Born on March 24th 1990 on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Alyssa Healy is former Test, ODI and T20I wicket keeper and captain for Australia. Wicket keeping is in the genes.
Her uncle Ian Healy was one of the best Australia has ever produced and with his guidance Alyssa was always going to make the grade to the point where she has held the role in all three formats of the game for a decade. Selected to tour New Zealand in 2006/07 in the Australian Youth team, Healy played in all three matches in a team that included some other handy players – Rachael Haynes, Ellyse Perry, Nicole Bolton, Delissa Kimmince to name but a few. She kept wickets but it was her batting that was a tour highlight and it was with the bat that she made her debut for NSW in 2007/08.
In the last game of the season, Leonie Coleman stepped aside and Alyssa took the gloves. It was a brief moment. Coleman was after all, the Australian wicket keeper at the time. In 2009/10 following the retirement of Coleman, Healy is now the NSW wicket keeper and in a stroke of rotten luck for the Australian captain Jodie Fields an injury means there’s a brief window in the Australian team.
Healy makes both her ODI and T20I debut against New Zealand in February and by May is playing in a T20 World Cup final. Only six months prior did she finally get the wicket keeping gloves for NSW. Six months later in January 2011 and with Jodie Fields still injured, Alyssa Healy makes her Test debut against England at Bankstown Oval in Sydney and top scores for Australia with 37 runs in the first innings batting at number eight. Healy played in eleven Test matches in a decade. She scored 502 runs at 29.52 with a high score of 99. It is the only format where she didn’t score a century. She’s took 22 catches and two stumpings, placing her equal second best all time for Australia with Marg Jennings.
Far more productive in ODIs where she played 162 matches and proved her value with both bat and gloves. She scored 3777 runs at 37.02, with eight centuries and nineteen half-centuries. Her highest score of 170 against India in the World Cup Final at Christchurch in 2022 underlined the fact that she is a big game player. With the gloves 85 catches and 38 stumpings for 123 dismissals, the most by an Australian and fourth best of all time.
It is easy to forget about her glove work in T20s because she was the most explosive opening batter in the world. When Healy opened the batting it was time for pyrotechnics. No more so than her display in the World T20 final of March 8, 2020. Her 75 runs from 39 balls included five sixes, three of which were in succession as she annihilated the opposition bowling attack. It was vintage Healy.
In 126 T20 Internationals Healy scored 3054 runs at 25.08 and a strike rate of 131.68. Her high score of 148 not out came from just 61 balls with a strike rate of 242.62. With the gloves 65 catches and 63 stumpings for a total of 128 dismissals, the most by any keeper in this format and the first and only player to pass 100 dismissals.
In November 2020 she was named the ICC Women’s T20I Cricketer of the Decade. Healy retired in March 2026 after playing her final Test match, against India at the WACA in Perth.