The temperature hovered around 40-degree Celsius. But that didn’t stop fans from filling up the Reliance Cricket Stadium in Vadodara. That was a bit unusual at the time — eight years ago — for a women’s cricket match.
That was still the time when for most Indians, women’s cricket meant Mithali Raj, the batter who would hit headlines almost every other week with a new record. She was the captain of that side that took on Meg Lanning’s Australia in the three-match ODI series in Vadodara.
The turning point
India was walloped 0-3, as the Aussie women served revenge cold that insanely hot week in March, 2018. They avenged their stunning defeat in the 2017 World Cup semifinal in which they were blown away by an out-of-the-world innings from Harmanpreet Kaur at Derby.
One of the highlights of that series was a brilliant hundred by Alyssa Healy. The 115-ball 133 would prove a turning point in her career. She took the game away from India with strokes all around the park.
She hadn’t quite become the destroyer at the top of the order. Or the woman who would develop this knack to produce the innings that would matter most in the match that mattered most.
Still got it: In her final ODI, Healy cracked a 98-ball 158, an innings that encapsulated her batting.
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Healy, who ended her international career with the Test against India at Perth, will always be remembered as one of women’s cricket’s all-time greats. It is not just her strokeplay, or her energy behind the stumps, that will be missed. Her friendly smile will be missed, too. As will her sense of humour as well as her chattiness and cheekiness.
Jhulan Goswami noticed that early on. “Even when she was a teenager, she wasn’t afraid to talk to the batter from behind the stumps and she said something to me while I was batting,” the former India seamer tells The Hindu. “I wasn’t expecting that. I was impressed by her keeping, which reminded me of Ian Healy [her uncle].”
Though Jhulan was convinced of her talent, Healy exceeded her expectations. “She has grown as a player massively,” she says. “Over the last few years, you could find that in challenging situations, she always steps up and takes responsibility.”
Former India captain Shubhangi Kulkarni feels Healy is a natural leader who brings energy and aggression to the team. “She set the tone for the Australian innings,” she says. “She performs on the big stage.”
Like she did against India in the final of the 2020 T20 World Cup at Melbourne, with 75 off just 39 balls. Two years later, she smashed 170 off 138 balls in the ODI World Cup final against England at Christchurch. Both innings, of course, helped Australia win the titles.
Healy has been a part of an incredibly gifted Australian team that has won eight World Cups (6 T20, 2 ODI). That team, like Clive Lloyd’s West Indies and Bradman’s Invincibles, is among the greatest in the history of sport. The Women in Yellow set a record of 26 ODI wins in a row from March 2018 to September 2021.
Lanning, who captained the side for almost a decade, retired in 2023. Healy then took over. She actually put her hand up. She recently revealed that she had called up chairman of selectors Shawn Flegler and told him that she wanted that job. “I can be really proud of that moment when I took a really bold step,” she said. “It was somebody who I really trusted that suggested I make that phone call.”
Leading from the front
She may not have been able to add another World Cup to Australian cricket’s crowded showcase, but she has led her team from the front. Last year, Australia beat England in every match of the Women’s Ashes — three ODIs, three T20Is and the one-off Test.
In her last series, against India, she led Australia to a 3-0 win in the ODIs, before the Test victory at the WACA. That was a fine comeback after the Aussies, under new captain Sophie Molineux, lost the T20I series.
Eye on the ball: Healy might not have been the game’s most stylish wicketkeeper, but she was among the most effective
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In her final ODI, Healy cracked a 98-ball 158. She could not have dreamt of a better farewell knock. And that innings encapsulated her batting.
She ended her career with 7,333 international runs and hit nine hundreds and 39 fifties. Even in a batting line-up that featured the likes of Lanning, Ellyse Perry, Beth Mooney and Tahlia McGrath, Healy could make her presence felt.
As is the case with most batters, moving up the order helped her batting. It was after the loss to India in the 2017 World Cup that Healy became a regular as an opener.
During an interview in Mumbai three years ago, Healy had told this writer that the defeat had changed the way Australia played its ODI cricket.
“We decided we needed to come up with some different stuff,” she said. “It was a real turning point for the group and me personally. Before that, I was batting in the middle and probably didn’t know what my role was. So from that moment on, we reinvented how we wanted to play One-Day cricket and that included me at the top of the order. At that time being 27 and where I was in my career, it gave me the confidence to do better.”
Her confidence indeed showed during that maiden international hundred in Vadodara. At the press conference, she admitted, smiling, “Yes, there was a little bit of revenge.”
After Vadodara, she went on to produce breathtaking knocks across the globe, including 148 not out off 61 balls against Sri Lanka at North Sydney Oval in 2019 (a T20I record then). She also holds the record for the most dismissals as a wicketkeeper in T20Is (126).
She may not have been the most stylish of ’keepers in women’s cricket, like Sarah Taylor, but she was among the most effective. She was quick and smart, too.
She has also been one of the more popular female cricketers around. She has played a role in the transformation of women’s cricket, which a girl can now look upon as a well-paying full-time job, and not just a hobby.
Team before self
Healy, of course, would have loved to play more Tests. In a 16-year international career, she played just 11 Tests. In her last Test, she was given the option of opening Australia’s second innings. But always the team player, she didn’t want to disrupt the young partnership of Georgia Voll and Phoebe Litchfield, who chased down the modest target of 25 set by India.
And Healy had an explanation: “I wanted to protect my Test average of 20.”
She was being modest. The average is close to 30.
Healy is looking forward to some new things in life, but confessed, “Marrying a cricketer [Mitchell Starc] wasn’t the smartest thing in trying to move away from cricket.”
