Image Credit- Getty
After officially succeeding Meg Lanning as captain of
Australia’s all-conquering women’s cricket team in all three formats, Alyssa
Healy hopes to establish a “new legacy” for the team.
Over the previous two years, including the Ashes this
year, wicketkeeper-batter Healy has taken over as captain for extended periods
of time, replacing Lanning. Now, following Lanning’s unexpected international
retirement last month, the 33-year-old—who was always going to be expected to
earn the promotion—will take on the duty full-time.
Vice-captain Tahlia McGrath, an all-around player who
helped Adelaide Strikers win two consecutive WBBL titles, has been named.
“For me to be able to present to the powers that
be about who I am and what I can bring as a leader and what I can hopefully
help this side do in the next couple of big years with a couple of World Cups
on the horizon was a really great experience for me,” Healy said.
“And [it] probably just ratified things in my own head about, ‘Yep, this
is exactly what I want to do’. And I want to help create a new legacy for this
Australian team.
“The legacy that Meg Lanning and Rachael Haynes
had for a really long period of time and the success they had was outstanding,
and I was a part of that, which is really cool. But it feels like we’re a
little bit new. We’re a new side, we’ve got talent coming through. We’ve got
all the players coming in and out and it was sort of an opportunity to reset
and refresh.”
Seeing the opportunity that lay ahead for her when
Lanning retired helped clarify Healy’s career-goals, in terms of both building
more success for this team and ensuring a successful future.
“I’ve always been a little bit wishy-washy, and
you guys in the media can probably attest to that,” she said. “I
always play games about how long I’m going to play for, but in my own mind it
sort of gave me an opportunity [to say] that, ‘Yep, this is what I want to
achieve and this is where I’d like to take the group for a certain amount of
time’. And I think we can achieve great things in that time, but more so set it
up for the next 10 years to be really successful.”