Kolkata: As far as sign-offs go, this one was low-key yet most adorable. And you don’t get to say that a lot nowadays. With Australia drawing the earliest contours of the game with an unapologetically butch attitude, cricket’s emotional quotient has often been channelled into unwarranted aggression.

Till New Zealand took you down another route where celebrations can be a heady cocktail of champagne and confetti but also a soulful rendition of ‘E te Iwi E’, a waiata (Maori song) about acknowledging the people who matter, and what they did to bring them this far.

Befittingly, Amelia Kerr—Player of the Match and Tournament—led the group strumming her guitar barefoot, the chorus growing every beat with players and coaching staff chiming in. At the corner stood Sophie Devine, quiet recipient of a farewell so organic that it didn’t need any hashtag warriors. A smile, a brief thanks, and that was Devine handing over the baton to the next generation.

Kerr’s ready. Allrounder par excellence, limping through the final but making the risk worth it with a defining performance, and only 24—there isn’t a more deserving candidate to take forward Devine’s legacy. Making this symbolic passing of baton even more endearing is Kerr’s unwavering loyalty and an almost childlike adulation of her childhood heroes.

“When I was at primary school in creative writing, I wrote about winning a World Cup with Sophie and Suzie,” Kerr said, a memory that spurred her to spend hours at the nets with her dad, pretending she was batting with Devine and Bates.

“Being in the team so young and playing with my role models, who have been so good to me, and two of New Zealand’s greatest ever cricketers, I don’t necessarily believe you deserve things in sport, but if any two people do, it’s Sophie and Suzie,” Kerr said. “So, to be here now, having done that, I think that’s probably why I was so emotional out on the field in the moment. It’s something so special when I think back to my younger self. To be here now and to do it with two of New Zealand’s best ever.”

At a time when cricketers ‘expressing themselves’ has been cliched into monotony, Kerr’s emotion feels raw and refreshingly unedited. Similar with Devine, describing her relationship with Bates with a tinge of banter.

“Me and Suz have been through a lot, we’ve been through a lot of hairstyles together, hers a lot worse than mine,” she cracked up, before dwelling on the final moments of their win. “But to be able to share it, we probably had to rein ourselves in the last six balls because we were so close. To be able to be fielding close together as well and share that moment, that embrace, that is 17 or 18 years of joy and heartbreak and happiness shared in that moment.”

Nice country. Nice cricketers. New Zealand has always been anything but not nice to the game. Fiercely competitive too, history will point out till being gently reminded they haven’t won much to show. That’s changing though. A Sunday that started with the Black Caps winning their first ever Test in India in 36 years ended with the women winning the T20 World Cup that was 15 years in the making. The six-wicket defeat at the Lord’s in 2009 was probably easier on the heart than the three-run loss to Australia the following year but both hurt nevertheless.

To keep trying since then and succeeding in the final leg of their careers is the kind of closure all cricketers seek but very few are granted. But Bates, Devine and Lea Tahuhu are living, breathing examples that nice things can happen to nice people. Ushering positivity in the game not just because they are good at it but also because of an unassuming nature is a vibe typical of New Zealand. Now they have a World Cup and a legacy that can inspire more generations, and hopefully many more renditions of the waiata.

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