Healy overcomes poor form to make statement century vs India after what was a rather long spell of patchy form.
Healy: ‘It hasn’t been my day of late, but it was my day today’.
To win, 331 must be chased. during the World Cup. with raucous opposition supporters crammed into the stands. Unless you’re Alyssa Healy, it’s not the easiest job. Alternatively, Ellyse Perry. With an entire over in hand, Australia achieved the feat, which called for a record-breaking batsmanship. Healy later remarked, “That’s a really cool stat” that will give the batters “a heap of confidence” for the remainder of the tournament.
The cornerstone of that chase was Healy’s innings of 142 in 107 balls. Her first since April 2022, but her sixth ODI century. Even if she has missed a good deal of cricket in the interval, there is still a 25-inning lag between hundreds, and only her second fifty-plus score of the calendar year. Talk about good timing.
“I think I was just trying to contribute. I think it needed somebody to make a hundred to chase down that total. Obviously you’d probably like two to make hundreds just to make it easy, but somebody needed to, if they got set, to cash in and have a good day,” Healy said at the press conference afterwards. “So, yeah, it was probably… it was my day in the end. It hasn’t been my day of late, but it was my day today, which was really cool.
“And to get ourselves, obviously I would have liked to be there a little bit longer and probably see it home a little bit more, but I think to get ourselves in a winning position at that point in time was really cool, and I’ll probably reflect on that a little bit later and be a little bit happy.”
The other three frontline bowlers, Amanjot Kaur, Kranti Gaud, and Sneh Rana, were costly, but N Shree Charani and Deepti Sharma had outstanding economy rates of 4.10 and 5.20, respectively. Healy’s ability to defeat the quicks, Amanjot and Gaud, each time she faced them, was especially remarkable.
“It wasn’t a distinct plan as such. Charani was getting actually quite a bit of spin; she was kind of the pick of the bowlers today,” Healy said. “We identified that really well and thought if we can capitalise on some of the pace bowlers, that would be handy knowing that they really have [only] five bowlers in their attack. So, yeah, we thought if we could attack that it’d be great. But it wasn’t really a plan as such, it just panned out that way on the day and I think with the wicket sliding on it probably enabled us to do that.”
“If you’ve been watching me in the nets, it’s been a frustrating experience because I feel like I’ve had no rhythm whatsoever, been struggling to find it, and I didn’t really know where it went before I came into the World Cup,” she said. “But I think once you step out on the field, your competitive instincts kick in and you kind of just lock-in to getting in the contest. Obviously aware that Kranti had got me out a fair bit throughout the ODI series, so an opportunity to go out there and lock in a contest with her and just sort of, I don’t know, have a bit of fun in that regard, I think sort of got me going and that was really a really enjoyable experience. And like I said, it was my day today, and hopefully it continues but if not, I’m sure it’ll be someone else’s, which is cool.”