Alyssa Healy is preparing for her eighth consecutive T20 World Cup in 2024, and for the first time, she will be leading Australia as captain. Having taken over from Meg Lanning last year, Healy now faces the task of captaining her nation in an International Cricket Council (ICC) event. Under Lanning’s leadership, Australia secured four T20 World Cup titles (2014, 2018, 2020, and 2023), and now, with Healy at the helm, the team is eyeing a fourth consecutive title.
The World Cup is just the start of a hectic six months for Healy, which includes a Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) campaign with the Sydney Sixers, a home Ashes series featuring a pink-ball Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), two white-ball tours of New Zealand, and hopefully another Women’s Premier League season with the UP Warriorz. On choosing to skip The Hundred this year, she shared, “I’m relieved at the decision to not go and play. I probably underestimated what the last nine months really took out of me, and to have some time to reflect and refresh myself was really important.”
Healy and Lanning have played together in 97 T20Is and 29 T20 World Cup matches. However, this will be the first time since 2014 that Lanning won’t be alongside her. Commenting on this, Healy shared, “It’s definitely opened my eyes to some stuff Meg was probably dealing with behind the scenes, some of the things that potentially were wearing her down.
“I was only really vice-captain for a couple of months before she stepped away from the game, so I didn’t really get to see too much behind the scenes, what was needing to be done. But upon being thrust into the role, it’s been eye-opening. It’s been a challenge, but one that I’ve actually really enjoyed. I’m definitely glad that I’m 34 not 24 taking it on. I think it would have been really overawing.”
Healy made her captaincy debut against India on December 9th at the DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai, and since then, she has led Australia in 22 T20Is, winning 14 of them. Reflecting on her leadership experience, she said, “I think the cricket side of it is really exciting. To have the opportunity to go out there and toss the coin in a World Cup is a pretty amazing experience, one that I’m really looking forward to. Hopefully the group will enjoy themselves and also play some good, hard cricket.”
Australia has been the most successful team in women’s T20 World Cup history, winning six out of the eight tournaments held so far. With Healy aiming for a seventh title, she acknowledged the challenge ahead, saying, “We need to switch on and get moving and get into the tournament as fast as we can, because we’re being hunted at every opportunity. Winning a World Cup is really, really hard to do, in the T20 format in particular. To be as consistent as what we have been in that format is an amazing achievement. If it’s four in a row, amazing, but if not, if we give it a red-hot crack and we don’t come away with the trophy, then that’s okay.”
Originally, the tournament was set to take place in Bangladesh, but political unrest forced a relocation to the UAE, where Australia has never played any international match. Healy commented, “I’ve never played international cricket there. It seemed like a unanimous decision to put it in the UAE. Logistically, it seemed to work the best for everybody. We were really well prepared as a squad for Bangladesh, and they’re some of the harshest conditions that you’ll play in, especially in T20 cricket, with how much turn there was in that series we played against them, and how low and slow the wickets were getting.”
She added, “We’re going to have to wait and see what we get when we get there, because I’ve seen some absolute flat tracks produced over there, and then I’ve seen some really low scoring ILT20 games.”
Australia’s success also extends to the Ashes, where they have won 10 titles since the competition’s inception in 1934-35. Looking ahead to the January 2025 Ashes, Healy reflected on their most recent series in mid-2023, where England leveled the series at 8 points after being 0-6 down.
She remarked, “England did that to us in that series over there. They came out really, really hard and wanted to put us on the back foot early, and at times maybe we did take a little bit of a step back. So, it’s an opportunity for us to say, ‘No, you know what? This is actually how we play the game, and this is what we can do at home.’ And more so than anything else, I want the fans to come out and be a part of it as well, because we know what happened over in the UK, and we got some hostility from the crowd. So, it’s nice for the Aussie fans to come out, let the Poms know that they’re in Australia.”
Speaking about the crowd support, Healy added, “The crowd really got into the whole two Ashes series on at the same time over there, and we’ve made a decision to go away from that and actually split the Ashes, and almost have one Ashes, two seasons. To let the Poms know twice in the space of 12 months that they’re in Australia and they’re up for the fight, the fans should be frothing.”
Before the Ashes, Healy and Australia are focused on their defense of the T20 World Cup title, aiming for a record seventh championship. Australia, placed in Group A alongside India, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, will kick off their campaign on October 5th, facing Sri Lanka at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium. Under Healy’s leadership, Australia will look to extend their dominance on the world stage.
(Quotes sourced from Fox Cricket)