Alyssa Healy’s World Cup winning show puts a smile on all Aussies’ faces, none more than her own
As a home World Cup Australia were expected to breeze through threw up trials and challenges, the team turned to Hollywood for help in dealing with them. Alyssa Healy’s final show could barely have been scripted better.
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Australia harnessed the power of the ‘Black Panther’ during their T20 World Cup campaign to help them absorb all the pressure and expectation and walk away as champions.
Player of the final, Alyssa Healy, revealed she came up with the analogy of the Marvel superhero whose special suit absorbs energy, to inspire the Aussies to weather the storm of the past two weeks in the form of injuries, and form slumps and even rain.
“For every big series, we have a refocus about what’s important to our group,” said Healy.
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“We knew that every single opposition was going to come really hard at us in every game, it was about how we could absorb that pressure and throw it back in their face, and me being the nerdy person in the team, I referred to the Black Panther in the movie where his suit absorbs the energy from his opponents and when he’s ready, he forces it back upon them.”
In the hours before taking to the biggest stage of her career, Healy had posted a message to her 50,000 Twitter followers.
“Hope every single person enjoys today. This is for everyone!!”
During the national anthem at the MCG her smile was as broad as the bat she then wielded to deliver a performance which everyone will be able to enjoy forever.
From a first ball full toss swatted for four until the final heave down the ground which ended an innings of pure joy, 75 off just 39 balls, Healy was the ultimate World Cup entertainer.
"Thanks to the 86,000 people that came out tonight, it was something incredibly special."
— T20 World Cup (@T20WorldCup) March 8, 2020
A message from Alyssa Healy to the fans after Australia's #T20WorldCup triumph ðŸ—£ï¸ pic.twitter.com/03GxSg3Z29
She even provided the moment of the match with a mis-hit. Already on nine, Healy was dropped on the fifth ball of the innings by Shafali Verma at cover.
The shelled catch, by the youngest player, male or female, to ever to play in a World Cup final, was as big as any of five Healy’s sixes.
The woman they call “Midge” entered the tournament with just 15 runs in five games. She’s as vulnerable early as she can be dangerous.
But there were no alarm bells, at least not publicly.
“I wasn’t worried one bit,” Healy said after accepting the player of the match award for her match-winning knock.
“It’s the nature of the way I play my game. I go out and take the game on. I just need a little bit of luck to go my way, I felt like that happened in the first game against India and I just rode the wave.”
It was more of a tsunami at the MCG.
In the 2015 World Cup final Mitchell Starc, Healy’s husband, elicited an MCG roar those who were there say was the loudest they had ever heard, when he rocked New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum’s middle stump in the opening over.
With her husband watching on, after making the mad dash from South Africa, Healy bettered that.
She smashed 14 runs, including three fours, off the first six balls from a shell-shocked Deepti Sharma to set the game on a course that the Indians could not escape.
Healy only escalated from there. She had 28 runs off 14 balls, with six fours. Then 48 runs off 28. She brought up her 50 with a four. It came off 30 balls.
Healy scored the three fastest half-centuries of the tournament and finished the World Cup with more runs than everyone other than her opening partner, Beth Mooney, after flaying all the Indian bowlers in equal parts.
There were heart in mouth moments with two of her five maximums sailing so close to fielder’s fingers, lunging hopefully on the boundary, they would have felt the ball’s jet stream.
Healy was hitting the ball so hard one smash towards the old Bay 13 at the MCG went 83m. No-one in the tournament hit one that far.
She hit back-to-back sixes in the eighth over, then three in a row three overs later in the sort of “get a load of this” effort Healy had forecast with her mid-morning tweet.
“I never thought I would enjoy anything like that in my career,” Healy said after walking off, holed out going down the ground, as if she’d go any other way.
“When so many Australians have come out to support us we might as well put on a good show.”
“You cannot wipe the smile off my face. I never thought we would get an opportunity like that in my whole career.
“It was something really special.”