HAMISH BIDWELL
If Donna Trow were a bloke, chances are she'd still be playing cricket.
But without the luxury of being able to play semi-professionally all year round like her male counterparts, the Central Districts star has made the difficult decision to pull stumps on her career while she still loves the game.
"It sounds a strange word 'retired' but, yeah, I've stopped playing," Trow said yesterday.
"I've been playing for CD at some level since I was 15 and I'm 28 now, so that's 13 years. I had a season for ND and one season off due to injury and it's a lot.
"I've honestly achieved everything I wanted to achieve and I feel really good about cricket at the moment and I would hate to come back for another season and not feel the way I do now.
"I'd rather leave on a good note, which means there's a high chance I will return in terms of managing or administration.
"I want to be able to give something back instead of thinking 'I've had enough of this because it's crap'."
Because cricket hasn't ever been a game for Trow, it's been an all-consuming passion. Not the most gifted player of all time, any success she enjoyed had taken a massive amount of work and she had now reached the stage where her career at Sport Hawke's Bay and relationship with partner Scott Findlay demanded similar attention.
"In the last couple of years I'd leave home at seven and wouldn't get back home until nine at night," she said.
"There's Hawke's Bay (Cricket Association) committee stuff on top of that and it's just so full on and time consuming. If you look at the guys, a lot of them don't have full-time jobs, so they don't know what it's like in terms of jamming everything into one day and you really do it for the love of the game when you're not getting paid for it.
"I talk to Scott about it quite a lot because he knows what it's like for me and the fact that everything I've achieved, I've done through my own determination. It really has come down to my own hard work, because I'm not the most talented person, but I've performed to the best of my ability and I know that.
"I don't have any regrets."
But what about the fact that her international career proved to be so brief? What would she give to have today's head on those young shoulders?
"The way I feel about New Zealand is that I was 21 and definitely way too young," said Trow.
"I definitely had the ability to bowl really well and I had a skill that nobody else in the team had. But mentally, in terms of understanding that level of competition and what's required and what's expected, I definitely wasn't ready for that.
"I believe I've performed better over the last three years than I ever have, because mentally I'm way tougher. Bowling is about consistency, it's a mental battle and a lot of young players tend to be mentally soft."
So having lived and breathed it, what will she do with all that free time? How will she cope?
"I don't know," she said.
"All I know is that I had a weekend off last week for the first time since Labour Weekend and, believe me, there wasn't one time when I was sitting there thinking 'what am I going to do?'
"I know it's time for someone else now."
CRICKET: Trow pulls up stumps
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