Cricket's mothers have it better now than ever (but not all of them)

"There is a chance that you won't be able to come back," Satterthwaite, whose wife is team-mate Lea Tahuhu, remembers. "You don't know how your body's going to react and all those sorts of things." Pregnancy at that point was also likely to rule her out of the T20 World Cup in February-March 2020.

There are as many as eight mothers playing in the 12th Women's ODI World Cup, in New Zealand: Satterthwaite and Tahuhu, Megan Schutt and Rachael Haynes of Australia, Lizelle Lee and Masabata Klaas (South Africa), Bismah Maroof (Pakistan), and Afy Fletcher (West Indies). A men's international starting XI alone often figures more players who are fathers, so on paper, eight cricketers who are mothers featuring in a global event may not seem unusual on the face of it.

But in cricket, motherhood comes at a cost. In a field where the body is one's key tool, scientific research into the female cricketer's physiology is scarce. And several boards do not have processes, policies or infrastructure to cater to mothers. As many of the predecessors of the current list of eight (and scores of current domestic and Associate cricketers) will vouch, sometimes the price is as hefty as one's career.

That there are eight mothers at this World Cup speaks to the growing visibility of women's cricket, but it also shines a light on the conditions such cricketers play under, and the inequities within the women's game and in the sport at large.

New Zealand is an outlier here, and Satterthwaite, now the team's vice-captain, is an exception when it comes to cricketers' pregnancies. "We're probably very fortunate that we are in a country that are very supportive of it and we've been able to go through this journey," she says.

She and Tahuhu announced they were expecting in August 2019. The news was made public through NZC, which coincidentally rolled out its first-ever pregnancy leave provisions then, as part of the newly formulated three-year Women's Master Agreement (WMA) between the board and the New Zealand Cricket Player Association, aimed at making the women's game in the country more professional.

NZC made clear that Satterthwaite, the carrier of the child, would be among the players contracted for the next year. The WMA's new contract conditions guaranteed her full core salary while she was on maternity leave, without the obligation of playing or training. It meant that Satterthwaite, who was the captain at the time, remained at the top end of the pay scale.

Tahuhu got two weeks' leave after the birth of the child, in January 2020. "Something that can be overlooked at times is the importance of the non-carrier parent being able to have some really important bonding time when the baby is young," she says. Her absence from the early part of the home s eries against South Africa that month was facilitated by the board's maternity provisions. "And then when I joined up with the team, I was obviously in a better place, as well, to be able to do my job."

She and Satterthwaite, who have had NZC central contracts since 2015-16, had the luxury of deciding when to have their child - though when they considered starting a family, they weren't in a position to know favourable board policies would soon be in place to mitigate against the possibility of Satterthwaite losing her income because of pregnancy. "Whatever the consequences of that were going to be, we were happy to still take that step," says Tahuhu, now 31, who married Satterthwaite, 35, five years ago. "We are older. We were comfortable with knowing that I was a professional cricketer, so that was still going to continue to be my job and it wasn't going to change in the year that Amy was going to be off."

Satterthwaite says she was particularly pleased with the openness of the communication with her employers about support for her comeback. Either side of giving birth to her daughter, Grace, who was conceived by intrauterine insemination (IUI), which involves placing sperm inside a woman's uterus to facilitate fertilisation, Satterthwaite consulted a sports doctor at home in Christchurch. Also on hand was Scott Wrenn, New Zealand Women's strength-and-conditioning (S&C) coach, who is based in the same city. "To just be able to have a conversation with a professional and work through things on a one-on-one level was pretty massive," Satterthwaite says.

Wrenn took on the task of tailoring a return-to-play (RTP) plan for Satterthwaite that suited her body and batting-allrounder playing role. He had never worked with a pregnant cricketer before but some personal experience came in handy. "My wife had had our first baby about a year earlier, so I had some understanding of what Amy was going through," he says. "That experience gave me a bit more insight into things that may have needed to be modified both pre- and post-partum."

For the first five months of pregnancy, Satterthwaite kept running. Biking continued longer, with time in the gym on the side. Tweaks to her routine were made on the fly as she got more heavily pregnant. But at no point before delivery did walking, or other light-to-moderate workouts, come to a halt. The only period of prolonged rest was the eight weeks after Grace's arrival on January 13, 2020.

Bismah Maroof and Nain Abidi: a tale of two Pakistani player-mothers
In the subcontinent, the trend of marriage and/or motherhood ending careers cuts across teams. The interplay of socio-economic, religious and cultural forces thrusts large numbers of girls into marriage (and soon after, motherhood) in their teens or early twenties. "South Asia carries a shocking 40 per cent of the global burden of child brides," a 2019 UNICEF report said. Given the general precarity of women's positions in what are still largely patriarchal societies, being a professional sportswoman beyond a certain age requires privileges few inherit, resilience few are able to muster, or both.

A look at the numbers of married women cricketers in the latest central-contracts pools of the Asian Full Member teams underlines this. In India, zero out of 19 contracted players are married. (Punam Raut, driven to think of suicide over the emotional turmoil her marriage thrust her into, ended it a few years ago.) Pakistan: one out of 20 (Maroof). Bangladesh: two out of 22 (Shamima Sultana and Fargana Hoque). Sri Lanka: zero out of 20. For women it often comes down to having to pick either family or career, prematurely forcing many to walk away from the field of play.

"Batool [Fatima], Nain [Abidi], Asmavia [Iqbal], Qanita [Jalil], and several others - they were all Pakistan team-mates of mine who either couldn't resume cricket for a long time after marriage or had to leave it altogether for good," says Maroof, Pakistan's leading limited-overs run scorer and captain. "But cricket in Pakistan is no longer where it was back then. Professionalism has gone up and so has what's expected of players. The PCB's policy is a reflection of that."

Under the policya, introduced during Maroof's pregnancy, centrally contracted cricketers are entitled to up to 12 months of paid maternity leave and are guaranteed a contract extension for the following year. They can transfer to a non-playing role before they start on maternity leave. "Adequate medical and physical support" is to be provided in terms of post-childbirth rehabilitation. The board is also to foot half the bill if a mother needs to travel with a carer to help with childcare.

In Pakistan, women playing top-flight cricket after marriage, let alone childbirth, is a rarity. Maroof is aware her experience sets a template. Without her transition from what she calls "the normal state" into motherhood, Pakistan might well have not become the first cricket board in the subcontinent to introduce a player-specific maternity policy. "The policy gives me confidence as a cricketer," says Maroof, who is in New Zealand with her daughter, Fatima, with her mother present as carer. "If I am being seen as a role model in our culture, I appreciate where that's coming from.

Having family on board is important, she says. "Getting that encouragement from your family after marriage or pregnancy is like half the battle won. My family, including my in-laws, are crazy about cricket. They acknowledged I still have a lot of cricket left in me." Her husband, Abrar Ahmad, a software engineer, has unwaveringly supported her return to top-flight cricket. "He has been a rock though this phase," Maroof says. "He appreciates both cricket and my family's place in my life, and also wants me to be a role model for girls in our culture because not everyone is as lucky as I have been."

On a Zoom call lasting a little over half an hour, Maroof makes generous use of "luck", "lucky" and "good fortune" in talking about her family's support and the launch of the PCB's policy. Abidi, a good friend and former team-mate, echoes the sentiment.