IND-W vs AUS-W | Healy opens up on technical tweaks in keeping to avoid injury recurrences ahead of World Cup

Alyssa Healy is set for a comeback to international cricket, for the first time since January, in an upcoming three-match ODI series against India Women.  to perfect her technique and manage her workload ahead of the upcoming global events.

Healy has been one of the prominent wicket-keeper batters in women’s cricket, known for her aggressive knocks at the top. She has a great record in ICC tournaments, averaging 50.58 in ODI World Cups and boasting 1,008 runs at a healthy strike rate of 129.39 in T20 World Cups. However, the last few months of her career have been marred by injuries, which have affected her performances and consistency. Healy has not kept wickets for Australia since the last Women’s Ashes ODI series and played the one-off Test as a specialist batter due to the recurrence of a foot injury, which she sustained during the T20 World Cup the previous year. Healy also missed the entire WBBL season with a knee injury and with the repeated wounds taking a toll on her body, the Aussie skipper has brought about some tweaks in her keeping technique.

“We've been taught how to wicket keep a certain way in this country for an extended period of time. At the end of the day, it's not overly efficient on our bodies, and doing it at 35 is not ideal. 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,” Healy said during a Cricket Australia event.

“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. 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,” Healy gave further details about her preparations while talking to ESPN Cricinfo.

“[Looking at] some of the stressful parts of my job and what it's doing to some of the joints in my body, and how do I get the best out of myself for the back end of my career. So we just tinkered around with it, and it's just really simply, it's kind of like a bit of a hybrid model between what the English do and what we do. We've all been traditionally taught 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 anymore. So just been playing around with how to get to my power position a little bit differently," she concluded.

Though Australia are yet to announce its squad for the upcoming India tour, which will take place in September, Healy is confirmed to represent Australia A in the warm-up games against India A. This will be a litmus test for the 35-year-old to see if she can keep wickets in the upcoming World Cup, scheduled to begin on September 30 in Bengaluru.