da betcris： Repeatedly overlooked by New Zealand, the wicketkeeper-batsman has tried to make a career as the first freelance cricketer in the women’s game, but the going is tough
da 888： Snehal Pradhan29-Jan-2019Harmanpreet Kaur, Sophie Devine, Stafanie Taylor, Rachel Priest, Dane van Niekerk, Suzie Bates, Smriti Mandhana, Lizelle Lee, Amy Satterthwaite, Marizanne Kapp. These are the ten overseas stars who play in both the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) in Australia and the Kia Super League (KSL) in England. Each of them has storied careers for their national teams; they are the cream of international cricket.Except, one of them doesn’t play international cricket anymore.Last year Rachel Priest spent January crisscrossing Australia playing for Sydney Thunder in the WBBL. In February she was in New Zealand, playing for Wellington Blaze. From May to August she was in England, playing limited-overs games for Wales and then T20s for Western Storm in the KSL. In October, she was back with Blaze again. And in December, she started a new season with Thunder.”I don’t get a lot of downtime,” she says, laughing, as we chat over the phone in the middle of her 2018-19 WBBL campaign. Priest had plenty of cricket on her plate last year despite none of that being for New Zealand women. She was dropped from the ODI and T20I squads after the 2017 World Cup, and asked to work on her fitness and ODI average. She has a career average of 28.35; in nine matches for New Zealand in 2017 she averaged 25.22; six of those were World Cup games, where she averaged 20.83.In August last year, she lost her central contract. With 86 ODIs and 68 T20Is to her name, she was the most high-profile exclusion from the list. And so she has now swapped the black New Zealand uniform for a variety of league cricket colours.Like her former New Zealand team-mate Sara McGlashan, who now plays in the KSL as a local player, Priest is in a unique position in women’s cricket, as an in-demand overseas player who doesn’t find a place in her national team.”It feels good in a way, but it also feels bad in a way,” she says. “I love T20 cricket, so it feels good that these teams are selecting me. But obviously it is hard. I want to be playing for New Zealand.”
“I know I’m not going to be rich when I finish playing, and I’ll have to go straight into a job. But I love playing cricket and I’m so lucky to travel the world”
Priest has two hundreds and ten fifties across formats in a decade-long career with New Zealand, and was one half of a hard-hitting opening combination, with Suzie Bates, for much of her career. “I don’t want to take it out of their hands, I don’t want to retire,” she says. “I still think I have something to offer.”It might be tempting to label Priest as the first freelance women’s cricketer, but there are only two professional tournaments for women to play in outside of international cricket, and just the beginnings of a living to be made from them. Which means that even though 33-year-old Priest earns the kind of money she never dreamed possible from domestic cricket, her financial position is still shaky.”A national contract would be monthly, so to have money coming in gives some security,” she says. Priest has no job outside of cricket, and doesn’t own a home. While in Australia and not on Thunder duty, she stays with her parents in Brisbane. While playing domestic one-day cricket for Blaze in Wellington, she stays with friends. Wales hosted her while she played for them, but offered no professional fees, though she did do some coaching on the side there. Priest is essentially dependent on the two major T20 domestic leagues to sustain her itinerant lifestyle.”You do get paid pretty well now for these tournaments, but it’s one lump sum at the end. It is hard for the times in between that, and has to be managed pretty closely and carefully.”Priest has no agent. She negotiates her own contracts and spends her own money for coaching, nutrition and gym memberships when she is not associated with a team. But she wouldn’t have it any other way. “I know I’m not going to be rich when I finish playing, and I’ll have to go straight into a job. But I love playing cricket and I’m so lucky to travel the world.”Her situation also means that she cannot effectively press her case for a national recall in New Zealand’s domestic cricket. To earn money, she has to choose the WBBL over the concurrently running Super Smash in New Zealand, taking her further from the eyes of the selectors. While Priest earns upwards of US$15,000 a season in the WBBL, Super Smash players receive only allowances for games and no match fees.It is an issue that Peter McGlashan, a former Black Caps keeper and brother of Sara, raised while commentating on the Super Smash final last week, and something Priest and Sara have spoken about since. The pay disparity between leagues is just as big a concern as that between men and women, one that the New Zealand Cricket Players Association has said will be discussed with the NZC at the end of the season.
@ @SuperSmashNZ games 2day @Mitch_Savage got paid $850 4his game,I got $350 4commentating 2 games 4 @radiosportnz, @sophdevine77 got paid her $45 non-traveling day meal allowance & the @Wgtn_Blaze got got & 4 winning the Comp,No .In 2 wks winners with of same comp get $80k
— Peter McGlashan (@PeterMcGlashan) January 20, 2019