Australia skipper Alyssa Healy has spent the winter quietly re-shaping her wicketkeeping technique, hoping the small shift will spare her battered joints and keep her in the gloves for this autumn’s 50-over World Cup in India and Sri Lanka.
Healy, 35, has not kept since January’s Ashes ODIs. A bruised foot, first jarred at the 2024 T20 World Cup, flared up again, and a separate knee problem shortened her WBBL campaign. She filled the gloves for a few training blocks this month, liked how the body felt, and now plans to test the new method during August’s Australia A trip to India.
Key facts first
• Healy has adopted a slightly taller starting position behind the stumps.
• The tweak came after chats with a podiatrist in Sydney.
• She will keep in the Australia A v India A one-dayers, then — if all goes well — in the World Cup that starts 29 September.
“We’ve been taught how to wicket keep a certain way in this country for an extended period of time,” Healy said as Cricket Australia announced Westpac as its latest partner. “At the end of the day, it’s not overly efficient on our bodies, and doing it at 35 is not ideal.”
The Australian method, drilled in junior pathways, asks keepers to start low and rise with the ball. It looks textbook, but the crouch loads pressure on knees and ankles. Healy’s experiment borrows from the English style — keepers there often stand an inch or two higher — creating what she calls a hybrid stance. In simple terms, her spine is a touch straighter at set-up; the move into the “power position”, as coaches dub it, is shorter.
Speaking later to ESPNcricinfo, she added more context. “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,” she said. “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.
“[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.”
Medical staff appear content. There is no radical surgery here, only smart tinkering, but the signs are promising. If the foot holds up through five one-dayers in Bengaluru, Healy should reclaim the gloves for Australia’s three pre-World-Cup ODIs against India in late September.
“I’ll get a red-hot crack at it in the ODI fixtures in that A-series, so we’ll get a better look at how things are working,” she said. “My goal is to be there and playing in the World Cup as a wicketkeeper, so hopefully that pans out.”
Analysis
The timing matters. Meg Lanning’s retirement and several younger faces mean Australia lean on Healy’s dual role. If she cannot keep, selectors would need a reshuffle: Beth Mooney has deputised before, but moving her from the outfield weakens the batting depth chart. Georgia Redmayne is around the squad yet untested in ICC tournaments. A fit Healy simplifies everything.
There is also a broader theme. More professional games, tighter schedules, and older careers are forcing keepers to find marginal gains. Lighter leg guards, load-management drills and now minor stance adjustments are all part of the modern survival kit.
For now, Healy looks relaxed, even curious about the late-career experiment. The cricket public will see soon enough if the new posture survives the heat of Indian afternoons — and whether those veteran joints stay quiet.
