Sydney: Australia wicket-keeper Alyssa Healy revealed that she had almost quit cricket due to disfatisfaction with where her career was headed. The 29-year-old, now a mainstay in the Australian batting line-up and widely considered the best wicket-keeper in the world, said that she was considering the option of quiting the game about two to three years ago.
“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,” Healy is quoted as saying by cricket.com.au.
“I probably would have been 26, 27 at the time, so it wasn’t so long ago,” she said. “I think I was probably just frustrated with my cricket and didn’t really know what more I could achieve or what more I could do to better myself or my cricket.
“You come in at such a young age and you play for a long period of time, so you’re not sure where the end is and you feel like you can walk away and do something else with your life while you’re still young.”
Healy decided to continue, which turned out to be the right decision. Since October 2017, she has scored over 1000 runs in both the white-ball formats. She was named player of the tournament after Australia’s victorious 2018 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup campaign.
In October last year, she smashed the highest individual score in women’s T20Is, a 61-ball 148* against Sri Lanka. She was also named the ICC Women’s T20I Cricketer of the Year in 2019.
“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,” she said.
