Follow UsAlyssa Healy, at the age of 35, is still looking to make a comeback to international cricket and play the Women’s World Cup 2025 as a specialist wicket-keeper batter for the defending champion Australian side. To do that, she has discarded the Australian way of keeping, which asks the keeper to crouch low and then start rising with the bowler’s delivery stride.
"We've been taught how to keep wickets a certain way in this country for an extended period of time. To stay low and come up with the ball and that's fine until your knees and your feet can't allow you to do that any more. At the end of the day, it's not overly efficient on our bodies, and doing it at 35 is not ideal,” ESPNcricinfo quoted Healy as saying.
Healy, who is also Australian men’s team speedster Mitchell Starc’s wife, said that she talked to specialists dealing with sports positioning, and one of them even told him how football great Cristiano Ronaldo’s position managed to keep him fit as he started getting old.
"One of them actually worded it to me like when, and I'm not comparing myself to him, but when Cristiano Ronaldo started to get towards the back end of his career, they changed positions for him to make it a little bit easier on the body," said the niece of former Australian great Ian Healy.
Explaining the changes in her posture, Healy, who has played for Australia since 2010, said, "It was interesting, and I said, well, how do we do that in the game of cricket? Like you can't really change positions, but can we change things technically to make things more efficient? And we just played around with it.”
"We've just been looking at ways to make it a little bit easier for some ageing joints and trying to keep things moving the way they should. It's been a nice learning experience later in my career, so hopefully it pays off,” she added.
Healy, who has been off wicketkeeping duties, will get a crack at it against the India A Women's team at home. She will try to maximise this chance to get ready for the World Cup, which begins in late September in India.
"I'll get a red-hot crack at it in the ODI fixtures in that A-series, so we'll get a better look at how things are working. My goal is to be there and play in the World Cup as a wicketkeeper, so hopefully that pans out,” said Healy.
The Australian picked up an injury during the T20 World Cup in the UAE and had to return midway home. The injury was aggravated during the Women’s Ashes and, therefore, she has not kept wickets since then.