At 18 years old, Regina Suddahazai has already taken an international hat-trick, represented Sussex women and has an impressive growing audience on social media platform, Tiktok. Regina spoke to Richard and Polly Starkie of the Noughtie Child Podcast to tell her fascinating story.
Regina’s bubbly personality and enthusiasm for cricket is immediately apparent, speaking passionately and confidently about her experiences of cricket. With a Kashmiri father, hailing from the Pakistan side, it seemed inevitable that cricket would somehow be a part of Suddahazai’s life.
“I feel like Cricket's kind of in your blood when you say Pakistan!” she says. “I grew up with all my uncles and my dad, they all played cricket and I could just remember always going to their games”.
It was both nature and nurture which drew Regina to the sport, her father taking up a job as the manager of the men’s USA cricket team when she was a child.
“I have family in the US, my mom was raised in the US so we lived there for a while when he was managing and it was probably one of the coolest experiences ever” she explains. Cricket and America are two words not often found in the same sentence, but the country played a key role in igniting an interest for Regina.
“I think that built me up to be like ‘cricket's quite cool, look at the opportunities he's gotten to have’” she said.
Despite this initial interest, a lack of club cricket in the US meant that Regina didn’t regularly pick up a bat and ball. “When we moved back to England, my dad put me at a cricket club with my brother” she explained.
“At first I hated it I didn't want to play!” she reminisces. “I thought this is awful, but my brother played, and he loved it so I couldn't have my brother do something and me not do it, so from there I carried on playing”
Luckily, a sibling rivalry turned into a genuine love for cricket and quickly, Suddahazai moved from softball into hardball. “I wanted to go play hardball so my dad took me to the nets and it was so much fun” she said.
“From there I went forward for County trials and it hit off. I was like ‘maybe Cricket's not such a bad sport anymore!’”
County cricket, like many young cricketers, has been an important part of Regina’s journey. “I've been in the [Sussex] pathway since under 11 and I've gotten to work through every single age group” she recalled.
“I got to make my Sussex women's debut earlier on last year which was like a dream come true ever since I was a kid. I always wanted to wear the cool Sussex shirt because obviously seeing Danni Wyatt, Sarah Taylor, when I was younger that was awesome”.
Role models have been crucial, particularly female players within the Sussex set up who were regularly accessible and willing to be mentors. “I think Georgia Adams for always being available if you will throughout the pathway” Regina explains.
“I think that was so imperative to the dream because you sit there and think if Georgia can do it and she's giving you expertise, it really motivates you to be like I can do it as well. She's always been so kind and so she gives you a lot of time. If you genuinely have questions she's always there to answer which I think is absolutely awesome”.
Receiving a text from the Vipers captain on her Sussex debut was just another indicator of how generous and thoughtful some of the senior players have been towards Regina and other players in the pathway.
Furthermore, coaches have been instrumental in encouraging Regina throughout her career so far. “Alexia Walker who's the coach of the Sussex women, she's absolutely brilliant” she said, smiling.
“She manages the pathway so well and I think she's probably one of the reasons that I've always stayed at Sussex because she really helps you feel that you're worthy of your spot and you're worthy of playing cricket”.
Although Regina has thrived at Sussex, opportunities with the Southern Vipers, the women’s regional side, have been scarce. The Vipers is perhaps one of the hardest regional sides to break in to, given their mammoth success and their bursting trophy cabinet.
“I just don't think at the moment I have a spot that would be there” she admitted. “It's very hard with Southern Vipers because they're very picky on age if that makes sense so being 18, it seems to be a little bit too old for the Academy but of course they very much try to stem their cricketers from their Academy up into their first team so I think regional cricket is a bit of a tricky situation”
As alluded to, Regina has a fascinating heritage, meaning she could represent four different countries internationally.
“I lived in England pretty much most my life and then I lived in America and I obtained an American passport so I could go play for America” she said. “Then Italy, I've had an Italian passport since birth. It never became useful until Brexit and of course the cricket!”
With a Kashmiri father, from the Pakistan side, she could also feature for another nation. “I have a lot of Pakistani family and that also allows me to go play for Pakistan” she explained. “I haven't been to Pakistan since I was very young so it's a bit far to travel at the moment but I'm hoping to go back and maybe try and play some domestic cricket out there”.
However, with all the options, Italy was not one which Regina had even considered. In fact, she had no idea that the Italian women’s cricket team even existed! While playing club cricket against a local men’s team, she spotted a member of the opposition dressed in full Italy kit.
“While I was batting this guy kept talking in Italian and I just kept laughing and he was like ‘why are you laughing’! I was like ‘I can understand’”, she laughed. Perhaps she was always destined to wear the Italia shirt as more pieces fell into place. While her mother was scoring the game, she overheard the same man speaking Italian, teaching a teammate some words who was preparing to do his Best Man speech for his best friend’s wedding in the local language.
“They turned around to my mum they were like 'we're really sorry if this is distracting you, tell us to stop if it is’ and my mom said ‘it's really nice to hear people speaking Italian I don't get to hear it very often’” she said.
The conversation very quickly to focus on the fact Regina had an Italian passport and crucially that she was eligible to play cricket for Italy. Despite holding citizenship, a passport renewal was due, which was a lengthy process but it was only a few months before she met up with the national team coach in London.
“We met, had a trial, a little net and he said to me, let's try and get you in the next tournament” she said. “I got to go play in February in Gibraltar and make my debut which was pretty cool!”
As debuts go, it probably couldn’t have been more successful but it was the behind the scenes chaos which Regina was quick to recall. Playing on a 3G outfield and losing her cricket bag at the airport were not ideal starts to her international career, but after utilising her GCSE Spanish, some of her kit was found and the focus could shift to the match.
“On the actual debut we were playing Gibraltar” she explained. “I'd already started to gauge what the European standard would be like and you quickly realise how starting these teams are but they're very quickly improving”
Soon discovering that the Gibraltar side had only formed mere weeks ago, Regina realised she didn’t need to be too nervous, but the pressure of an international debut still was very much present. “This was the first time I'd properly played cricket where it was televised in a way on the ECN network and there's commentators and there's lights and all of a sudden all the pressure was on me” she said.
“Looking back I don't know why I was so nervous I was just so, so nervous when I went out to bat. I remember I hit my second ball for four and I was like okay this is fine!”
The story from the day, however, was not Suddahazai’s boundary hitting – it was her bowling, an element of her game that she had only recently focused on again. “I wasn't really expecting to bowl that game because I've been brought in as a batter and I got to bowl” she admitted.
“I got one wicket and I got my international wicket out the way with and I was just like ‘keep bowling straight, if you bowl straight you'll hit the stumps’. All a sudden I'd gotten two wickets in a row, the last two balls of the over and my captain then took me off and put someone else on!”
With only one wicket left, Regina saw her hat-trick dreams slipping away, her captain not opting to bowl her again. However, a teammate mentioned to the skipper that the debutant was on a hat-trick and imminently, Regina was back into the attack.
“The hat trick was the coolest moment ever because what a dream to say that I have an international hattrick!” she exclaimed. “It was such a changing moment in my perspective and my life I guess. After that I got a lot of media training with ECN and I got to do a lot of interviews and I had a lot of interactions online”.
There was a darker side to this joyful moment as Regina started to receive online hate from the large audience who follow European cricket overseas. Her hat-trick had circulated online, due to the significance of the achievement but it lead to unfair criticism.
“I restarted bowling only recently” she explained. “I've worked on it a lot harder because then you get self-conscious watching yourself bowl and watching back in the recent tournaments it's gotten better but then I don't think it was 100%”.
“There's so many comments being like ‘what is this’, ‘that's ridiculous’, ‘she doesn't know what she's doing’ or when I do interviews ‘she doesn't know what she's talking about’ ‘I can't believe she'd say this’”.
It then became much more personal and targeted towards Regina’s identity and heritage. Some of the comments read ‘how can you have a name like Regina and still claim to be Kashmiri and Pakistani’. The personalised nature of the comments were difficult to read but Regina made it clear that she has a fantastic support system from friends and family, to her coaches and teammates.
From the highs of the T10 tournament in Gibraltar, the next event for Italy was the Division Two Qualifiers, with an aim to reach the highly contested Division One European Qualifiers. “The division two qualifiers were quite cool because this was our big first tour” she said.
After being bowled out by Jersey for 44, Italy were disheartened and the Division One Qualifiers couldn’t have felt more far away. However, bouncing back and thrashing France was the confidence boost Italia needed and they ended up progressing through to the Division One Qualifiers.
Suddenly, Regina was going from playing against a brand-new Gibraltar side to facing professional cricketers and Hundred stars, all in the space of a few months.
“I think everyone went with the attitude of let's just play the best cricket we can, we can do this, we deserve to be here” she said. “I think initially a lot of us were ‘like oh my God, playing Scotland and the Netherlands, we are nowhere near them’ but really, we've proven ourselves to be there”.
Coming from a world of regular county and club cricket, it became clear to Regina that she had much more game time under her belt, than her national teammates. “Some people in the Italy Squad, they play 12 games a year whereas I'll play 12 games in two weeks!” she mentioned.
Facing Scotland and Netherlands, two of the biggest European sides, they came up against the likes of Sarah and Kathryn Bryce, Abtaha Maqsood and Sterre Kalis, all who have featured in the Hundred and are professional regional players in England. The main difference between Italy and the other respective sides was that crucial game time, something Regina is keen to improve.
“I think that's definitely what we're trying to push for” she said. “Things like FairBreak, I've gotten in contact with a couple of people to try and get into that and I think that's a massive opportunity to get Italy more known on the world stage”.
A significant step in closing this gap was the introduction of the first professional contracts for the Italian Women’s Cricket Team, earlier this year. “For the first time ever you get to call yourself a professional cricketer!” Regina exclaimed.
“Our captain, Kumudu [Peddrick], we give the most amount of credit to her because she's definitely someone who kept Italy Cricket alive. They funded Italy Cricket from their own pockets traveling around the country, they would pay for themselves to go and play and buy all their equipment and all the kits and shirts”.
The Italian Federation have also been extremely supportive of the women’s team, paying for flights, kit and expenses for a while. “We're starting to get more resources and more funding so I think that was a massive step just to showcase to other people that Italy Cricket backs their women”.
One half of Regina’s life was being a professional cricketer, however, during the elation of international cricket, she was studying for her A-Levels in Maths, Biology and Psychology. “We just competed in the two qualifiers and I came back the next day to psychology, then maths, then biology A-Level, three days in a row”.
Although she didn’t receive the results she quite wanted, Regina did enough to get to university but as planned, opted to take a gap year, an idea stemming from the Covid-19 lockdown and a desire for a break from education. Currently writing her UCAS application, Regina knows that university is the next step, hoping to study a degree along the lines of journalism and communications.
“My dad, he's now a professor so I don't think I'd get far if I didn't go to university” she jokes. “He's been very ‘get your education and prioritise that’ so we've always had that in the household. I think that's really good, both myself and my brother having that because it's kept us reading and stuff like that and I think it's really helped to develop us as people”.
Aside from education, Regina has built an ever-growing following on social media platform, TikTok where she posts videos of her either talking about or playing cricket. “It all started last year so Dan from ‘Our Cricket’, I play against him quite regularly in men's cricket and I remember I spoke to him once about media and he was like ‘there's a massive avenue for women's content, stuff like that’”, she explained.
“Ever since I was younger I've always made videos just for fun, my dad has been a massive advocate for creating content and just being creative in different medias and different”
Always chatting in the nets, she decided to film a video of her batting and posted it on Instagram. Her teammate suggested posting it on TikTok but Regina was initially reluctant due to the perceived ‘cringy’ nature of the app. Regardless, she went on to upload the video and it took off from there. “It got 6,000 views which was pretty cool” she said.
“I did another one after afterwards because I was able to get a sponsorship by Grizzly Bear Sports, so I made the same video but in my Grizzly Bear kit” she explained. “We recorded it and some things turned out to be a little bit funny so I kept that going, I had so many people starting to follow my account and I got up to 500 followers really quickly”.
The big breakthrough was a video she made ranking ODI players ahead of the men’s World Cup. Now turning on her decision, Regina controversially put Indian icon, Virat Kohli second in the ranks with Pakistan’s Babar Azam as top. “There was a massive debate in my comments being India v Pakistan and a lot of people were getting really heated in it telling me ‘you don’t know anything about cricket’” she recalled
“I used it to my advantage because this is getting a lot of viewership, I think it's now on 300,000 views which it's crazy”.
With two careers developing, there’s a world of options for Regina going forward. “I definitely think that I will continue on with the creation of content in terms of documenting my own journey and documenting the experiences” she said.
“I really want to get into journalism and writing things, not necessarily reporting but just being involved in it. I want to play as long as I can and see how far I can get. I have to work really hard to try and make it if I want to become professional Cricketer in England so that's definitely something I'm trying to push for and trying to get myself in a better situation for the franchise tournaments outside like Fairbreak and things like that”.
The full conversation with Regina Suddahazai can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/237Y5sbpBOmBB0wIT7619M
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