KEY POINTS:
Cricket has taken Rebecca Rolls around the world. Yet, for exotic sights, nothing matched what greeted her, aged just 21, on her debut for New Zealand.
It was Christchurch, 1997, and the Pakistan team were on a learning mission. A proud Rolls had replaced the retired New Zealand
captain and wicketkeeper Sarah Illingworth in the White Ferns.
Rolls spied the opposition at Hagley Park, and wondered what on earth she was seeing. The full extent of the Pakistan warm-up involved one player "smashing" the ball at comrades just a few metres away. The players would flinch and turn.
As Rolls describes the scene, she did the same just watching it. "They were odd - we played them in two games and they were useless."
The scorebook confirms the scene of her debut. New Zealand were left to chase just 57.
Her marvellous career in the White Ferns side came to a sooner-than-intended end a few weeks ago, when she announced her retirement after 104 ODIs, leaving her second only to Debbie Hockley.
Her decade of international cricket ended where so many cricket dreams have ended - with defeat at the hands of Australia, in the final of a quadrangular tournament in Chennai, India.
Rolls had a blaze of glory against the Australians though, smashing 104 from just 87 deliveries to lead New Zealand to victory in the opening game.
It was an iconic innings for the tall batter, whose swashbuckling shots have often contrasted with the genteel women's game, where batters let the ball work its own way behind point. Her previous one-day century was also against Australia, a belligerent 114 from 111 balls.
For women's cricket, these numbers are almost historic.
Women's cricket, in many ways, has the feel of the men's game of yesteryear.
Rolls draws on memories; of team camaraderie, a game that takes its players to exotic locations on the sniff of a linseed-oiled rag, fitting the game around work, and all for low or no cricket pay.
Rolls, a police detective for the past two years and a member of the force for a decade, is now with the Auckland drug squad. She has always been based in South Auckland, where she has worked on the deaths of the Kahui twins and the slaying of pizza delivery man Michael Choy.
It's not often you get to hear a top sports person thanking their employer any more.
"The police is a great career for a sports person," she says. "For most of the time, I have had unlimited paid leave to represent New Zealand though, since 2004, it's been limited to 20 calendar days a year.
"Which is still pretty generous, so I feel pretty lucky.
"Sometimes, though, I've had to miss cricket - if you are working on a homicide, where you work very long days, you just have to stay there until the end.
"But I would never have wanted cricket to become my job. I take my hat off to the men. I love the game but when it's your job, the pressure goes on.
"If you are not succeeding, there goes your pay packet, so that's pretty tough."
There was never any danger of cricket providing Rolls with a pay packet. Host countries cover expenses but any prizemoney can be clean bowled by excess baggage bills.
At the Chennai tournament, the New Zealand squad of 14 were able to share four player-of-the-match awards, which totalled about $1200.
Rolls even found cricket on the cheap.
"It was all free-to-air coverage when I was a kid," she says.
Her cricketing journey began as a child in Napier, when the one-day game boomed. For childhood heroes, read Richard Hadlee, Lance Cairns and Ian Smith.
As was later the case with Rolls, none of these New Zealand greats were specialist batters but, when they did have the bat in their hands, the ball tended to go a long way - and very hard.
A young girl playing cricket in Napier faced certain obstacles. Her first experience of organised cricket, at intermediate school age, was as the lone girl in boys' teams.
While the coaches were always welcoming, often the boys and their fathers were not. Rolls says that at times, it felt like one young girl against the rest.
This was before the introduction of special forms of cricket for kids.
Boys develop motor skills earlier than girls, she says, which made it even tougher back then.
One thing in her favour, though, was that she threw like a boy. "Yes, some girls throw like girls but I didn't," she laughs.
"My family were fantastic, there every week, and if I felt a bit left out, I would go and sit with them.
"The boys were great unless you got to bat before they did or something like that.
"I remember one guy at intermediate telling me not to come back next week if I didn't score any runs - which was a bit weird, since I was getting runs all the time.
"It was lonely at times but I wouldn't change it. When you've got to compete to prove yourself, it certainly makes you step up a bit."
Rolls' ability wasn't confined to cricket. A soccer goalkeeper, she played a dozen games for New Zealand in the 1990s.
The defeat of Australia in the World Cup final at Lincoln in 2000 is her obvious cricket highlight. Rolls took the final catch as New Zealand scored a four-run victory in front of a delirious crowd of 3000.
She made important contributions with the bat in New Zealand's rare Rosebowl win over Australia in 1998. Rolls also has a rather brilliant test average of 71 - made in the first innings of her only test, against England in Scarborough in 2004. Police work meant she missed the only other test played during her White Ferns career.
Rolls says the greatest advances in women's cricket have included a greater attacking emphasis in a game saddled with a dour reputation, the advent of Twenty20 cricket, and computer-based analysis.
She lauds Hockley, and picks out Emily Drumm as the most talented of the cricketers she has played alongside.
Rolls had intended to quit after the 2009 World Cup. "There was no one reason for quitting now, but other parts of my life were getting busier and busier," she says. "I couldn't do it justice any more, -and that would have been unfair on other people. This last tour to India was great but I've felt mentally and physically exhausted at the end of each day during the last two or three years."
She has a clear subscriber-television picture of her immediate cricket future.
"It will have a lot to do with the remote."
The CV
* Aged 31. White Ferns debut in 1997, retired 2007.
* Wicketkeeper/batter.
* 104 one-day matches for the White Ferns, second to Debbie Hockley.
* First wicketkeeper to reach 100 dismissals in international limited overs cricket. Her tally of 133 is a world record.
* Scored 2201 runs, at an average of 25, the third-highest NZ total.
* One test, with batting average of 71.
* New Zealand soccer representative in the 1990s.
