very different world now, and I just feel that I am very fortunate that I got to experience both the amateur and professional sides of the game. There were probably crossroads there when I got to my late twenties where I probably wasn’t earning enough money to look after myself, and that is when the game started to take off worldwide and franchise cricket came into it.

That kind of kept me going, and now internationally, we are full-time professionals, and I think having been in a completely amateur era, I now want to make the most of getting paid for something that I used to do pretty much for free.