She’s King of the MCG, but this leggie may wait in the bullpen at the World Cup

6 days ago 5

Alana King loves baseball.

While Shane Warne is her homegrown hero, and the avatar for her own prodigious leg-spin gifts, King also holds sporting candles for the likes of Mookie Betts and Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Alana King is a weapon with the ball for the Australian side.

In the case of ace pitcher Kershaw, that is just as well for King. A selection squeeze in Australia’s one-day international World Cup squad means she may need to call upon a baseball “bullpen” mindset for the tournament that begins against New Zealand in Indore on Wednesday.

With left-arm spinner Sophie Molineux back from injury, and fellow leg-spinner Georgia Wareham admired within the set-up for her batting ability, King’s prolific wicket-taking over the past three years may not be enough to guarantee her place. The Australians are expecting flat wickets in India so may want to extend their batting order, whereas in Sri Lanka later in the tournament, those pitches may spin more.

If King not being guaranteed of a place in the side sounds harsh, it’s another reminder of the incredible depth in the Australian women’s team, whose members are highly motivated to retain the ODI cup won in New Zealand in 2022 after stumbling to early elimination from the T20 tournament last year in Dubai.

Back then, the 29-year-old King was also left out, but she used her baseball mindset to avoid dwelling too much on the snub, and went on to play perhaps the match of her life in the pink-ball women’s Ashes Test at the MCG in March.

“I’ve been in the situation where I’ve been a little bit out of the T20 squad in recent times, so I just know that, if called upon, I’ve done all the work in the nets, as much as you can, and you try to take every opportunity you can,” King told this masthead.

“Even when I’m in the team, when the captain throws you the ball, you want to take that opportunity and make an impact. It doesn’t necessarily have to be wickets, wickets are great, but if you’re playing a defensive role and tying up an end, I’m happy to do that.

“Just watching baseball and the way they can deceive batters at the plate with their sliders and curveballs, it’s the kind of mentality I try to have as a spinner. You’re trying to deceive the batter in the air and get them to come forward, or go back to a full ball.”

Those moments abounded at the MCG, when King’s match figures of 9-98 helped her win the player of the series award as Australia took all 16 points against a sorry England touring team.

Chief among them was a delectable leg-break that drifted into Sophie Dunkley before snapping back to take off stump – not the first time King had conjured something akin to Warne’s “ball from hell” to defeat Mike Gatting.

King produced this stunning delivery to dismiss Sophia Dunkley.

“I think it was day three when I got to bowl for a whole session and then came back after the dinner break and kept bowling,” King said. “That’s when it was realised we don’t get to do that often, so I was embracing every over I could bowl, and trying to keep toiling away at batters.

“Working with my partner-in-crime at the other end, Ash [Gardner], we just kept bowling and I really enjoyed those long spells. Test cricket is a lot of fun, and doing it at the MCG, my spiritual home in front of the Shane Warne Stand – yeah it was very special.”

Special too, because King had to leave Victoria to get the opportunity to be picked for Australia. A move to Western Australia in 2020 reaped greater opportunities and ultimately a baggy green, where in the east she had been stuck behind the likes of Wareham and many others.

“I probably wouldn’t be sitting here representing Australia if I didn’t make that move back in 2020, to uproot my life, leave family and friends behind and have a second crack at it,” King said. “All I wanted to do was bowl a bit more, and WA presented a great opportunity for me.

“I never saw myself moving states. [There were] some hard conversations, not just with my family but with my manager as well, to see if this was the right thing to do, and we just came to the decision to say, ‘Let’s take it’, because you can always come back. But opportunities like this aren’t going to be there forever.

“Let’s put all our eggs in this basket, give it a crack and just see what happens. I haven’t looked back since moving. WA is home now, I owe a lot to them for the opportunities they’ve given me. I get called the adopted daughter in WA, and I’m happy to be so because, without them, I don’t think I’d be here.”

India, of course, is another home away from home for King as the land of her parents. She is excited by the prospect of bowling in big games in a country where spin bowling has always been very much to the fore. Winning a World Cup on Indian soil is something that Warne, among others, never did.

“I’m not going to look too much into the hype around games in India, turning pitches and stuff,” King said. “I don’t want to go into any game thinking, ‘Oh it’s going to spin big, I’ll be sweet here’.

“I still have to do my craft and focus on what I do well, and that’s spinning the ball hard and trying to be as consistent as I can and be a really attacking bowler.”

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