New Zealand veteran Suzie Bates set for WBBL switch to Hobart Hurricanes

LEG BUYS: When the WBBL season gets underway this month, expect some big-name replacement players to land back in the tournament – with New Zealand star Suzie Bates finding a new home.

One of the most decorated players in women’s international cricket history is poised to land at her fourth Women’s Big Bash League club.

New Zealand veteran Suzie Bates is understood to have attracted strong interest from the Hobart Hurricanes to be a replacement player for the WBBL season when it begins later in the month.

Bates, 37, was bypassed by clubs at last month’s draft but is on the radar of the Hurricanes for the tournament that starts less than a week after the Women’s Twenty20 World Cup final in the UAE.

She shapes as a likely replacement for England’s Danni Wyatt-Hodge, who is due to miss the latter stages of the season including the finals because of international commitments against South Africa.

Suzie Bates has played the past two seasons with the Sydney Sixers. Picture: Getty

An all-rounder over the years, Bates seldom bowls these days but remains one of the White Ferns’ key players, making 27 at the top of the order in NZ’s upset win over India last week.

One of women’s international cricket’s most capped players in both white-ball formats, Bates has played the last two WBBL seasons with the Sydney Sixers but was not retained for this campaign after averaging 14.41 with the bat at a strike rate of 93.01.

She previously had stints with both the Perth Scorchers and Adelaide Strikers, having appeared in all bar one of the nine WBBL seasons to date.

Bates also served as NZ captain between 2011 and 2018 and represented her nation in basketball at the 2008 Olympics.

The Hurricanes – who have never won the WBBL – picked up South Africans Lizelle Lee and Chloe Tryon alongside Wyatt-Hodge at the draft.

Suzie Bates is one of the most decorated players in women’s cricket history. Picture: Getty

FRIEND ONE WEEK, FOE THE NEXT

While the World Cup still has a fortnight to run, domestic women’s T20 cricket begins on Friday in the form of the new Spring Challenge event, added to the summer calendar for this season to supplement the schedule after the WBBL was trimmed from 14 matches per side to 10 per team.

Initially Cricket Australia had hoped that the league would be contested by the seven Women’s National Cricket League sides (the six states plus the ACT) however pushback from Victoria and NSW led to a backflip and compromise whereby the tournament will feature the eight WBBL teams – sans players involved at the World Cup – and the ACT.

That just left the matter of the handful of ACT Meteors players who are also contracted to WBBL teams. Meteors captain Katie Mack and spinner Anesu Mushangwe both fall into that category as they are on the books of the Strikers.

While the new league’s contracting rules make an allowance for WBBL-contracted players to play for the ACT in the Spring Challenge with the approval of a CA technical committee, Mack and Mushangwe are both set to turn out for the Strikers rather than the Meteors despite already playing for the ACT in the 50-over competition this summer.

Victoria and NSW both threatened to boycott the new competition had the initial plan remained in place, claiming that it provided an unfair advantage for one-state WBBL teams who could have used the new league as a development opportunity at the expense of the clubs from two-team states.

Originally published as New Zealand veteran Suzie Bates set for WBBL switch to Hobart Hurricanes