The Farewell Tour Is Falling Apart — NZ's Three Legends Deserve Better Than This

In April, Suzie Bates sat down and wrote her goodbye. Twenty years. 355 internationals. 4,717 T20I runs — more than any woman who has ever held a bat. She chose her words carefully: "I have one final mission: to head to the UK — a place that holds so many special memories for me — and win another World Cup."

Two months later, the UK has welcomed her back. The XI has not.

Bates has been left out of New Zealand's playing eleven for both matches so far. The greatest T20I run-scorer in history — playing her tenth and final World Cup — has watched from the dugout as her team lost to West Indies by seven wickets and then to Sri Lanka by five. Her farewell tour is happening in a tracksuit, not pads.

And she's not the only legend watching it all collapse.

When New Zealand Cricket named their World Cup squad in June, the announcement carried a weight that cricket rarely produces. Sophie Devine, Suzie Bates, and Lea Tahuhu — the three pillars of New Zealand women's cricket for the better part of 15 years — all confirmed this would be their final international tournament.

Coach Ben Sawyer called it "a rare and special occasion." Tahuhu, characteristically understated, said there was "no better way I could've imagined finishing my career than alongside 'Soph' and 'Suz'." The narrative was supposed to write itself: the grandmas of the team, as Bates once called them, riding off into an English sunset with the trophy they won together in Dubai 20 months ago.

Instead, the defending champions sit bottom of Group 2. Played two, won zero. Net run rate in the red. The sunset is looking more like a storm.

The farewell tour opened at the Rose Bowl, Southampton, on June 13 against West Indies — the same team New Zealand beat in the 2024 semi-final on their way to the title. This was supposed to be a reassuring start. It was anything but.

New Zealand posted 162/6, with Isabella Gaze hitting 39 from 29 balls and Devine chipping in 22 off 15 on the day she crossed 8,000 international runs. Respectable, not dominant. Then Shemaine Campbelle happened.

Campbelle — who hadn't scored a T20I fifty in 154 matches — chose the World Cup to produce her masterpiece. Her unbeaten 90 off 62 balls, supported by captain Hayley Matthews' 48, saw West Indies complete the second-highest successful chase in Women's T20 World Cup history with a ball to spare. The defending champions were beaten before they'd even settled in.

If the West Indies loss was painful, the Sri Lanka defeat on June 16 was self-inflicted. New Zealand batted first again — Amelia Kerr and Devine both scored 45 to post 150/6. Competitive but chaseable, especially at Southampton.

Sri Lanka's chase wobbled early. Captain Chamari Athapaththu was dropped on 6 and went on to score 27. Nilakshika Silva was dropped on 1. She went on to score 54 not out off 37 balls — her second T20I fifty in a 13-year career — and stitched together an unbeaten 48 with Kaushini Nuthyangana to win it with two balls remaining.

Nine dropped catches across two matches. That's the stat that will haunt this team. You don't get to write a fairy-tale ending with butterfingers.

"New Zealand is one of the best teams and the world champions," Athapaththu said afterwards. "We beat them and it means we can beat anyone." When opposition captains use your name as a credential for their own belief, you know you're supposed to be better than this.

The most painful subplot isn't the losses — it's that Suzie Bates isn't part of the XI experiencing them. The woman who has played more T20 World Cup matches than anyone in New Zealand's history, who scored 4,717 runs in the format, who was there when the White Ferns were a punchline and was there when they became champions — she's sitting out.

Bates missed the first match against West Indies. Then she missed the second against Sri Lanka. No official injury announcement. No detailed explanation. Just "Bates misses again" in the toss report. New Zealand have moved to younger options — Georgia Plimmer, Izzy Sharp, Isabella Gaze — and the greatest T20I batter of all time is watching from the boundary.

This is not how "one final mission" was supposed to read. You don't declare you'll give "every ounce of energy" to a quest and then spend it in the dugout. Either Bates forces her way back in for the remaining matches, or her international career ends the way no career should: not with a final innings, but with a final omission.

Group 2 has six teams: England, West Indies, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Scotland, and Ireland. The top two qualify for the semi-finals. England are unbeaten. West Indies and Sri Lanka both have two points and momentum. New Zealand have zero points and three remaining group matches — against Scotland, Ireland, and England.

Beat Scotland and Ireland and they're alive. But they'd likely need to beat England too, or hope other results go their way. For a team that hasn't held a catch or chased down a target in this tournament, that's an enormous ask.

And if they fail? Three of the greatest cricketers New Zealand has ever produced — across any gender — walk away having spent their final tournament watching a defence disintegrate from the inside.

Before the tournament, Tahuhu was asked about the retirement talk following her around. Her answer was pure pragmatism: "A lot of the talk will probably be outside of our team about those retirements happening, but for me, we're just here to do a job." Devine, who handed the captaincy to Amelia Kerr but stayed on as the team's spiritual centre, echoed a similar sentiment: "We're not here to say goodbye. We're here to win."

That resolve will be tested now in a way no pre-tournament interview prepared them for. The next match — likely against Scotland — becomes the most important game of three legendary careers. Not because Scotland are a threat, but because if New Zealand lose it, the farewell tour officially becomes a funeral march.

Fifty combined years of international cricket. Nearly 13,000 runs. Over 450 wickets. A World Cup title won together 20 months ago. Devine, Bates, and Tahuhu have earned a better ending than this. Whether they can still write one is the only question that matters now.