White Ferns face growing calls to return to test cricket as Sophie Devine retires without ever playing the format

The White Ferns are the reigning Twenty20 world champions, but New Zealand’s leading women cricketers have not played a single test match in 22 years, and a growing number of former players is asking why. The question has sharpened as Sophie Devine prepares to walk away from the international game at next month’s Twenty20 World Cup in England without ever having pulled on the whites. The 36-year-old all-rounder, who will retire alongside Suzie Bates and Lea Tahuhu, has built a 20-year career and close to 8,000 runs and 239 wickets across one-day and Twenty20 internationals, yet the longest form of the game has stayed out of reach for her entire time in the side. Devine has been candid about the gap on her record. “It just hasn’t been a priority for New Zealand cricket,” she said as her farewell tour wound through England. “I’ll walk away from the game having not played one, but it’s really cool to see more countries are taking up that opportunity to play test cricket.” She is clear-eyed about what a return would take. “You can’t just rock up and play a four-day or five-day women’s test, there’s obviously a lot of work that has to go into that,” Devine told reporters. “None of us has played multi-day cricket.

Well, I have, but that was when I was in high school or playing club cricket 20 or 25 years ago. For me, it’s probably the ultimate form of the game.” The numbers behind New Zealand’s absence from the red ball game are stark. As RNZ reported in a feature on the campaign, the White Ferns have not played a test for 22 years, their last appearance coming in a draw against England at Scarborough in August 2004. The country has not hosted a women’s test on home soil for 31 years.

In total New Zealand has played just 45 women’s tests since the format began, winning only two, both of them back in 1972, and losing ten. That history sits awkwardly alongside the team’s recent white-ball success. The White Ferns claimed the Twenty20 world title at the 2024 tournament, and they head into this year’s event as defending champions, a side that has thrived in the very formats their critics say have crowded out the longer game. Former White Fern Penny Kinsella, who played six tests and 20 one-day internationals in the 1990s, has no doubt about the principle. “Absolutely they should be playing test cricket,” she said.

Kinsella also offered a practical pathway, suggesting the domestic calendar could be reshaped to build the skills. “My idea would be to repurpose the North-South series that we’ve had reinstituted into a way of preparing our players to play the multi-day format,” she said. Frankie Mackay, who played 30 one-day internationals and 30 Twenty20 internationals for New Zealand, agrees the side belongs in the test arena but warned against treating it as a simple switch. “Of course New Zealand’s representative side should be playing test cricket, just like their male counterparts,” she said, before adding that “there needs to be a little more planning that goes in behind the scenes than that.” She cautioned that the difficulty of preparing players should not become a convenient excuse for never trying. New Zealand Cricket, for its part, is not promising anything soon. Liz Green, the organisation’s head of women’s high performance development, pointed to the pull of the shorter formats and the global tournaments built around them. “The limited overs formats have proven to be very effective in terms of attracting and retaining young players,” she said. “Focusing on formats which include ICC global events, such as world cups, is our preference for now.” Officials have stopped short of ruling a return out entirely, leaving the door open on a never say never basis.

The wider game is shifting around them. India and South Africa have both returned to women’s test cricket in recent years, joining England and Australia, who continue to contest the multi-day Ashes test as part of their points-based series. Devine herself has noted the trend with a mix of pride and regret, pointing to the way more nations are now giving their players the chance she never had. For the White Ferns, the timing carries an extra edge.

The team that will defend its Twenty20 crown in England from 12 June is also saying goodbye to a generation of players who carried New Zealand women’s cricket through its professional era. Devine, Bates and Tahuhu between them have given decades of service, and none will leave with a test cap. Whether the next generation gets that opportunity now rests largely on choices being made off the field. Should New Zealand Cricket find room in a crowded calendar for the red ball game, or is the focus on world cups and the shorter formats the right call for the women’s game right now?

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