It was July 2021 and Kerr, the gifted New Zealand allrounder, had been sent home from a White Ferns training camp, in her words, "for safety reasons".
The New Zealand allrounder talks about how her mental-health break made her appreciate the value of sharing your problems with your loved ones
VALKERIE BAYNES | FEBRUARY 28, 2022S eeing her dad "broken" as he rallied the family to help when she was at her lowest ebb, Amelia Kerr finally realised she had people all around who could get her through this, she just needed to talk to them.
It was July 2021 and Kerr, the gifted New Zealand allrounder, had been sent home from a White Ferns training camp, in her words, "for safety reasons".
She was accompanied on the trip home by team-mate and close friend Maddy Green, who had been a confidante through Kerr's struggles with anxiety and depression, but it was only now that her family was able to fully understand the struggles she had tried to keep hidden from them for so long. The next day, her parents took her to hospital and so began her journey to where she is now - in a much better place.
"I've never seen my dad so broken in his life," Kerr says.
"That was the thing that really was like, 'Wow', for me. Then I got taken to the crisis team at the emergency department, and got in to [see] a psychiatrist. I think if my family didn't get involved, I would still be suffering now.
"It just felt so suffocating. I wasn't sleeping at all and I just felt like I was wasting away. It felt like you were slowly drowning"
"I needed that confronting experience, and all of that to happen for me to get to where I am. My family has been amazing. I have a huge extended family and we're all extremely close. For so long I couldn't tell my family because they were the closest people to me and I didn't want to hurt them because I knew they would find it hard seeing me struggle.
"I tried to hide it from them, but they needed to know what I was going through, because when they did find out, it was the most important thing and they got a plan in place. It made me realise how important that was to tell them and how much you are loved as well."
It became apparent during New Zealand's tour of Australia in September 2020 and her WBBL stint with Brisbane Heat soon after that being away from home was a trigger for Kerr's mental health to spiral.
"But cricket was Kerr's "safe space", so she pressed on, playing and training in an environment where she was untouched by what she was feeling outside of it. Never had she been overwhelmed during a match or while putting her body and mind through endless hours perfecting her craft. She was always able to "get into a zone" where cricket was concerned, she says."
Amelia Kerr on her mental-health troubles: 'It's a real sickness - cruel and painful and hard'
S ophie Devine, the New Zealand captain, who is from Tawa, the same commuter suburb in north Wellington as Kerr, remembers hearing "some pretty big raps coming out of the school system" about the skills and achievements of a young girl she'd seen around the cricket field.
Kerr's father, Robbie, a Wellington player-turned-coach, first selected Devine for the team. Her mother, Jo, also played for Wellington, and her grandfather, Bruce Murray, opened for New Zealand in 13 Tests between 1968 and 1971.
Devine came to know the family well and ended up as a babysitter to Kerr and her sister Jess, who took up cricket later than her younger sibling but is now well established in the New Zealand set-up as a seam bowler.
"The thing that impresses me most about Melie is, she's always hungry to get better," Devine says. "And she tries to surround herself with people that are going to push her
"She follows Suzie Bates around like a little puppy, trying to soak up as much information as she can from probably one of our greatest ever players here in New Zealand and they certainly push each other. They're very competitive people, so it makes for some interesting training sessions."
New Zealand captain Sophie Devine supported Kerr through her time away from the game, playing basketball with her and talking to her regularly on the phone Marty Melville / © AFP/Getty Images
Kerr announced her arrival on the big stage at the 2017 World Cup as a prodigiously talented 16-year-old, New Zealand's youngest woman ever to play at the tournament, where she finished as her team's joint-highest wicket-taker, taking ten from six games.
She had showed great promise even before that, taking 4 for 42 in her fourth international, a five-wicket win over Pakistan in Nelson, and 3 for 16 on T20I debut, in another win against the same side two days later.
IA highly skilled legspinner with a deceptive and confoundingly quick googly, Kerr is also an excellent fielder. She was billed as a star in the making right from the beginning, with Jacob Oram, the former New Zealand allrounder and White Ferns bowling coach, describing her as a future captain.
In 2018, Kerr broke Belinda Clark's long-standing record for the highest women's ODI score with 232 not out against Ireland, in the process becoming, at 17 years and 243 days, the youngest player - male or female - to score an international double-century. She also took five wickets in the match.
"It's funny how our brains are wired to think we shouldn't tell those people closest to us, but at the end of the day, that's what helped me the most"
"She spends hours and hours and hours just hitting balls or out in the field or just wanting to talk cricket, so I think she's going to continue to get better and better as a player," Devine says.
"It's a bit scary to think that she is only 21 because it feels like she's been around for yonks, but I think she's certainly got so much more to give to this game as well."