Australia-born Kratzmann was a professional tennis player before he switched to cricket. He won three junior Grand Slam singles tournaments, including Wimbledon in 1984 when he was the world's No. 1-ranked under-18 player in the world.

In 1996 a serious back injury forced his early retirement from professional tennis so Kratzmann returned to cricket. Kratzmann represented Queensland when in primary school in the late 1970s, against a New South Wales junior side that included the Waugh twins, as a left-arm allrounder. His father, Neville, had faced up to Jeff Thomson and Peter Lever in the 1970s while batting for the Queensland Country XI.

Kratzmann played in rural and park cricket in Australia before moving to Hong Kong in 2003. After a couple of moderate seasons, Kratzmann turned into a prolific scorer, amassing 1506 runs including seven hundreds in 2005-06; that same season he scored a staggering 706 at 117.67 in the Saturday League and won the 2006 Hong Kong Player-of-the-Year award. Though he was part of the 20-man squad for the 2008 Asia Cup, Kratzmann was not included in the final 14.