In an effort to lessen the physical burden on her body before the ODI World Cup in India and Sri Lanka, Australia skipper Alyssa Healy has made some technical changes to her wicketkeeping style.
Since the January Ashes ODI series against England, Healy has not played in a competitive match. After a knee injury ended her WBBL season and a foot ailment she had sustained at last year’s T20 World Cup returned, she played the Test in that series as a specialist batter.
She will begin in a slightly more upright position, which Healy described as a hybrid approach between what is often trained differently in Australia and England. Healy clarified that the alterations won’t be particularly noticeable.
Alyssa Healy stated, “We’ve been taught how to wicket keep a certain way in this country for an extended period of time,” after Westpac was announced as Cricket Australia’s new partner. Ultimately, it’s not very effective for our bodies, and it’s not the best idea to do it at 35.
“We’ve just been trying to maintain things working the way they should and looking at ways to make certain ageing joints a little bit simpler. I hope it pays off because it’s been a pleasant learning experience for me later in my career.
Healy explained in a separate interview with ESPNcricinfo how the adjustments were made after talking with a podiatrist she was seeing about her most recent injury.
“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,” Healy explained. “I found it fascinating, and I wondered how we accomplish that in cricket. You can’t truly switch jobs, but is it possible to make technical changes to increase efficiency? We simply experimented with it.
“[Looking at] some of the stressful aspects of my work, the damage it’s doing to some of my joints, and how I can maximise my performance for the remainder of my career. We experimented with it, and it’s fairly straightforward—it’s a sort of hybrid paradigm that combines what the English do with what we do.
“We’ve all been taught historically to stay low and come up with the ball, and that works well until your feet and knees become incapable of supporting you any more. I’ve been experimenting a little bit with different ways to reach my power position.
In the hopes of playing a full part behind the stumps at the World Cup, which begins in late September, Healy will resume keeping in the forthcoming Australia A series against India A. Australia will play three ODIs against India in order to be ready for that event.
“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,” she stated. “My goal is to be there and playing in the World Cup as a wicketkeeper, so hopefully that pans out.”
Since the WPL is now permanently in January and prevents them from playing during the school holiday window, Australia will not be seen on home soil until mid-February when they play India, despite the fact that they have a big prize ahead of them as the defending champions at the ODI World Cup.
Three Twenty20 Internationals, three One-Day Internationals, and a day-night Test at the WACA in Perth round up the multiformat series against India.
“Not having an international fixture in that school holiday period does hurt a little bit, but in saying that, it kind of extends the cricket season, which isn’t completely a bad thing for our sport,” Healy stated. “I thought it was really cool to have it at the end of the Border-Gavaskar at the end of the Ashes [last year], so hopefully there’s the same kind of momentum this year at the end of the men’s Ashes, that there’s still more cricket to watch.”
“We’ll wait and see how it goes since we’re playing India, which is one of our greatest series. I believe that until we find the ideal equilibrium for WPL moving in Australia, things will look different for a short while.”
“Hopefully we get a nice fast, bouncy wicket and we can show the Indians how good our pace stocks are,” Healy stated in reference to the pink-ball Test.
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