LISA STHALEKAR: Will injury-plagued Alyssa Healy get a fairytale ending?

You know what time of year it is based on Alyssa Healy’s injury status.

That’s right, it is WBBL time, as she once again misses matches for Sydney Sixers.

Even on her podcast, Willow Talk, she joked “it’s WBBL time so it’s not unlike me to have some sort of injury,” as she sported her right thumb in a splinter. We are still unsure the extent of the injury she sustained during Australia’s loss in the semifinal against India during the recent World Cup.

It is now the third year in a row Healy has missed matches for the Sixers, as she battles frequent injuries in her twilight of her career.

The 35-year-old confirmed after the semifinal loss that she won’t be around for the next 50-over World Cup. Even Megan Schutt who is only 32 indicated it will also be her last, with both making their debut in World Cups in India in 2013. Yet both are still available in the other two formats, T20 and Test cricket.

The game has changed so much since I retired in 2013 at the age of 34. Very few players in the Australian side ever went past 35 as the demands of playing competitive cricket and juggling a full-time career became too hard.

Plus once you retired from one format, it was all formats, even State cricket, with no domestic leagues even thought of back then.

For this generation cricket is their full-time job and Healy and Schutt have gone through the transition of being amateur, semi-professional and, now, fully professional.

I would imagine it’s a lot harder to say goodbye to that kind of life and the coin, knowing that a normal life is on the other side. Plus in back of every athlete’s mind is the hope and desire that you get to call your time at the highest level, the way you want to.

With no money in the game around the time of my retirement, players marked certain events or tours to call time.

For most Australian players it was normally an away Ashes campaign, with Belinda Clark, Lisa Keightley, Julia Price and Karen Rolton taking that route. Cathryn Fitzpatrick was always an outlier, who retired at 39 during a women’s quadrangle series (top four nations).

The question on the Australian skippers’ mind is will she get that fairytale ending? No doubt lifting the World Cup was part of the plan, and that didn’t transpire.

Healy, has indicated that she will look to play out the International season for Australia. India, the World Cup Champions land on our shores in mid-February for a series that will include three T20’s, three ODIs, and climax with a day/night Test at the WACA Ground (all matches will be shown live and free on Channel 7 and 7Plus).

That series is shaping up to be the perfect redemption. However will the selectors pick Healy and Schutt in the ODI’s? Is victory more important then rebuilding?

A win at WACA would be special. Could that be the perfect way to bow out? The issue for players is that big tour or ICC events come thick and fast, it may be tempting to travel to the West Indies to play an historic Test match and then on to England for T20 World Cup in June/July.

It’s a tough place to be. For me I had marked 2013 World Cup in India, the place I was born, with the wish for us to gain back the World Cup. Thankfully everything fell into place, with some people shocked that I retired too soon. I was always conscious that I wanted to go out on top.

I remember in the mid 2010s the three big names of Healy, (Meg) Lanning and (Ellyse) Perry all discussed that they would finish their career during the T20 World Cup in Australia 2020. At the time I wasn’t sure if they were kidding or being serious, though all three did come into State cricket and the national set-up as teenagers. It is a long time in a system that monitors your every move.

If they had retired (maybe not Perry as she missed playing in the final due to injury) then, it would have been the perfect way to bow out — in front of 86,000 plus dancing on the stage with medals around their neck with Katy Perry. Now that would have been a fairytale ending.

As it turned out, Lanning quit prematurely in the green and gold at the age of 31. She later admitted on the The Howie Games podcast that an unhealthily imbalance between obsessive exercise and not eating enough meant that she couldn’t perform at the highest level.

Perry hasn’t indicated what her intentions are in terms of International cricket. Though while she is still contributing, like she did over the weekend against Perth Scorchers, with 2/12 and 47* (37) I can’t imagine her calling her time on the game anytime soon.

Time will tell for the Australian skipper, though her first job on the horizon is get back and play in the magenta as the Sixers try to emulate the success they once had at the start of the WBBL.