Meg Lanning has learnt from feeling outcast from own team
A moment of feeling awkward in her own dressing room has helped Meg Lanning become a better leader for the Aussie women’s cricket team.
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MEG Lanning was in the Australia dressing room and didn’t know what to do with herself.
A place she has commanding for so many years, suddenly she felt awkward. She wasn’t quite part of the team, not in the thick of it.
It was during last year’s Ashes series and Lanning was sidelined after shoulder surgery following Australia’s World Cup campaign, which made the situation doubly hard for the fierce competitor.
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She felt like an outsider in a team that has been her life since the age of 18 and then had been robbed of the chance to right the disappointing exit Australia suffered in that tournament.
“I thought I’d prepared for it, knew I was going to miss it, but when you are sitting on the sidelines watching your teammates playing a really big series, it’s definitely difficult and I struggled a fair bit with that,” Lanning said.
“It’s one of those clichés, but until you can’t have something or are not involved in something you realise how much you love doing it and that was certainly the case with me.
“It was such a big series following a disappointing World Cup, it was the first time we got back out on the park and I wasn’t able to contribute to that, which was frustrating.
“But now that I’m back out playing I’ve been able to learn a few things from that and it’s a distant memory.”
Those learnings have helped her grow as a captain.
For the first time in Lanning’s career she experienced what it was like to miss the cut.
Even though it was injury that had ruled her out, it was tough to not be part of the 11 going after a Test win over World Champions England at North Sydney Oval.
“I was sitting in the change rooms during that Test match and I wasn’t sure where to sit, I wasn’t sure who to talk to,” said Lanning, who’s quick rise to the top features as part of Cricket Australia’s #WatchMe campaign.
“It seems a bit silly, but that was how I felt.”
“It’s given me a totally different perspective on the game and I guess I’ve been lucky in my career so far that up until that point I hadn’t really been dropped out of the team and taken the captaincy pretty young and was just looking towards the next game and the next series.
“The perspective, I guess, is perhaps what it’s like if you’re not selected or if you’re struggling with things and I feel like now I’ve got a much better understanding of that and can connect a lot more with people in the group in that area and help people become the best they can be.
“I think it was a real eye opener for me to see what it’s like to be on the outside.”
Lanning has achieved a lot in her career, and quickly.
At 26 years old she has been captaining her country for five years already.
She holds the record for the most centuries in women’s one day internationals and was the first person, male or female, to score 2,000 runs in T20 internationals.
She debuted in that format at 18 and a few days later made her ODI debut for Australia too. Two days after that, in just her second ODI she made her first 100 — another record, becoming the youngest centurion for Australia at 18 and 288 days and replacing her childhood hero Ricky Ponting in doing so.
When Lanning was handed the captaincy at just 21 years old, it took her by surprise, but like with everything she does, she took the job head on.
She hasn’t looked back. While she says she’s still learning the little things that make a good captain great, she understands it’s a role in which you need to be open-minded and approachable.
“One of the biggest parts of being the leader is just being able to manage people and bring people together to get the most out of them and that’s something I probably didn’t have the most experience in and had to learn the best way for me to do that,” she said.
“It’s taken time and I’m still learning now. I’m trying to get the most out of people. That’s probably been the biggest shift I think.
“On field it’s about backing your decisions and going with your gut instincts. The more you do it the better you get at it.
“You don’t get everything right, that’s something you have to have an understanding of. You have to go with what you feel at the time. You don’t have time to sit back and see how things are going to pan out. You have to make a decision.”