Ian Healy's niece and Mitchell Starc's girlfriend Alyssa, whose father Greg also played for Queensland, is part of Oz women's squad for ICC World Cup
Cricket is life for Australia’s Alyssa Healy. She grew up watching her dad Greg (who played for Queensland) and uncle Ian (former Australia Test wicketkeeper) play cricket and now she has Aussie pacer Mitchell Starc as her boyfriend.
Mitch & I: Australia woman cricketer Alyssa Healy (right) with boyfriend Mitchell Starc at the Cricket Australia Christmas Day lunch in Melbourne recently. Pic/Getty Images
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But the batswoman and wicketkeeper revealed that she prefers not to talk about cricket with Mitch. “I was seven when I started playing cricket. Being a wicketkeeper-batswoman, Ian uncle is always there to offer help. Now I have my boyfriend who is a cricketer. But I prefer not to talk about cricket at home,” said the 22-year-old on the sidelines of a warm-up match at the MIG ground yesterday. The Australian women defeated West Indies by 135 runs in the match.
Alyssa said though Australia are underdogs in the tournament, they could spring a surprise.
“With England basking in the limelight, we prefer to be known as the underdogs. If we play our best cricket, we can reach the final and would love to play against England. I just hope that like we defeated England and won the Ashes in 2011, we could win the World Cup here,” said the Marine Biology student.
The Queensland-born cricketer has achieved more success in the Twenty20 format compared to one-day internationals. She has scored 388 runs in 28 matches in T20s and made 36 runs in nine ODIs played so far. “I just hope to score some runs in the World Cup in India,” said Alyssa whose all-time favourite cricketer is former Aussie captain Ricky Ponting. Having visited Mumbai earlier, she hopes to explore more this time around. “I just love the vibrancy of this city.
It’s just amazing to see thousands of people walking down the city lanes at any given point of time. But nothing can beat the early morning view of the Gateway of India from my hotel room’s balcony. This place is a culinary delight and I love the paneer tikka here.
“I just can’t wait to go to Cuttack where we play our first match against Pakistan on February 1,” she signed off.u00a0
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