Former Australian bowler Sarah Coyte is back in the electric blue, learning new cricket tricks and loving life again
With the WBBL at the midpoint of the season, former Australian bowler Sarah Coyte is among a host of Adelaide Strikers in red-hot form. She chats about her reinvention and love of the game.
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There are moments in matches that define a player’s season. For former Australian bowler Sarah Coyte that moment came on October 26 this year on a warm, spring Saturday morning.
Her side, Adelaide Strikers, were playing Hobart Hurricanes in a Women’s Big Bash League game at Allan Border Field in Brisbane, where Hobart had won the toss and sent Adelaide into bat.
The Strikers were in all sorts of trouble; the openers had failed to fire, middle-order lost their wickets to run outs and the team had slumped to 7/78 in the 17th over.
With another wicket gone and at number nine, Coyte, a medium pace bowler, took in a gulp of air, picked up her bat and marched to the wicket.
The Sarah Coyte of old might have found this moment slightly terrifying.
But not the new Sarah Coyte, not the one who has battled hard and defeated eating disorders and anxiety. Not the Sarah Coyte that has picked herself up after her marriage broke down only months ago and therefore lost care of a foster child she’d come to love.
Not the Sarah Coyte who has called on friends and family to give her the belief to rebuild herself.
So when she picked up her bat on the Saturday morning, it was with a renewed confidence. After all, she had new tricks up her sleeve.
“At the start of the season I said to our assistant coach Charlotte (Lottie) Edwards that I was sick of batting like a robot,” Coyte says.
“It sounds weird, but I was all about technique … I didn’t want to look stupid if I missed a ball.
“Then I thought: ‘It’s T20, you just need to get over it and get bat on ball’.
“So I said to Lottie I wanted to learn how to do a paddle or a ramp, so we worked on it about four days out from our first game (on October 19).
“Lottie was throwing me some balls and we’d go into the nets and I’d practice it and maybe one out of five I would hit.”
So there was Coyte on this Saturday morning coming out to bat with her team’s back against the wall, but personally with new tools in her already accomplished toolbox.
What happened next will likely go down as season-defining for the Strikers: Coyte hit 24 off 13 balls (including four boundaries) and pushed the Strikers over the 100-mark thanks to her newly learnt ramp shot easily finding the boundary.
“I just let instinct take over … even I was surprised I made it,” she recalls.
“There’s no reason I couldn’t ever learn how to play it, it’s just that at one point in my life I was like: ‘I don’t want to look like an idiot getting out to a ramp shot when I could just play the ball straight’.”
But the ramp isn’t the only new trick this 28-year-old has learnt lately. She’s called on confidante and fellow Australian representative Megan Schutt to help add a new slower ball to her repertoire.
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“I’ve been talking to Megan about how I’ve been bowling one of my variations and the way I start with it in my hand and she said: ‘Why don’t you just try how I bowl it out the back of the hand and you don’t have to change your grip on the ball at all’.
“We’ve been working on that and it’s been coming out really well.”
Schutt is one of Coyte’s best friends (you know this because they do silly things together … take close note of this year’s 2019 team photo and you’ll see they took advantage of being seated next to each other and they’re holding pinkies), as too is fellow bowler Alex Price with whom Coyte is currently living after relocating from hometown Sydney for the WBBL season.
Coyte says team-mate Price is one of those people who she would “do anything for”, especially because living in Price’s home has meant Coyte’s been able to bring her one-year-old purebred boxer, Bonnie, to Adelaide.
“Bonnie is one of the lights of my life, I love her more than anything and if I was coming to Adelaide then she was coming too.
“So I messaged Alex and she said I could come here, but she probably regrets it now because I wake up at 5am and put the kettle on every morning.”
But the fact that Coyte’s not staying in a dog-less city hotel apartment for the duration of the big bash is a blessing and she agrees that her form this season has outstripped her previous.
In WBBL04, she played all 14 games, took nine wickets with an economy rate of 7.19.
So far this season she has played eight games and already has eight wickets to her name with an economy of 7.41.
“This is probably the best spot I’ve been in terms of being prepared for cricket and the season and my attitude towards training and playing and travelling, mentally I’m in one of the best positions I’ve ever been in,” she says.
“I knew that I wanted to have a good season, I wanted to refocus on cricket and training and be a good player for the Strikers and I knew I had to be surrounded by good people.”
Talk to cricket insiders and you quickly learn that the Adelaide Strikers are known around the country as the “nice guys” of the WBBL. Everyone seems to like them.
“I’ve never been part of a better group,” Coyte agrees.
“And being with them, honestly makes me feel like I’ve left my best cricket till now.
“Back in the day, I knew I wasn’t healthy … since I took time away from the game and came back, I’ve had this attitude to see how good I can be.
“That’s what I’m doing now; I’m learning new things, I’m trying to take a few risks, not being afraid to try them.
“And the group we’ve got, the environment, the coaching staff, they allow you to do that and when you’ve got the freedom to do that, it changes everything.”
* Adelaide Strikers v Melbourne Stars, Saturday, November 16, Centennial Park Oval, Nuriootpa, from 1.30pm