Australian women’s captain Meg Lanning admits to nerves as she returns to cricket after a long layoff

AFTER a long injury layoff, Australian women’s cricket captain Meg Lanning is about to return to the field, but she has no plans to ease her way back into the game.

Australian women’s cricket captain Meg Lanning had to get used to watching the game from the sidelines.

FOR the first time in her career, Meg Lanning felt like an outsider.

As her team took to Allan Border Field for the first match of the Ashes in October, the youngest ever cricketer to captain her country was stuck on the sidelines, part-way through a frustrating recovery after shoulder surgery.

“I was finding it quite awkward being on the outer a little bit, I’m used to being in control of things,” Lanning said.

“I had to take a step back and that was very difficult, seeing Rach take over, it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

“Sometimes I found myself (thinking), ‘I shouldn’t be here, I’m in the way.’

“(I thought) everyone’s like, ‘what is she doing here?’ A lot of that was in my head, because everyone else was like, ‘It’s great to have you around’, but I just felt in the way, in my own team.

Australian women’s cricket captain Meg Lanning had to get used to watching the game from the sidelines.

“I found I had to talk to people about that, otherwise I would have gone absolutely nuts.”

This was the first injury in a distinguished career that has produced more than 5000 runs for Australia in 136 games.

Lanning went through stages; the initial annoyance of not being able to sleep after the surgery in August, the slow return to running (“I used to hate running, now I love it”) and then batting and of course, the art of learning to watch.

“I learnt that sometimes sharing some stuff and opening yourself up can make things a little bit easier, but it took me a while to work that out,” she said.

Lanning became a “full-time trainer” and nearing her 26th birthday, is the fittest she has been.

On Saturday she flies to India and will lead Australia against the home nation and also England.

The matches will be shown in Australia on Fox Sports and Lanning admits she’s nervous about her return to the crease.

“I’ve got no idea how this tour is going to pan out just because I haven’t played in so long,” Lanning told the Herald Sun.

Meg Lanning in T20 action for Australia.

“I’m not going over there for it to be my first tour back and to ‘get back into it’. I want to go out there and score as many runs as I can.”

Lanning’s team has a fresh look. Vice-captain Alex Blackwell has retired and Rachael Haynes, the woman who successfully stood in for Lanning during the Ashes, is her new deputy.

Victorian rising star Sophie Molineux comes into the touring squad for the first time.

Lanning is different too. She feels part of things again and the layoff has given her a new perspective.

“Looking back now, I never really stopped to consider maybe how it was if you weren’t playing, or if you weren’t in the squad,” she said.

“I feel like I’m better equipped now to help those players, or at least make them feel like they’re really important to the group, because you can easily be forgotten, which I didn’t have a good perspective on before.

“In the past I was so caught up in what I was doing, what the team was doing, that you sort of forget that not everyone is going along swimmingly.”