Newly crowned Australian captain Alyssa Healy is relishing the chance to lead her national squad into a T20 World Cup battle, with the star wicket-keeper-batter supremely confident her team can defend—or rather, simply “win”—the title in style.
Australia’s T20 World Cup campaign begins this weekend, with the heavyweight team coming into the United Arab Emirates-hosted tournament as three-time defending champions. In fact, outside a shock 2016 loss to the West Indies, the women from Down Under have won basically every biennial event straight since way back in 2010.
Don’t call it a World Cup title defence in front of Healey though, or the new skipper will bite; there’s nothing so simple at a World Cup as simply defending a past win.
“You don’t come here to defend the title,” the 153-game T20 veteran declared on the eve of Australia’s opener against Sri Lanka this weekend. “That’s not what the World Cup is about, you come here to win it. We’re here with that approach.”
One reason she’s more eager to dub the ICC Women’s T20 tournament as something Australia will have to win rather than simply return to collect again is how “tricky” their group is. Group A houses rivals India, New Zealand, and Pakistan, as well as opening game challengers Sri Lanka—all of whom could become banana peels for the Aussies quite quickly.
Things can only get tougher for Australia as the oft-hunted championship team too, Healey added. “Teams are coming really hard at us to put us under the pump,” the national skipper said, before adding it’s something which the whole team loves. “This World Cup’s going to be no different. We know what the other nine are going to throw at us. We see it as a challenge and a good opportunity to showcase a brand of cricket we like playing.”
“The whole tournament, in general, is about adapting the quickest. That seems to be the way. If you look at the warm-up games, [it showed] you’ve got to adapt pretty quickly to what you’re given. Probably the team that does the best through the tournament will get the job done. We feel like we’re well placed to do that and hopefully, we can do it.”
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Australia begins its World Cup campaign late on Saturday night against Sri Lanka. That match, Healey’s 154th in International T20s, will be her first as Australian captain.
