Amelia Kerr was honoured by her White Ferns team-mates as the recipient of the 9th CPA Players’ Award for 2024 on Wednesday evening in Christchurch.
Upon receiving the CPA Players Award, Kerr bagged a third consecutive award and in doing so joins an exclusive club alongside Sophie Devine as players to receive the CPA Players’ Award on three consecutive occasions.
After receiving the award the 23 year old Kerr said “This award is extremely special, it’s the one that's voted by your peers and teammates, that's who you play for every time you go out and represent as well as your family and friends. The other special factor for me is also the fact that my name is alongside Sophie (Devine), Suzie (Bates) and Amy (Satterthwaite) who growing up as a young girl I was pretending to bat with them in the nets, they were my cricketing role models so to have my name on the CPA Players’ Award alongside them is incredible special.”
Despite receiving a plethora of accolades and awards Kerr shared how driven she is to continually improve and her strong work ethic, a trait she attributes to her family. “I've always had a really strong work ethic and a lot of it comes from my parents, aunties, uncles and my sister Jess. They are incredible role models where I've seen them get places through work ethic, never giving up and how they've faced adversity. The other thing they’ve taught me is being a good person first and I know that if I can celebrate other people's success, get around others, be kind and love what I'm doing as well, that's the most important thing and ultimately that's going to help me in the process. Being a White Fern was a dream of mine from at such a young age and I've achieved that goal. For me now it's about moving forward and wanting to be one of the best players in the world and getting better each day. “
Over the course of the past year the skilful all-rounder was steady with the bat and ball, featuring with typical standout performances through the tours to Sri Lanka and South Africa, and the home series against Pakistan and England. Kerr racked up another two ODI centuries over the period and was the Whites Ferns top ODI scorer with 541 runs at an average of 67. With the ball she collected 23 wickets across both white ball formats, including a career best 3 for 11 in the T20 international against Pakistan.
NZC Life member Catherine Campbell presented the award and was delighted for Kerr. “The thing that has impressed me the most about Amelia, is yes, she's got talent, but she works hard at her game and she wants to get better. From a young player, she's strived always to improve, and I believe she's continued to do that. She's had lots of success. She could just rest on her laurels, but she doesn't. She continues to work hard and she just always wants to contribute and wants to get better.”
Echoing this sentiment was fellow White Fern and triple CPA Players’ Award recipient Sophie Devine. “It shows the skill of Melie as a player and her consistency over last few seasons with her ability to back up scores with the bat and then with the ball everyone knows what a threat she is. The fact that she's been able to put that together for so many seasons now in a row and win the cap for the third season in a row is testament to the work that she's put in but also how she's been able to stand up and perform time and time again. Melie doesn’t just want to be the best player in the country. She wants to be the best player in the world, which is great for the White Ferns. I think it's a huge thing to see that she'll keep trying to work away on continuing to be the best player that she can be.”
The CPA Players’ Award recognises the contribution players make in every match, and comes with the knowledge of the strategies and key moments within each game. This year’s voting reflected the stellar international performance that Kerr displayed.
The leading CPA Players’ Award vote recipients from each series during 2023/24 were:
Sri Lanka tour Melie Kerr /Sophie Devine (first equal)
South Africa tour Melie Kerr
Pakistan in NZ Suzie Bates
England in NZ Melie Kerr
CPA Players’ Award recipients
2024: 9th- Amelia Kerr
2023: 8th - Amelia Kerr
2022: 7th - Amelia Kerr
2021: 6th - Amy Satterthwaite
2020: 5th - Sophie Devine
2019: 4th - Sophie Devine
2018: 3rd - Sophie Devine
2017: 2nd - Amy Satterthwaite
2016: 1st - Suzie Bates
About the CPA Players Award
The CPA Players’ Award is awarded to the most outstanding White Ferns Cricketer of the Year for performances in official International matches over the preceding 12-month period and shall be judged by the players, and coaching staff.At the completion of each match, each player and coaching staff will cast their own individual vote. The player who tallies the most votes will be awarded 3 points towards ‘CPA Players’ Award’ for that match. The players tallying the second most and third most votes will be awarded 2 points and 1 point respectively. In order to compensate for the difference in formats and to ensure that players from all formats of the game have a fair chance of winning the award, a weighting system will apply to all votes. One Day International matches will attract a ‘weighting factor’ of 3 and T20I matches a ‘weighting factor’ of 2.