When Eden Carson began her few steps in to send down the final ball of the 2024 T20 World Cup, she had one thought on her mind - don’t bowl a wide.
By that point, New Zealand’s win was certain. South Africa were 126-9 and 32 runs off their target - a wide from Carson would have made no difference. But, looking around her teammates, she couldn’t force them to hold in the emotion a moment longer.
“I nearly did [bowl a wide] and I was like ‘oh no!” Carson tells Wisden.com. “On the third ball of that final over it hit me like ‘oh my Lord we are world champions’. I was looking around the team like, wow, and I could see Sophie [Devine] and Suzie [Bates] holding in tears. It was just surreal. I was telling myself to smile and embrace the whole moment of the World Cup, the crowd, the atmosphere, it was amazing.”
Fortunately for Carson, the ball she sent down to Nonkululeko Mlaba reached her about an inch inside the tramlines, sealing New Zealand’s first-ever Women’s T20 World Cup win, and their first ICC trophy since 2000.
“I don’t think it will sink in for a while,” says Carson. “Even after the game I don’t think it really hit any of us until we got into the changing room and we started singing the team song, definitely the best and the loudest we’ve ever sung it. It was pretty crazy.”
While the team song was sung behind closed doors, a clip of the squad singing on the outfield later in the evening, with Amelia Kerr accompanying on the guitar and many of the players bare feet, went viral on social media. They were singing their team Waiata, a Maori song sung to impart a story or historical event, or to entertain or bring closure to a single entity.
“We sing it on special occasions and we’re actually trying to learn another as well,” says Carson. “We usually sing it when we’re being welcomed by other teams. It was even more special with it being Sophie’s last T20 game as captain, to be able to win the World Cup for her and the older ones as well as being able to sing the Waiata nearly brought a few of us to tears.”
As the final image for a tournament which not only formed a high point in the White Ferns’ history, but also filled in the missing piece and brought closure in the careers of their most enduring and greatest players, the symbolism is unmissable.
Pitch perfect from the champions 🎶🏆
— ICC (@ICC) October 21, 2024
SOUND ON 🔉#T20WorldCup #WhateverItTakes pic.twitter.com/4w8UZi7LrM
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Rewind 12 months before that performance of their Waiata on the outfield in Dubai and you get a sense of how unlikely that moment was to happen.
After losing a T20I series to Pakistan in December 2023, New Zealand went on to lose four out of five to England at home earlier this year. Their win, which came against a side shorn of most of their first-choice players, was driven by Sophie Devine and Amelia Kerr, while their younger players struggled to make an impact.
Since January 2023, 80 percent of half-centuries scored for New Zealand in women’s T20Is have been scored by Devine, Kerr or Suzie Bates. Outside of those names, only Georgia Plimmer and Izzy Gaze have passed 50 in a T20I in that time. That story is also reflected in the averages chart, with all three of Kerr, Devine and Bates averaging above 20 in that time, while only two other players make it into the late teens.
It’s a similar story with the ball. Ahead of the T20 World Cup, only Kerr and Lea Tahuhu had taken more than 20 wickets for New Zealand in the preceding 18 months. Carson and Fran Jonas were the only other players to make it into double figures.
That plotline of the reliance on their senior players, while the youngsters given long runs in the side struggled to make up the gap, played out over the first half of the year, when the White Ferns lost 5-0 in England, as well as 3-0 in the ODI series, and then lost 3-0 to Australia a month out from the T20 World Cup.
“I don’t think we spoke about it as a team,” Carson says of the losses. “We all knew that was what we had going into the tournament. But, being able to play two top teams like Australia and England really prepared us. I know the scorecard doesn’t show what we would have liked, however I think we took a lot of learnings out of that going into the World Cup.
“There was possibly that self-doubt within the team during those ten games. However, when I was talking to the girls before we left I said, ‘I know that we lost those four games but I feel like I’ve gained so much confidence out of them coming into the World Cup’. We just grew in belief in each other, and the support really helps as well.
“If you’re bowling to the best in the world or facing the best in the world it’s going to really set you up coming into big pinnacle tournaments. It really showed in that tournament that whoever turns up on the day is going to walk away with the win.”
It was paramount to New Zealand’s win that their younger players, like Carson, supported their seniors, or ‘grandmas’ as Devine called Bates, Tahuhu and herself. Not only did Carson and Rosemary Mair finish in the top six wicket-takers of the tournament, but Georgia Plimmer tied with Bates as New Zealand’s leading run-scorer.
Of the new generation, however, Carson’s performance was the most eye-catching. She was named Player of the Match in New Zealand’s final group game against Pakistan and in the semi-final that followed, taking combined figures of 5-36 across those matches.
“I hadn’t ever won a Player of the Match before,” says Carson. “Yes I got the wickets but it was an all-round bowling performance from our girls. I was bowling the third over in the semi-final but being able to get that wicket [of Qiana Joseph] was from the build-up of pressure in the first two overs from Fran [Jonas] and Rosemary [Mair]. I said to Fran when I got that wicket ‘that’s all you because you’ve built so much pressure’.”
After that match, Carson was interviewed by Mel Jones. Visibly emotional, a clip of her covering her mouth and giggling when Jones asked her how it felt to be a finalist again did the rounds on social media. Her demeanor spoke to another vital aspect of the White Ferns camp that led to their success: the relaxed atmosphere the leadership were able to create.
“We knew that we probably weren’t expected to get that far throughout the tournament,” says Carson. “We had talked before that no matter what happens, we’ve done ourselves and our supporters proud. We went in there [the final] with the open mind that, win or lose, we’ve still done what we came to do and we should be proud of that as a whole.
“Sophie said to have fun and smile and embrace this moment. She always says that pressure is a privilege, and it really is. They were the biggest games I’ve ever played in for the White Ferns, to feel that pressure made me a better player.”
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While the step up from their younger players was what allowed them to win the tournament, the foundations of their campaign were laid by the devotion of their senior players.
Bates and Devine particularly have played crucial roles in fostering a love for the sport, and for the White Ferns, in the generation of players who have come through behind them. Between them, Bates, Devine and Tahuhu have over 800 international caps, with Bates and Devine present in the last New Zealand side to reach a T20 World Cup semi-final in 2009. It was around that time that Carson first met her future international captain.
“Suzie was a big role model for me,” she says. “Both of us coming from Otago, she coached me back when I was U13s and I went through the ranks under her… I can’t remember a lot but I do remember her crashing one of the team vans which was funny. I also remember her coming to my primary school because her dad is from where I live. She came in and did a cricket clinic there and I was like, ‘Wow Suzie Bates is so cool’.”
Playing alongside your heroes has been a common experience in women’s cricket, where international careers typically start younger, and the careers of those who reach its top echelons can span the best part of two decades. But New Zealand occupy an almost unique position where those extremes have been so stark.
Five of New Zealand’s XI that played in the final were 25 or under, with Brooke Haliday the sole representative of the middle generation in their late 20s. For Carson at least, there’s a genuine authenticity to how much not only winning the World Cup meant to her, but how much more it meant to do it with and for the players she’s looked up to almost her entire life.
“Just being able to see their smiles and the happy tears in their eyes was even better than holding up the trophy,” she says. “To do what we did for them will be something that I always remember in my cricketing career.
“Seeing the years of hard work, of blood, sweat and tears that those players have put in throughout all the years they’ve played for the White Ferns pay off and that they’re able to say that they were in the 2024 winning T20 World Cup team is pretty special.”
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