Nicola Carey walks back into an Australia camp this week having spent almost three years assuming the door was closed for good. The 30-year-old all-rounder, now a linchpin for both Tasmania and Hobart Hurricanes, has been named in the T20I and ODI squads to face India, starting at the SCG on Sunday.
Key facts first. Carey turned down a Cricket Australia central contract in 2023, fed up with hauling the drinks more often than hauling the ball. She wanted cricket, not clipboards, so committed full-time to Tasmania and the WBBL. In the two domestic seasons since, she has topped the WNCL run-scoring charts with 696 in 2023-24, lifted the Hurricanes to their maiden WBBL title, improved her T20 strike-rate by nearly 20 points and reinvented herself with the new ball. Those numbers have forced the selectors’ hand.
“I’d made peace that if it [representing Australia] didn’t happen, I was so okay with it,” Carey said as the squad gathered in Sydney. “It was literally just about playing more games of cricket, and that was just the path that I thought was the best way to go about it for me.”
The move was a gamble. Leaving the security of a contract can slam a door shut for good, particularly in an Australian set-up bursting with all-round options. Carey knew it. “Maybe that’s the risk you take, potentially never being able to play again, and I was really okay with that, because I guess I had other things I wanted to achieve in terms of seeing where I could get with my cricket.”
From the outside, the risk looks to have paid off handsomely. Former Australia quick and Hurricanes assistant coach Ben Hilfenhaus thinks the freedom of constant cricket, rather than constant travel, has sharpened her game. “She bowled the new ball for us out of necessity, then suddenly we realised she swings it as well as anyone in the comp,” he noted during the WBBL finals. (Hilfenhaus’ comments were made to local Tasmanian media last month.)
Carey’s international CV already includes the 2020 T20 World Cup final at the MCG, the 2022 ODI World Cup and 50 white-ball caps, yet she was pigeon-holed as a spare part. “I fully understood why I wasn’t playing cricket,” she reflected. “It’s just the nature of the game, isn’t it? The team’s elite, it still is. It’s really hard to crack into the XI, it still is.”
That honesty cut both ways. “I probably felt like … I was sort of plateauing. I probably wasn’t that good anyway, so I needed to get better,” she admitted. The domestic circuit became her laboratory. Longer spells with Tasmania’s coaches, regular match pressure in the WBBL and fresh stints overseas — she returned to the Hundred last year and earned a first WPL deal with Mumbai Indians — provided the variety she felt was missing.
Australian head coach Shelley Nitschke, while reluctant to talk up any single player, hinted at the balance Carey offers. “We like specialists, but an all-rounder who can open the bowling and bat anywhere is gold on Indian-sized grounds.” That was Nitschke speaking after the squad announcement on Friday.
There is, of course, no guarantee of immediate game time. Australia’s core remains ferociously strong and Tahlia McGrath, Ellyse Perry and Ashleigh Gardner already cover multiple roles. Carey is relaxed. “I don’t regret the decision that I made. It’s definitely helped my game, and I have really enjoyed the last little period, where I’ve been sort of embedded in the Tassie set up, as the WBBL, or the Tigers stuff, and it’s been really enjoyable.”
Selectors value form and flexibility, especially with a T20 World Cup in Bangladesh later this year. National selector Shawn Flegler pointed to Carey’s improved strike-rate and power-play bowling as “clear evidence the domestic route has worked for her”.
So what now? Carey admits she has no grand plan. “I didn’t really have any goals or expectations of where that would get to … I just wanted to go back, try and get better, and just go with it and see where it takes me. It’s bizarre that it brought me back here, but it’s kind of cool at the same time.”
It is a grounded outlook, one that fits a player who chose cricket over contracts and rediscovered both. Australia will decide in the next few days whether the new-look Nicola Carey slots straight into the XI; the bigger point, perhaps, is that she has already proved her decision was the correct one.
