Ex-Gisborne cricketer Kayley Knight in White Ferns squad

Former Gisborne cricketer Kayley Knight has been selected in the White Ferns T20 squad for the series against Zimbabwe this month and early March in Hamilton.

Former Gisborne cricketer Kayley Knight has been selected in the White Ferns squad for the T20 series against Zimbabwe this month and early March.

The squad were announced yesterday, but Knight learned of her selection on February 4 as she was travelling over the Kaimai Ranges on her way from Tauranga to Hamilton.

“Ben Sawyer [New Zealand women’s cricket team head coach] had been trying to ring me, but I’d changed phones, so my Northern Districts coach [Peter Borren] got a message to me that he was trying to get in touch.”

When her selection was eventually confirmed, it was the latest step in a climb up the cricket ladder that has had its trials ... like a stress fracture in her left foot that kept her out of the game for all but the tail end of the 2024-25 season.

“I’d had a sprain and damaged some parts of my ankle playing football, but I recovered and went back into cricket,” she said.

But fast bowling put stress on the ankle, “which wasn’t quite up to supporting it and took it out on the bone”.

The injury helped persuade her to give up football as she focused on her cricket career.

At 22, she is keen to do well in the T20 games against Zimbabwe to press her claims for inclusion in the T20 and one-day international squads against South Africa next month.

Knight started playing organised cricket at the age of 7, one of only a few girls who played alongside the boys in Gisborne school cricket.

She always wanted to bowl fast, but as she came through the grades she was also an opening or top-order batter. She was at the other end of the pitch for significant parts of the two centuries made by her mother and first coach Mel, who preceded her in the Northern Districts women’s team.

Kayley Knight’s teams in recent years have been more interested in her bowling, but she is keen to work on her technique over winter with a view to batting a little higher up the order. Lately she has batted around No 8 or 9.

Knight made her Poverty Bay women’s senior representative debut at 14 and was soon on the radar of outside selectors. She first played for the Northern Districts women’s team in a 50-over game when she was 17 and made the New Zealand Under-19 T20 team in the 2022-23 season.

She completed a degree in Health, Sport and Human Performance Science at Waikato University in 2024 and has been in Tauranga for a little over a year. She has just finished work at Snap Fitness Papamoa to devote herself to the next stage of her cricket career.

“I’ve built up some savings working part-time for the past seven years. My work at the Odeon Nibble Nook was my prime income earner from the age of 15 to 19. For a while, my life was spent on three things: study, cricket and work.

“Now I’m looking forward to concentrating on cricket.”

But family holidays these days are more likely to be spent in the South Island than in Gisborne, as her parents, Mel and Alan Knight, are living in Alexandra. Alan is managing an orchard and Mel is working in administration for the Central Otago District Council. They’ve been there about 18 months.

Fixtures:

Wednesday, February 25, 7.15pm: First T20I; Seddon Park, Hamilton

Friday, February 27, 7.15pm: Second T20I; Seddon Park

Sunday, March 1, 2.15pm: Third T20I; Seddon Park

Thursday, March 5, 11am: First ODI; University of Otago Oval, Dunedin

Sunday, March 8, 11am: Second ODI; University of Otago Oval

Wednesday, March 11, 11am: Third ODI; University of Otago Oval