Born on March 24th 1990 on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Alyssa Healy is the Test, ODI and T20I wicket keeper 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. With Fields returning for one last run in 2013 it has meant that Healy has only played in six Test matches in a decade. She has scored 236 runs in that time at 23.60 with a high score of 58. She’s taken 12 catches and 1 stumping.
Far more productive in ODIs where she has played 91 matches and proven her value with both bat and gloves. She has scored 2325 runs at 33.69, with three centuries and fifteen half-centuries. Her highest score is 133 against India at Vadodara in 2018. With the gloves 62 catches and 28 stumpings for 90 dismissals.
It is easy to forget about her glove work in T20s because she has become the most explosive opening batter in the world. When Healy is opening the batting be prepared 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 123 T20 Internationals Healy has scored 2136 runs at 24.00 and a strike rate of 129.69. Her highest score is 148 not out. With the gloves (oh yes!) 46 catches and 52 stumpings for a total of 98 dismissals. In November 2020 she was named the ICC Women’s T20I Cricketer of the Decade.