Opinion
The dreaded pair – and indeed any duck – is a greater occupational risk for opening batters than their middle order counterparts.
Faced with the freshest opening bowlers, new ball and juiciest wickets, sometimes these specialists are back in their training gear before the bowlers have finished breakfast.
Because of this, the statistical benchmarks for considering excellence in specialist openers – average and number of hundreds, for example – are generally accepted to be a little lower than the middle order.
The same is true of wicket keepers – they typically find themselves either trying to rescue a top-order collapse or escalate a run-rate and progress the game, often after keeping for hundreds of overs.
In Test cricket, of course, Alyssa Healy does both – just as she does in ODI and T20 cricket. She is not historically alone in these dual endeavours, but those who have done both are certainly in the minority and none have done it successfully for very long.
She has made plain her desire to take on the workload, saying ahead of the Test:
“Hopefully, we get the full four days in and I’m out there for all four days. I look forward to that challenge and test my body, physically and mentally. The chats are being had but at this point in time, considering it’s such a one-off event for us, I want to be involved as much as I can.”
Her desire to be involved is echoed in many an athlete’s generic media platitudes, but for Healy and her teammates this sentiment is more substantial – in 11 years, she has played six Tests. For reference, the men’s team has played 109 since her debut.
With just one Test every other year to look forward to, the desire to take part and contribute – in other words, not miss out – must be immense. She already has one DNB to her name, when she was not required in the second innings of her debut Test as Australia chased 198 to beat England at Bankstown Oval, and is understandably keen to avoid any more.
On one hand, Healy opening does makes sense: with no long-format domestic competition for women in Australia, the experience of opening in white ball cricket can be considered more valuable than, well, no experience of opening at all.
But anyone who follows cricket knows that Test cricket has not seen anything close to Healy’s immense talent with the bat yet – and it deserves to.
It’s impossible to use a sample of just six Tests to draw any kind of meaningful statistical conclusions, but she has now opened in exactly half her matches, making 58, 13, 29, 6, 0 and 0 (average 17.66). In the middle and lower order, she has made 37, 39, 9 and 45 (average 32.5).
These figures don’t show that she can’t open, but that she shouldn’t. The guarantee of participation opening the batting, however enticing that is to the player herself, is outweighed by all the other factors against it.
More importantly, she deserves to take a place in the team that supports her to achieve her goals and fulfil her talent. The game is far richer for her making runs than not.
Unsurprisingly, this means a move to the more traditional wicketkeeper’s position at seven. Healy’s early departures meant Beth Mooney essentially opened this Test, and made runs doing so.
Shifting everyone up one position benefits the lineup in more ways, too – it puts Ellyse Perry at three, the traditional home of the best batter in an Australian team, and places more responsibility on both Ashleigh Gardner and Tahlia McGrath, whose performances over this Summer in international and WBBL cricket have been awe-inspiring.
Healy is easily good enough to bat at six, too, and such is the depth of all-rounders in the side that she can perhaps switch between them based on the match situation.
The Manuka Test could have taken on a rather different complexion if Meg Lanning could have sent Healy, whose strike rate is 101.69 in ODIs and 129.69 in T20Is, out to escalate the run rate.
Of course, there is one glaring issue with all of this conjecture. Unlike the men’s Ashes, in which we were force-fed low-quality Test after low-quality Test with barely a breath between, the next Test for the Australian women is, well, who knows when? Beyond the World Cup there are no fixtures available.
It will be of little consolation to her that the ignominy of her pair contributed to the fantastic drama of the recently concluded Test at Manuka Oval. In a roundabout way, this contributed to the growing public support for more women’s Tests than ever before.
Two Tests in one Summer is progress in itself, but not enough. Hopefully it is just a matter of time before Healy and her teammates take part in a fully-fledged Test series; when it comes, she can reflect on this substantial silver lining as she waits to bat down the order.
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