Rising star’s journey from the backyard to the Baggy Green

Australia’s Annabel Sutherland is the hottest women’s cricketer in the world right now. Who is she? The 23-year-old tells us where it all began.

Annabel Sutherland of Australia makes her way out onto the field. Picture: Getty

Annabel Sutherland was the quintessential backyard cricketer. Big brother was trying to knock her block off. Dad bowled all right with a tapey. Mum’s dibbly-dobblies were borderline unplayable. Younger brother was on her side. Automatic wickie. Six wasn’t out as long as you retrieved the ball from the other side of the fence. One-hand, one-bounce complicated the existence of any batter overstaying her welcome. Because a fast game’s a good game in backyard cricket.

“I remember right in the middle of summer, when the men’s Tests were on TV, we’d get our own Test matches going,” Sutherland says ahead of her headline act in the women’s Ashes. “Two innings’ each. Five or six wickets per innings. Me and my younger brother, Tom, were against my older brother, Will. We’d team up and take him on. Try to take him down. It’d go for hours when the fiercest battles were happening.

Annabel Sutherland as a youngster with former Australian captain Meg Lanning.

“Bats were thrown, I’d burst into tears and storm off in a huff. That was the only time Will showed any mercy. He’d do everything he could to get me and Tom to come back because he needed us to keep playing. Otherwise, he had no one to play with. They’re great memories. The best.”

Sutherland is 23 years of age. Top chick, tough cookie. She’s ­becoming so dynamic as an all-rounder the Australian team doesn’t always know what to do with her. She could bat number three but Ellyse Perry is already there, ageing like a nice bottle of plonk, playing better than ever, and so Sutherland is likely to bat at five against England. She could take the new ball, too, but Megan Schutt, still swinging a six-stitcher like a tapey, and a handful of others are proficient leather-flingers and so Sutherland will deliver a slightly older ball when the Ashes begins with the opening ODI at North Sydney Oval on Sunday.

She’s coming in hotter than Bondi Beach on Boxing Day, hotter than Emerson Jones at the Australian Open, no longer a superstar of the future but a superstar of right now, shortlisted for the ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year award. If she doesn’t win the Belinda Clark Medal, Clark herself should throw the gong in the bin. If she doesn’t follow in Perry’s famous, fancy-free footsteps by winning the ICC’s top prize later this month, I’ve been watching the wrong season. Sutherland is all-round tough, all-round skilful, all-round competitive, all-round likeable, all-round analytical, all from the time she took middle-and-leg against the tapey in cricket’s greatest proving ground.

“The backyard,” she says. “Yeah, the ball was a tapey. Electrical tape on one side so it’d swing a mile. So hard to play, such a good way to learn. Long innings were rare. Can’t remember scoring any hundreds. Backyard games are designed for short and sharp innings. No one wants to be bowling too long. Getting people out is the name of the game. We had two-hands, one-bounce if you were in for too long. Automatic wickie, all that stuff. When you have an older brother who never goes easy until he realises you’re cracking the shits and chucking the bat across the yard and storming into the house because you’ve had enough of him … that was the only time he showed any mercy … I think in my position you either stop playing altogether or you start enjoying the challenge of sport and the opportunity it provides to get out of your comfort zone. That’s where it all started. The backyard definitely toughened me up. The backyard made me the competitor I am.”

Science student

Sutherland is studying science at Melbourne University. Part-time. She’s juggling it with her full-time job. It’s a good gig if you can get it. Australian cricketer. The scientific approach to life and cricket is serving her well. She likes the facts of any given matter. If E=MC2, you’re more likely to get a wicket by bowling at the top of off stump.

“I think the beauty of sport is that whether you’re in the backyard or playing for Australia, the challenge never ends,” she says.

Sutherland in Dubai ahead of the Women’s T20 World Cup in September. Picture: Getty

“There’s always a question that needs a solution and I’ve always really liked taking an analytical look at the questions that always pop up. At school I was more keen on science and maths than English – I think that probably tells you how I think. It’s just so enjoyable to get engaged in problems and work them out. I invest quite a bit of time into that. Like, if something isn’t quite going my way, there’s a bit of a clinical and scientific way to work through it.

I don’t get too carried away with chasing perfection in cricket – it’s impossible and doesn’t exist. But what a great challenge to work out the best way to move forward from whatever problem might be holding you back.”

E=MC2 and the part-time science student knows cricket is the most inexact science. Don Bradman famously wrote the book The Art of Cricket. Sutherland sees the science in the game.

“Things are changing all the time in a game and that’s part of the problem-solving you go through,” Sutherland says. “On any given day, everything can feel completely different to the day before. Your hands are moving differently. Your feet are moving differently. You’re seeing the ball differently. You’re problem-solving when you’re training and getting ready for a game but then you’re problem-solving all over again when the game is on. You’re problem-solving on the run to whatever situation presents itself in any given moment. You’re finding solutions as you go along. I like to think there can be a bit of a scientific process to that. If there’s a problem, well, what’s the answer? Let’s find it. It’s fun to look at it like that.”

E=MC2 and you should always bowl at the top of off? “Potentially,” she says “Although nothing in cricket is that straightforward.”

Sutherland’s father, James, is the ex-CEO of Cricket Australia. Part of hanging out with Dad as a kid was getting into Australian dressing rooms, where the dearly departed Andrew Symonds became a favourite. “He was always doing something in a game,” she says. “He was always involved, either batting or bowling or as a gun fielder, and I really loved that about him. And I loved that he wore zinc. He gave me a tube of his zinc when I was in the change rooms with Dad one time, so he won me over there. A bit further down the track, Shane Watson was another favourite, contributing in all the facets of a game, which is the joy of being an all-rounder. I try to do what they did.

“ You’re not going to have a good day every day with bat and ball. That’s just the way cricket goes. But as an all-rounder you have different opportunities to make an impact and help your mates. I love that aspect. I’m a competitive person. I want to contribute as often as I can.”

Role models

Sutherland was fresh out of high school when she made her first Australian squad in 2020. Perry took her under a wing. “I grew up and got into cricket at a time when the Australian women’s team was on TV,” she says. “I’d say Pez (Perry) and Meg Lanning were the two players who people my age saw as our role models. I came in so young and Pez was huge in making me feel comfortable. She has an incredible desire to keep improving and keep getting better, which is remarkable given everything she’s achieved. I think quite similarly to her about my game and we’ve always clicked. She was awesome in those first couple of years, just sort of putting her arm around me and helping me feel like I belonged. I can’t thank her enough for that. Watching the way she trains now, just taking in observations about how hard she works and what it takes to be successful, she’s really been incredible to and for me.”

Hottest player in the world. Hotter than Coober Pedy in January. Hotter than Ariarne Titmus at the Olympics. Sutherland carved an unbeaten 137 against England in the 2023 Ashes Test at Nottingham, where they might only have dismissed her with one hand, one bounce. She blasted a breathtaking 210 in the Test against South Africa at the WACA Ground last year in Perth, where two hands, one bounce would have been advantageous to the foe. She smoked 110 and an unbeaten 105 in ODIs against India and New Zealand last month to confirm she was no longer a player of the future, but of right this very minute. No Australian player leaps into the Ashes with more momentum and hype.

Sutherland fielding from her own bowling against India in December. Picture: Getty

E=MC2 and Sutherland just might be the greatest cricketer in the world right now.

What a time for a 23-year-old all-rounder to be alive. She can exceed a million dollars a year in earnings via her Cricket Australia contract and lucrative international T20 leagues. From Sunday there’s the Ashes to look forward to, the seven-match series culminating with the first women’s Test at the MCG since Betty Wilson was Australia’s gun all-rounder in a skirt in 1949. In three years, Sutherland will be in her prime when cricket puts on its party dress for the Los Angeles Olympics.

“I love what I get to do,” she says. “I know I’m incredibly lucky to be doing this. I’m paid to do what I love and that’s amazing to me. I’d be doing it anyway. You pinch yourself every now and again when you think how lucky you are to be playing a game for a living, and to be playing a role in a team you really love being in. It’s a team that has so many great people in it. It’s been really cool lately to get some opportunities and take a few of them. I love the feeling of getting involved and being able to compete and contribute. There’s no better feeling than helping the girls have a win.”

My impressions of Sutherland? Top chick. Tough cookie. “I remember wanting to play cricket and footy against the boys back at primary school,” she laughs.

“The girls who were my mates would be sitting around at recess and lunch and they’d want me to hang with them, doing the girly stuff, I suppose, but all I really wanted to do was have a crack against the boys at their sports. It felt normal because after playing with Will and Tom at home in the backyard – I mean, cricket and footy were pretty much all we did outside of school hours so it just felt completely normal to keep doing it at school.

“Moving from year 6 to year 7 was when I probably realised it might be a bit unusual to be playing male-dominated sports as a girl. Luckily enough, things were changing in sport. A few more girls started playing footy and we had a girls’ cricket team. Now those teams are everywhere.”

Living the dream

The Ashes features three ODIs and three T20s followed by the MCG Test from January 30. The first on the hallowed turf for yonks. Sutherland has been to the G on umpteen occasions to watch men’s Boxing Day Tests and AFL grand finals, and she was in the Australian squad for the 2020 World Cup final that drew 86,000 patrons, plus a couple of Katy Perry tunes, and she was hanging around all wide-eyed and agape when Dad ran the sport in Australia, but she’s only played at the MCG a handful of times for the Melbourne Stars in the WBBL.

Soon enough she’ll live an Australian dream, going from the backyard to a baggy green, from a tapey to a red leather ball, on the most prestigious patch of turf in her home city.

“It’s a bit mind-blowing, to be honest,” she says. “I’ve been to the MCG a lot but I’ve never played there for Australia. I was there on Boxing Day a few weeks ago to watch the men’s Test and thought, ‘Holy crap, this atmosphere is unbelievable.’ It’s just so good. It’s such a special place. To have our own Test there, the first women’s Test in so many years, I cannot tell you how much we’re all looking forward to it. I cannot tell you how special it’s going to be.”