The Women’s World T20 is barely a few days away. How are the bowlers going to cope up with Alyssa Healy? Purely on the current record, Alyssa Healy’s form bears resemblance to a wolf’s outrage, where each vulpine attack stands the chance to go sharper, potentially clawing on to the victim’s skin deeper. Just that in Alyssa’s case, the cuts aren’t made by the jaw of a hound, but by the blasphemy of the willow.
There’s a streak of eccentricity about Alyssa Healy.
But this eccentricity concerns the sheer uncomplicatedness about her cricket. Good ball- she’ll attempt a stroke. Bad ball, don’t worry, just go and collect it from beyond the boundary. It was in an utterly ruthless manner that Australia’s wicketkeeping-batswoman tore apart the Kiwis in their recent outing Down Under.
In fact, if it could be said, there was mayhem Down Under but largely because of the form at the top of the order in the Australian line-up. Bates, Tahuhu, Devine, it didn’t matter to Alyssa Healy.
When it comes to the fastest man on the earth, it’s Usain Bolt.
When it comes to scoring at faster rates in the women’s game, there’s Alyssa Healy. Here’s a fact that no-one can challenge. Alyssa Healy isn’t related to Smriti Mandhana. Smriti Mandhana isn’t related to Deandra Dottin.
But when you place this extremely talented troika in parallel lines, you understand the women’s game is pretty gun-crazy. They seem like soul sisters related to one another through a central tenet defining their batting: Explosiveness.
How else can you describe Alyssa Healy’s form in the recent T20s?
Cricket needs impact players
Alyssa Healy’s a brand ambassador for that order of the day. Tests sadly don’t feature that much at all in the Women’s game. ODIs are their lifeline and against this narrative, the T20s are serving an interesting narrative, by leaving a lasting impression on audiences despite being a template created to serve ‘instant gratification.’
Impact players are the ones that serve the game the best.
They can be slow scorers but should affect a performance. Chanderpaul faced more deliveries in Test Cricket than Lara. But he saved about as many games that may have ended in near-certain defeats than those Lara won, despite the latter scoring 4 more Test hundreds for his side.
Dravid faced the most number of balls in Test cricket history, yet he managed to win more Tests for his team than Sachin, 15 to be precise.
Jayasuriya changed the context of scoring for openers by basing his inning inside the first 15 overs, nearly every each time he batted from the onset of the Wills 1996 World Cup, alongside ‘Little Kalu.’
Alyssa Healy is a dynamo giving shape to the new order of the contemporary structure of cricket, where Women’s game is finally getting the due it’s always deserved.
Alyssa Healy bats as if she’s attending a quick birthday party post which she’s due for another appearance at another duo.
Fans of better analogies probably might agree with her being a guest who arrives for a dinner right on time, insists food is served at ‘dinner time’, polishes off everything in her plate and manages to even help the host wash the dishes and leaves quickly but not before leaving a good impression.
To be honest, she didn’t spend a lot of time at the crease across the three games. Yet, even as in all, she faced 94 deliveries, she scored the most runs in the contest: 138 runs. They came from nearly 16 overs she batted.
Do the collective math and your mind will spiral into a sudden realization. In scoring the most runs against the likes of heavy duty talents- Devine, Satterthwaite, Bates on the one hand and legends like Perry and Lanning on her own side- she stuck around for 16 of the 60 overs bowled at Australia.
If that’s not a case of impact, then what is?
In a few week’s time, bowlers of the world would need to draw specific plans for Healy, whose 144 runs from 3 T20s resulted in 25 boundaries. True to the nature of not wasting anyone’s time, she rested on the twitch of her ferocious power to carve boundaries.
Do not be mistaken; she’s also among the fastest runners in between the wickets.
Give her a bad ball and if she’d miss out on a good whack, she’d steal that additional run the fielder didn’t imagine was a possibility. To bowl intentionally shorter to her, may often end up being signaled a wide. If the ball finds the meat of the bat, as it often does, teams would be advised to let spectators earn their fifteen seconds of fame catching the ball in the stands.
What to expect from the belligerent striker?
The punchy pulls, the rasp cuts, the glowing drives, she’s got the shots in the book that have culminated in nearly 1100 T20 runs, 1 hundred and 4 fifties in the briefest format.
But whether you were a Stafanie, Harman, Niekerk, Satterthwaite, you’d worry about that strike rate. It’s the feistiest weapon in the arsenal.
It’s 116.
Who knows, by the time the ICC Women’s World T20, 2018 ends, it might shoot up to 120. Oblige us by your gunslinging batting please, Alyssa!