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Kerr carried her bat through the innings with a magnificent 145-ball 232, the highest score in an ODI, going past Belinda Clark’s 229 that came way back in 1997.
New Zealand all-rounder Amelia Kerr is all of 17 and on Wednesday(June 13), she brought the roofs down with her scintillating show, both with the bat and ball as her team completed a 3-0 rout of Ireland. If posting 490 and 418 wasn’t satiating enough in the first two ODIs, New Zealand followed it up with a third as they put 440 runs on the board to cruise to victory by a staggering 305 runs. And the lady who orchestrated the towering win, not only posted the highest individual score in a women’s ODI but also picked a five-fer to boast of, all on the same day.
Kerr carried her bat through the innings with a magnificent 145-ball 232, the highest score in an ODI, going past Belinda Clark’s 229 that came way back in 1997. However, the teenager was unaware of her feat as she went about hammering fours and sixes in her inning. “I had no idea,” Kerr said after the game. “I think I heard them say stuff on the speaker but I didn’t hear them because everyone was clapping.”
Kerr’s previous best of 152 had come in an Under-21 match, but the way she went about converting her hundred into a double one before taking it to a whole new pedestal, at no point showed that it was her first at playing a knock of such magnitude. While the news of possibly breaking a record on the PA system hardly made it to her ears, she went about making the most of being what the players call, ‘in the zone’. “I had to work hard at the start but then once I got through I got going a bit. Put the bad ball away but keep scoring off most balls and then I knew the powerplay was coming soon,” the 17-year-old said.
“Once we got to the powerplay with only three out I was going to try and go hard then.”
By the time Kerr returned to the dressing room, having plundered 31 fours and two sixes, her body was hurting. So before the team strode out to the middle for the second half, Kerr managed a quick 10-minute nap on the physio’s table during the innings break. Little did she know that her blockbuster day wasn’t done after the double hundred, as her skipper Suzie Bates tossed the ball to her on a wicket that had some turn.
“I didn’t think I was actually going to bowl today. I thought Suzie was just going to let me have a rest in the field standing at slip all day,” she quipped. But with the wicket offering assistance for her leg-breaks, Kerr went on to bag a five-fer, again, her best efforts in international cricket, this time with the ball. “The pitch was turning which obviously helps me,” she added.
But after a taxing day, the kind she had on Wednesday, Kerr must have been a tired girl. But sleep was not the first thing on her list. She had to make do with her 10-minute nap to stay up till 10 in the night to catch up on her favourite TV show. “I will sleep well, I have to stay up until 10 o’ clock to finish Love Island but then we’ll be in bed.”
For the records Kerr stacked up to headline the morning newspapers of the next day, she was nothing but unassuming. And that should take her a long way in what promises to be a career to watch out for.
