A former top runner, Jess Kerr has repeatedly won battles against illness to fulfil her cricket dream
Deivarayan Muthu22-Sep-2025Jess Kerr never gives up. Both on field and off it.The 27-year-old seam-bowling allrounder has overcome a number of medical problems to become a New Zealand international. Growing up in the Wellington suburb of Tawa, she broke age-group records as a runner. She won the 800m and 1500m gold medals at the Colgate Games athletic championships for seven-to-14-year-olds in New Zealand, but then compartment syndrome in her legs halted her running career.When she was nine, she was suffered a bout of Bell’s palsy, which causes temporary weakness or paralysis on one side of the face. Later, when she entered her teens, she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.Related
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If not for her courage and resilience, Kerr would have been lost to sport. She had to let go of her dream of becoming a runner, but she took to cricket, following in the footsteps of her younger sister, Amelia Kerr, who she calls her “older sister/mentor” on the field.Cricket was in the girls’ DNA. Their father Robbie and mother Johanna represented Wellington, while their grandfather Bruce Murray played 13 Tests for New Zealand.”Growing up, Melie was the cricket prodigy and I was known as the running girl in Tawa,” Kerr says on a sidelines of a preparatory camp in the lead-up to the ODI World Cup, at the Chennai Super Kings Academy in Chennai last month. “So that was always a dream of mine – to go as far as I could with that, and from a young age I was training every day with running.”Being diabetic and an athlete has its challenges. You’re constantly trying to make decisions. So, often before a game, I’m checking my levels, trying to predict how that will go in the future. But I think sport sort of saved me and has been my outlet. To be able to represent my country, despite having those things, that’s been a real saviour for me. So I’m just grateful that’s not sort of stopped me from doing what I love.”Kerr bats in the 2022 ODI World Cup•Getty ImagesBoth sisters won the T20 World Cup with New Zealand in Dubai last year, and came home to a rousing reception. They now have a shot at adding the ODI World Cup trophy to their T20 World Cup title.”The four of us White Ferns [Amelia, Jess, Sophie Devine, Georgia Plimmer] are living in Tawa, so to be able to visit our old school [during the trophy tour] where it all started was really awesome,” Kerr says. “The support we get in the Basin [Reserve] throughout the summer is amazing, so to celebrate with those back home who were watching us was just very surreal.”I think there’s something really special about 50-over World Cups – they obviously don’t come around as quickly. And to be able to play in India, too, where it’s a celebrated sport… so we are all really hungry and want to go as far as we can. We have been working really hard on all areas of the game, and yeah, to think it’s sort of coming a bit closer now is really exciting.”Kerr played just one game in last year’s T20 World Cup, but has certainly strengthened her all-round credentials ahead of the upcoming ODI tournament. In the 2024-25 Super Smash, New Zealand’s premier T20 competition, she reinvented her batting, scoring 326 runs in 11 innings at an average of 36.22 and strike rate of nearly 120, in Wellington Blaze’s run to the title. Only Amelia scored more runs in the tournament.