We all know the dynamic wicket-keeping batter who takes one’s breath away when she starts tonking the ball from the meat of the bat. Alyssa Healy has been a revelation the moment she has started to open the batting for Australia in white-ball cricket and her performances, especially in the last two years, have been phenomenal with the cherry on the cake being her inclusion into ICC’s team of the year both in ODI’s and T20I’s for the year 2019.
All this cannot lead us to believe that the amazingly skilled wicket-keeping batter once thought of leaving it all, just before this outstanding turnaround happened.
As spoken to cricket.com.au, Healy said, “I remember having this discussion with (national selector) Shawn Flegler. “It wasn’t necessarily that I felt like I was at a crossroads, but I could have easily walked away from the game and been happy with what I’d done and that I’d contributed to successful teams. I’m not sure (what convinced me to continue) to be fair, I think Flegs reassured me that I was doing the right thing for the team and I was doing my job and that if I kept doing that then some more opportunities might open up.”
Now what is fascinating is that this thought lingered her mind at the age of 26-27 when she was an established cricketer having played for Australia for a long time but did not have that breakout year as yet where she set the cricketing world on fire. But the frustration regarding her future crossed her mind several times before she decided to give it up which could have let to Australia losing out on a spectacular talent.
After the World Cup of 2017, Australian coach Matthew Mott came up to Healy to ask her to open in the Ashes which followed soon after the World Cup and that was the exact switch which was needed for Alyssa to bring her A-game into play and the rest, as they say, is history.
Since October 2017 she’s amassed 1,143 runs at an avg. of 57.15 including three centuries in ODIs and in T20Is, she’s struck 1,008 runs at an avg. of 38.76 which has been a remarkable turnaround not just for her as an individual, but also for the Australian side. Healy was also named player of the tournament in what was a phenomenal run for Australia in the T20 World Cup triumph in 2018.
Healy jokingly says that she doesn’t know what she would have done had she left the game at that stage of her career as even her Golf was not that great. But she is glad that she stuck around and now is happy that she is able to contribute in a definitive way which is going great both for the team as well for her.
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