Australia captain Alyssa Healy says there will be no experimentation with their side as they plan to put out their best XI in the upcoming three-match series against New Zealand, who are hoping to bounce back from the nightmare tour of England as both sides prepare for the upcoming T20 World Cup.
Australia’s women have not played an international series since the start of April where they experimented quite a bit with their XI during the tour of Bangladesh including opening with Grace Harris in one game and batting Georgia Wareham at No.3 while Healy herself was listed at No.10.
But on the eve of the opening match of the series in Mackay, which is being used by both sides as a warm-up for the T20 World Cup that begins on October 3 in the UAE, Healy said Australia were planning to field a full-strength side across the three games.
“I think when you look at our side as a whole, we’ve been pretty settled in the T20 game for a long period of time,” Healy said on Wednesday.
“I guess Bangladesh was a good opportunity for us to try a few things that are just in case, what-if scenarios, if some of our key players go down, who can fill those roles. But I think for us now, having some consistency around our XI leading into a World Cup, you still use all 15 players I find in a World Cup to win it, but everyone knows their roles.
“I think we’re in a good place in that regard.
“We’re going to get very different conditions here to what we’re going to get in Dubai so it’s just about us playing our best XI at every opportunity and putting some things in place, knowing that we do have a World Cup at the back of our mind.”
Healy did admit there is some temptation to unleash Australia’s dual pace threat of Darcie Brown and Tayla Vlaeminck given the two have never played together at international level due to their respective injury issues.
Healy said it was an exciting prospect to pair two of the world’s fastest female quicks together in the same attack but it would cause some other selection headaches in regards to the balance of the side.
“Hugely excited to have Darcie and Tay in the same squad at the same time and available to play,” Healy said. “It creates some dilemmas for us, but at the same time, it’s really exciting. And the thought that, whether we play them at the same time as well, having that option is huge for us.
“It’s great to see Darc back. She’s a ball of energy around our group, and I think she’s excited to be here, which makes it even better.”
Healy’s vow that Australia would field their strongest outfit did not perturb New Zealand skipper Sophie Devine but she conceded it would be a great test for her team coming off a tour of England in June and July where they lost eight straight matches including five T20Is. They have lost seven T20Is in a row dating back to a home series against England in March and nine of 10 this year.
“We certainly took plenty of learnings away from that, and we’ve had a number of camps where we’ve addressed, I think, where we went wrong and where we need to look moving forward,” Devine said.
“I think it’s really important for this group that we stay positive, that we know that we’ve worked incredibly hard, not just these last couple of months, but leading into that as well. And just because we didn’t have the results we wanted from that series, that we’re still a good cricket team.”
Devine was keen to unleash a returning pace bowler of her own with Rosemary Mair named in the World Cup squad after missing the England tour with a back injury.
“Rocco’s worked incredibly hard,” Devine said. “She’s obviously had a pretty frustrating injury the last couple of months. But she’s someone that can bring real pace and bounce to the side. I think she’s someone that attacks the stumps, which we really like in terms of not only here in Australia, but also over in UAE as well.
“So we’re really looking forward to seeing what she can do. She obviously hasn’t played too much the last couple of years, so she’s a little bit of an unknown to a few players. So we’ll certainly be looking for her to have an impact, but just to have her in amongst the group, I think she’s someone that absolutely loves cricket. It’s been great to have Rosemary back.”
“Really cool,” Healy said. “I think it’s an amazing opportunity for the women’s game to be recognized in that regard, and I think it’s a great step forward in the game itself.”
Alex Malcolm is an associate editor at ESPNcricinfo