Australia Women’s team wicket-keeper batswoman Alyssa Healy on Thursday (February 6) revealed that she had seriously considered retiring from the game a few years ago owing to her dissatisfaction with her cricket.

For the past two years, Healy has made a remarkable turnaround, amassing 1,143 runs at 57.15 including three centuries in Women One Day International cricket, 1008 at 38.76 in the T20I cricket –more than any other Australian player.

The 29-year-old finished Australia's victorious 2018 ICC Women's T20 World Cup campaign as the player of the tournament and was also named the ICC Women's T20I Cricketer of the Year in 2019.

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The wicket-keeper, who is now one of the leading forces in the world of Women’s cricket, also won her first Belinda Clark Award last year and this year also, she is a leading contender to win the back-to-back award for Australia's best female cricketer.

Healy told cricket.com.au, “I remember having this discussion with (national selector) Shawn Flegler... it wasn't necessarily that I felt like I was at a crossroads, but I could have easily walked away from the game and been happy with what I'd done and that I'd contributed to successful teams. I probably would have been 26, 27 at the time so it wasn't so long ago.”

She continued, “I think I was probably just frustrated with my cricket and didn't really know what more I could achieve or what more I could do to better myself or my cricket. You come in at such a young age and you play for a long period of time, so you're not sure where the end is and you feel like you can walk away and do something else with your life while you're still young.

I'm not sure (what convinced me to continue) to be fair, I think Flegs reassured me that I was doing the right thing for the team and I was doing my job and that if I kept doing that then some more opportunities might open up.”

The flamboyant batter credited her team's faith in her and the confidence to bat at the top of the order for her recent success on the field; saying regularly at the top changed her approach towards the game.

She added, “Being given that opportunity to bat at the top of the order in that Ashes series is something that probably changed my game and changed my approach to the game and got me really rejuvenated about my cricket. We wanted to put the opposition on the back foot early and when Motty approached me to do that job for the team in the Ashes series, it was a nod from me.”

Healy signed off by saying, “I'd always been thrown up there for one or two games and mixed around the order, so to get that opportunity, I felt like I was in the right place mentally and maturity-wise to handle that and go out there and make it my own. For me, that was probably the flick of the switch I needed to work a bit harder to make sure I maintained that spot. I'm grateful that that happened. I'm definitely still enjoying my cricket and we'll see where it goes.”

(With cricket.com.au Inputs)