Couch to Crease

When Australian spinner Jess Jonassen removed Anya Shrubsole to hand her country a seventh ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup title in 2022, a delighted Georgia Voll celebrated from her sofa.

Little did the then 18-year-old know that just three years later she would be a major part of her country’s quest to become the first team to defend the 50-over global title since 1988.

Now 22, the Queensland native’s performances, including her maiden ODI hundred in just her second senior international match against India, have thrust her name firmly into the spotlight.

And despite entering a dressing room brimming with legends of the game, Voll feels at home in Shelley Nitschke’s squad.

“It’s quite funny, I’ve spoken to a couple of the girls who were at the World Cup in New Zealand, and it feels like ages ago,” recalls Voll, who smashed 81 from 68 balls in her most recent outing as part of Australia’s 43-run over India.

“I remember sitting on the couch watching, never thinking I’d be at the next one. I didn’t even realise it was every four years, that goes to show how much attention I was paying back then. But to be part of it now is really special.

“Looking from the outside in, [the Australian squad is] an intimidating group because of how successful they’ve been for so long. Coming into it, you’re not really sure if you deserve to be there, to be honest.

“[But] the games [I’ve played have] went quite well for me personally, probably better than expected. The goal was not to change anything. I was picked for a reason, to do a job, and filling Midge’s [Alyssa Healy] shoes was a huge task.

“But I just wanted to back myself and play the way I had been playing to get to that point. I was pretty lucky that it worked out and that I was able to contribute to the team.”

Having hit the ground running in ODIs, Voll was handed her T20I debut in this year’s Ashes series with England after Healy went down with a foot injury.

A Test bow soon followed as Voll helped Australia to an historic 16-0 whitewash across the multi-formatted series.

Since then, Voll, who has plied her trade back home for Women’s Big Bash side Sydney Thunder since 2024, has featured in subsequent series against New Zealand and India.

It was only then that she thought she was in with a shot of featuring at her first major tournament.

“Going through the next couple of series, I started thinking, ‘maybe this could happen, maybe I could play a one-day World Cup in India’. Not many people get to do that, so it’s pretty special to be here now.

“I didn’t think about it too much. I was just focused on playing really good domestic cricket. Things started to fall in line last year.

“I made the move to Sydney Thunder, which gave me the opportunity to open, and I just kept aiming to dominate domestic cricket without fixating too much on playing for Australia. Of course, that was always a goal, but I didn’t want to focus too much on it.”

Since breaking through at international level, Voll has immersed herself amongst the squad’s more experienced players in order to soak up as much advice as possible.

Although Voll is eager to benefit from the wealth of knowledge around her, she is also keen to remain true to the ethos that has taken her to this point.

She added: “They tell me to keep doing what I’ve been doing. When you step up to the next level, there’s this expectation that you need to do things a certain way, but the one thing I’ve learned is to just be myself.

“What I’ve done so far is enough to get me here, so I’m going to continue backing that and trusting the training I’ve done to get me into this position.”