Meet Sterre Kalis: The 21-year-old who traded The Hague for Headingley (via Australia)

ELIZABETH BOTCHERBY: She made her international debut at 14, had a professional contract in Australia at 18, and a world record a year later, but 21-year-old Sterre Kalis has so much more to give

Speaking to The Cricketer on her final day of quarantine before joining up with her Northern Diamonds teammates, Sterre Kalis discusses everything and nothing.

Lockdown in the Netherlands ("we had a curfew from nine at night to 05:30am in the morning"), her new bike ("I’m not that good, my furthest ride is about 57km"), and which beach her teammates took her too last summer (possibly Scarborough, definitely not Whitby - no Dracula).

Up until a few weeks ago, she was working for the Dutch equivalent of the NHS, helping the vaccination programme in her role as an appointment planner, and attending cricket training when timed allowed.

However, after 50 minutes of chatter, it’s obvious Kalis is no ordinary 21-year-old. In fact, she has achieved more in 21 years than many people achieve in a lifetime.

By the age of 14 she was an international cricketer, making her full debut for the Netherlands in a European qualifier against Scotland at Rugby School. After two unbeaten knocks, the teenager was shunted to the top of the order, where she has been ever since.

^{Kalis batting for Northern Diamonds in last season’s Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy}

Four years later, she earned a professional contract with Queensland Fire, sharing a dressing room with Australia internationals Jess Jonassen, Beth Mooney and Delissa Kimmince.

In 2019, she entered the record books after scoring an unbeaten 126 against Germany in La Manga – the highest individual knock in a women’s T20I. She no longer holds the record, Australian duo Meg Lanning and Alyssa Healy overtaking her before the dawn of 2020, but it’s good company nonetheless.

Growing up on the west coast of the Netherlands, Kalis’ first experience of cricket was the classic older brother scenario, swinging a bat on the boundary as a bored five-year-old taken to watch his matches. It’s worth noting that The Hague does not have a reputation for producing stellar cricketers. Like the rest of the country the two most popular sports are football and field hockey. It just so happened that her brother’s football club was next to a cricket pitch, a parent's dream combination of a summer sport and a winter sport on the same site.

Kalis, herself, favoured field hockey, balancing it with cricket until her international career forced her to reluctantly hang up her stick.

"I was quite good!" she laughs. "I was quite sad to quit but I like cricket more and you can’t really combine both at this level. In my youth I combined both and twice a year, we’d go overseas to play tournaments. We’ve been to Sri Lanka, Thailand and I realised it was cool to travel for cricket and learn about locals and their cultures so that’s why I chose cricket. I’m better at it too!

"But when I’m back in Holland, the hockey season is always there for another two or three months so I can play with friends if they ask me to come and join in for games. I always still play."

Then, at the age of 17, she took a radical step. With the help of FairBreak Global, an organisation supporting gender equality in sports, entertainment, arts and education, Kalis uprooted her life and moved nearly 17,000 miles to play cricket for the University of Tasmania CC.

"In Holland, the opportunities to train with the best coaches in the world and the best players are less than if you are in a cricket country," she says. "FairBreak helped me a lot. They gave me more exposure in the world, chances to develop my cricket with the best coaches and training facilities and play with the best players.

"For an Associate cricketer, it’s more difficult to knock on the door and get your name out there. It’s hard to compete with players from India, Australia, big countries for two or three overseas slots so exposure is important."

When she got to Australia, the difference was incredible. "When I came to Tasmania, everyone knew what cricket was!” she laughs. “In Holland, if a kid is four, he’ll get a soccer ball for his birthday, in Australia it’s all street cricket. It’s cool to see everyone knowing what sport you play."

Opportunities came thick and fast for Kalis over the next few years. Training with Tasmania’s state squad, a two-week stint under the tutelage of Alex Blackwell at Sydney Thunder, and successive professional seasons in Brisbane, with Queensland Fire, and Melbourne. During the Australian winter, she returned to the

Netherlands, dividing her time between club cricket in her homeland and county cricket with Essex.
And in summer 2020, all her door-knocking paid off. Northern Diamonds, the regional side for Yorkshire and the North East, offered her a contract for the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy – the top tier of English domestic cricket – and Kalis suddenly found herself sharing a dressing room with the very players she’d admired from the stands during the 2017 Cricket World Cup final at Lord’s.

"I felt a bit of pressure," recalls Kalis. "I didn’t really come in and train for a trial, so I wanted to perform, and score runs. There’s always pressure in a new environment. And some of the accents were hard to understand but living in Australia with some weird accents helped, so it was all good!

"I was a little bit nervous. There was Jenny Gunn, Katherine Brunt, also Nat [Sciver] and Lauren [Winfield-Hill] who all play for England and when I was younger, I always watched them on the TV and in stadiums. I was in England in 2017 so I watched the final versus India and a couple of pool games so that was pretty cool – and I couldn’t really think of sharing a team with them four year later – that’s pretty cool!"

Fortunately, one of the aforementioned international stars had a Dutch connection which helped settle the youngster’s nerves. "Nat said her parents used to live in The Hague which was cool, and she named the street and it’s two minutes from where my mum lives so I knew exactly where she lived," Kalis reveals.

Season preview podcast: Northern Diamonds

In her first season in Diamonds blue, Kalis showed her resilience, bouncing back from three consecutive ducks to finish 2020 with a team-leading 197 runs and score a half-century in the inaugural Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy final at Edgbaston. However, such are her high standards, she is critical of her performance in the trophy-match despite top-scoring for her side.

"I had a tough start with three ducks, and I was really struggling, and it was not good for self-confidence. But I tried to stick to my plans, train really hard to show the team what I’m capable of and I scored three fifties," she says. "When we were in the final that was pretty cool, playing in amazing stadiums on really good pitches and having the games live-streamed. My family and friends couldn’t visit but they could watch it on the stream.

"But personally, in the final I had to stay in for a bit longer and help my team to win. That’s a learning curve for me, to stay in at certain moments of the game. I talked to my coaches a lot about the final and learned from my mistakes.

"Obviously, it’s cool to score a fifty but I was disappointed I couldn’t help my team win," Kalis admits. "I was happy with my performance, but I’d rather have a duck and win the final than score a fifty and lose. Hopefully, I can look back on the final and learn from my mistakes in the future.

^{Kalis celebrating two of her three half-centuries for Northern Diamonds}

"And during the season I spent a lot of time on the pitch with Jenny Gunn which was pretty cool. Batting with her, listening to her, what she thought of the situation, what she thought was the best thing to do – it was really good batting with her."

She’s had a lot of time to look reflect on last season’s final. Arriving back in Holland in October, the country was stuck by a second wave of Covid-19, forcing the government to impose a strict curfew and close all non-essential services. Three long cricket-less weeks passed by before elite sports were given the green light to continue, allowing the Dutch national team to train, but not play matches.

It’s unsurprising, therefore, that she gets excited when she looks in her diary for the rest of 2021: Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy and Regional T20 with Diamonds,  World Cup qualifiers with Netherlands, and maybe, if performances go her way, a contract for The Hundred.

"I can’t wait actually," she says. "I’m looking forward to the T20s because I’ve been focusing on my T20 game throughout the winter, power hitting and playing 360 degrees, so I can’t wait to use everything I’ve learned in training in a game.

Young Sparks run free

"I want to score loads of runs of this year and show everyone what I’m capable of – I’d love to score a hundred every game. I would love to play in The Hundred as well and I will take the chances I’m offered. I just need to perform really well and see in July if I can get a spot.

"And in December we’ve got the 50-over World Cup qualifier, it got moved because of Covid so we don’t know when it is. But it’s quite cool because it’s our first 50-over qualifier for years!"

But like a true professional, she’s not letting a shot at World Cup qualification distract her from the task in hand, namely getting Diamonds’ season off to a winning start against Central Sparks and righting last season’s wrongs in the final come the end of the season.

"It’s going to take some more years for Holland to reach a World Cup, our team is really young,” Kalis states. “We cans see what the future hold but for now, I’m focusing on my England career here, playing for Diamonds and winning tournaments."