WBBL: Alyssa Healy and Ellyse Perry touch on their journeys in cricket and the Sydney Smash

Alyssa Healy and Ellyse Perry clinched a WNCL title as teens on the SCG in 2009, now the Sydney Smash is headed to the ground in an attempt to draw the biggest ever WBBL crowd.

George Costanza lied his way into becoming the world’s most renowned Marine Biologist, but for Alyssa Healy it seemed making a career out of cricket might be the bigger fantasy.

Healy was working as a manager at her local KFC and studying to be an actual real life marine biologist when this photo was taken of her and fellow 18-year-old Ellyse Perry celebrating their first WNCL title for NSW back in 2009.

They are the golden smiles of true champions, cricketers who started out playing for the love of the game only to become history-makers driving the sport into the professional era.

Now instead of cooking fried chicken after training, Healy (when she’s not nursing a nasty finger laceration) can spend her free time hitting golf balls … although hopefully not into the Pacific Ocean, because she never did finish that degree…

The victorious NSW team sing their song in the rooms in 2009. Picture: Phil Hillyard

“At that point in time, which when you think about it, wasn’t that long ago – there was no way we thought that the sport would be where it is now,” Healy said ahead of a coveted return to those famous SCG dressing rooms for Perry and the Sydney Sixers against the Thunder in the Sydney Smash.

“Now we come home after a day of training and we’re exhausted and we don’t feel like doing anything.

“Back then you were actually heading off to training at 6pm, so you’d have a full day of school or uni or work and then turn up to train at 6pm and finish at 9 and go home.

“I’m not quite sure how we ever managed it, but that’s all we ever knew.

“Then cricket took over.

“To sit here and say that we’re making a living and this is what I do 12 months of the year … the fact it’s grown so dramatically over that short space of time has been really exciting to be a part of.”

As the great Costanza once said: “It’s not a lie … if you believe it …” and the extraordinary rise of women’s cricket to be leaders in professional sport in this country has been built on utter dedication and trust.

Perry has been the face of women’s cricket for nearly two decades, but her greatest satisfaction isn’t what she’s achieved, but the journey to get there.

“It’s actually something that I’m truly grateful for and I’m sure Midge is as well – that is being able to experience the whole spectrum of the transition from I guess very much being a part-time vocation where all the players on that team from that 2009 photo had a full-time or part-time job or were studying, to where we are now, being full-time professional athletes and travelling the best part of 12 months of the year playing the sport,” Perry said.

“It’s been a really special thing to experience and I feel really fortunate to have gone through that whole spectrum.

Perry and Healy re-enacting their photo from singing the NSW Breakers victory song from 2009, back in the Sydney Cricket Ground dressing rooms. Picture: Phil Hillyard

“In a lot of respects it gives you a really easy way to appreciate and remember why you played in the first place. A lot of the most enjoyable and fulfilling aspects of playing sport have nothing to do with the remuneration you get.”

Healy admits one irony of the transformation of the women’s game is that in those early years she found herself playing at the SCG all the time, whereas now, Cricket Australia has shifted most Australian and WBBL matches to boutique venues like North Sydney Oval.

Off the back of the success of the recent FIFA women’s World Cup which packed out the nation’s biggest stadiums, cricket is again looking to shoot for the stars, starting with the Sydney Smash returning to the SCG for a blockbuster on November 26.

Organisers are hoping to break the all-time attendance record for the WBBL of 15,511 and Healy said it’s up to cricket fans to decide the future direction of the sport.

“I think it’s just got to be really determined by the fans,” Healy said.

“The beauty of us playing at the North Sydneys and the Karen Roltons (oval in Adelaide) is the fans are showing up and it’s got a really unique feeling about the WBBL. People want to come. They can set up their picnic rug on the hill and being their kids.

“We’ve done a great job at creating that family friendly vibe.

“Now it’s an opportunity to test the waters and say, OK, well the women’s game has grown a lot – can we potentially play a few big games at the SCG?

“The Sydney Smash is a great example of the opportunity to do that. It’s going to be determined by the fans showing up.”

A massive crowd packed the ‘G for the Women's T20 World Cup final. Picture: AAP Image/Michael Dodge

One underplayed fact is cricket would have arrived at this point back in 2020 had the Covid pandemic not hit literally a day after more than 85,000 packed into the MCG for the women’s World Cup final at the MCG.

That was cricket’s FIFA moment, but now it’s time to believe again.

“It’s very much the aspiration for the future of the sport,” Perry said.

“To play in our tier one stadiums and importantly have larger crowds coming to those matches.

“The Matildas have very much laid a platform there in terms of those matches becoming peak events on the calendar and it’s really important for the future growth of women’s cricket to have more matches staged at those big venues with large crowds.

“(After Covid) momentum has swung around very quickly again so it’s just up to us to keep building that potential.”

Originally published as WBBL: Alyssa Healy and Ellyse Perry touch on their journeys in cricket and the Sydney Smash