On October 27, while a young Sydney Sixers player was hitting the winning runs against Melbourne Renegades, two people in the stands were jumping with joy, and in their own words, “looking like idiots” while the other spectators looked at them in question.
The Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) does have its exciting moments, but no one could match the celebratory shouts of Gavin and Kim Bray that day. “That’s our daughter,” they explained to the others as they sat down after a while, getting a few thumbs-ups from fellow spectators who now understood the elation. Fifteen-year-old Caoimhe Bray, in her first WBBL outing, proved a new sensation in the female cricketing world, a player whose Gaelic name everyone is now learning how to pronounce, (“Keeva”).
Later that night, at their hotel, the three of them sat together to take in the fact that this was a dream come true. “It was a night I’ll never forget in my life,” said Kim.
Kim remembers a few other things people said to her over the years. When Caoimhe was about nine years old, she was playing in the Under-13 team at the state challenge up on the Mid North Coast. Kim was watching her daughter’s innings when the coach remarked, “You guys are going to have a lot of travelling ahead of you.”
That’s not to say that Kim wasn’t doing that already. A mother of six, living in the tiny town of Denman in NSW’s Upper Hunter region, she was already driving her youngest daughter Caoimhe to Newcastle (130 km) for Saturday matches and Sydney (250 km) for the Molly Dive competition on Sundays. Then, there were state challenges and carnivals. Add that to driving to Newcastle four days during weekdays for soccer, the other sport Caoimhe plays, and the miles added up.
They’d often have to start at 5am and the older kids would often have to organise dinner on their own. Not once, through the hours of travelling, did Caoimhe say she didn’t want this. “She was always ready to go and play,” said Kim. Caoimhe, she says, was always a handful growing up, always bubbling with energy, often eager to be outdoors.
Caoimhe almost didn’t play cricket. When she was eight, she brought in a flyer that said there would be a cricket program at her school, and asked her mum if she could play. Her mum said no, because her older kids were already playing netball and soccer during the winter, and she thought everyone needed a break during the summer.
Then, Kim received a call from the school principal. There was just one girl who had signed up for cricket in their school and she said she’d only play if there was another girl. The principal asked Kim if she’d allow her daughter to be the second girl in the program, just so the other girl could play. Kim agreed. The other girl stopped playing the following year, but Caoimhe loved the game.
It was quite apparent for most coaches who trained Caoimhe that she was a prodigy. Kim recalls the time when a coach gave her daughter the No 1 jersey, predicting she may be No 1 in the world one day, although her parents don’t take such comments too seriously. “She loves the No 18 jersey because Phoebe Litchfield wears that, and the No 8, because Ellyse Perry wears that,” said Kim. She has Sixers star Perry’s book and a picture of Sydney Thunder captain Litchfield in her room. While the 15-year-old is receiving her Basil Sellers Scholarship facilitated by the Cricket NSW Foundation this week, she already has a Sixers contract, and through her stellar debut performance, the eyes of Australian media.
For mum Kim, there’s still a lot of driving ahead as her daughter isn't able to get a driver’s licence for a few years. By now, she’s used to 5 am wake-up calls. For her daughter, meanwhile, life is changing rapidly. She is now learning to call her idol, Perry, now her Sixers teammate, by the latter’s nickname of Pez. Even as the world learns to call her ‘Keeva’.