Alyssa Healy

The Healy name continued to live strongly in the Australian game. After a rocky start to international cricket, Alyssa Healy transformed herself into one of the most destructive batters in the world. She was arguably the finest player of the lofted on-drive in the game, could take down bowling attacks in the blink of an eye and became outstanding behind the stumps. In October 2019 she set a new record for the highest T20I innings with an unbeaten 148 off 61 balls against Sri Lanka and in 2020 played the defining innings of the T20 World Cup final in Melbourne.

However, it took some time to reach those levels. In the first 80 matches of her T20I career she averaged 17.44 with a strike-rate of 112; in the first 52 matches of her ODI career she had an average of 15.96. Then, as with many in the same era of the Australian team, the semi-final exit in the 2017 ODI World Cup proved pivotal. She permanently moved to opening the innings, a position she had occasionally filled previously and given glimpse of her potential - an unbeaten 62 in an ODI against New Zealand in 2012 and 90 off 61 balls in a T20I against India the same year - and from that point her T20I average hit 36 with a strike-rate of 149, since 2017 in ODIs she has averaged 55.

Having been a key part of the 2018 T20 World Cup triumph in West Indies, her strength of character was on display at the start of the massively-hyped 2020 edition on home soil when she entered on a string of five single-figure scores then struck a half-century in the opening match, albeit a defeat, before saving her best of the grandest occasion of all in front of 86,000 people.

Having filled in for Meg Lanning, she became full-time captain in 2023 - it became a period where Australia's all-out dominance was challenged, and injuries started to catch up with Healy. She missed the 2024 T20 World Cup semi-final where the side fell to South Africa and fought through the pain in the 2025 ODI World Cup (having made two centuries) where India toppled them in the semis. Healy announced her retirement in early 2026, playing a final home series against India. She narrowly missed having a century across all three formats: her top score of 99 came against South Africa at the WACA.

"I feel like I've played a really small part in continuing to grow this sport and make it better for the young players coming through," she said. "I think that's probably what I'll be most proud of."