Australian cricket champion, Alyssa Healy (2008) has been a wicketkeeper, batter and bowler for Cricket NSW for 16 years and Cricket Australia for 14 years. She is also part way through a Bachelor’s degree in Marine Biology and Biological Oceanography at the University of Technology.

Alyssa attended MLC School from Year 6 in 2002 to the end of Year 9 in 2005 when she transferred to Barker College for her final three years of schooling. Alyssa says “Both schools have their own individual place in my heart for different reasons. I always tell everyone that I went to both.”

At the end of Alyssa’s first year at MLC School tragedy struck when her older sister Kareen (then in Year 9 at MLC School) died after an anaphylactic reaction led to cardiac arrest. After Alyssa left MLC School, she returned for many years to present the Speech Night Award in her sister’s honour. The Kareen Healy Memorial All-Rounder Sports Award is awarded to someone who has a positive influence on the team and displays respect for the sport.

Teams are also incredibly important to Alyssa. In a 2020 interview for the Sportette podcast, Alyssa said that at School she’d “played every sport under the sun … One thing that was consistent in all the sports I played, they were all team sports. I only gave tennis about six weeks of my life and hated it. I did diving for about four weeks, hated that too. I couldn’t handle the pressure on my own, I needed my teammates around me.”

At MLC School Alyssa participated in a number of team sports and achieved remarkable success. In 2003 while in Year 7, Alyssa took out the prestigious VM Medway Award for Outstanding Sportsgirl of the Year. The award recognises a student who displays exceptional commitment, leadership and talent in a CIS sport. Alyssa had represented CIS in Hockey, Softball and Cricket achieving Red Awards for Hockey and Softball and a Red Bar for Cricket.

Alyssa comes from an illustrious cricket family: her father, Greg, was a member of the Queensland squad, as was her Uncle Ken. Uncle Ian was Australia’s Test wicketkeeper from the late 1980s until 1999 and was the world record holder for the most Test dismissals.

Despite the family heritage, and watching her uncle represent Australia, she said that she did not become interested in cricket until she moved from Queensland to Sydney as a child and was coaxed into taking up the sport by a friend.

After taking up cricket, Alyssa rapidly progressed through representative ranks in NSW and joined the NSW team in 2007. For much of her first two seasons she was not the wicketkeeper and so was able to develop her top-order batting skills.

In 2009, Alyssa joined the national team and made her international debut in February 2010, aged 19, at the Rose Bowl Series against New Zealand. A few months later she played every match in the International Cricket Council (ICC) Women’s World Twenty20 in the West Indies and helped Australia take home the title. In January 2011, Alyssa made her Test debut.

Alyssa’s career achievements stand shoulder to shoulder with any modern cricketer, male or female. Over the years Alyssa has been recognised multiple times, including:

• 2018: Named ICC T20 Player of the Year after her outstanding performance that drove her nation to a fourth ICC World T20 title.
• 2019: Awarded the Belinda Clark Award (presented to the most outstanding Australian female cricketer of the season) at the Australian Cricket Awards. That year she was also named the ICC WT20 Player of the Tournament.
• 2020: Alyssa was named Player of the Match in Australia’s T20 World Cup Final victory over India at the MCG.
• 2022: Alyssa was named player of the match after Australia won the 2022 Cricket World Cup final in Christchurch. She made 170 (off 138), the highest score ever by a person (woman or man) in a World Cup final. This was also the first time any cricketer had recorded hundreds in both semi and final of a World Cup.

Later the same year, she was appointed Australia vice-captain and then became the seventh woman to captain Australia in a T20I on the tour of India.

In 2016, Alyssa married fast bowler Mitchell Starc. They are only the third married couple to play Test cricket, after the English couple the Prideauxs (Roger and Ruth), in the 1950s to 1960, and the Sri Lankan de Alwis couple (Guy and Rasanjali), in the 1980s and 1990s.