Lanning nominates left-field pick as next Australia captain

Australia great Meg Lanning believes young opener Phoebe Litchfield can beat an excellent field of strong candidates and become Alyssa Healy's successor as the next Aussie ODI captain.

It was Healy who took the top job from Lanning when the two-time ICC Women's Cricket World Cup winner retired from international cricket at the end of 2023, and the current Australian ODI captain is edging slowly towards the end of her career, given she is already 35 years old.

Lanning spoke in depth about Australia's recent Cricket World Cup campaign with host Nikhil Uttamchandani on the most recent episode of The ICC Review, and she acknowledged the long list of potential candidates the Aussies have at their disposal, who could take over from Healy in the future.

And while current vice-captain Tahlia McGrath, No.1 ranked all-rounder Ash Gardner and rising star Annabel Sutherland all have strong leadership qualities, Lanning thinks Litchfield can trump them all and become the new captain when Healy decides her time is up.

"I think all of those that you mentioned are certainly in the running," Lanning noted.

"I'd add Phoebe Litchfield into the mix because I think she's got a very level head on her shoulders.

"She's already shown that she's come in and settled herself nicely into the team. And I think she's got a really good temperament too. So I think she's certainly an option."

Litchfield has just 67 international appearances to her name, but has previous experience as captain having been in charge of the Sydney Thunder in Australia's domestic WBBL competition and Lanning believes the 22-year-old could bring a fresh voice to the playing group.

"The good thing with the team is that there are a number of different leaders that could come into that role whenever Healy finishes up," Lanning said.

"I think it's exciting in some ways whenever that transition does happen. It'll bring something different to the team and they'll have their own spin on what they want to do and their own leadership style and I think that could be really cool for the group.

"So I am going to go for her (Litchfield)."

Lanning said she had touched base with a handful of her former teammates since they crashed out of the World Cup in a narrow semi-final loss to India and will catch up further with the likes of pacer Kim Garth and all-rounder Sutherland when the next edition of the WBBL commences this month.

The former Australian skipper said there was a sense of disappointment from the current crop of players she had spoken with, though it would take some time before a full post-mortem would occur.

"I've spoken with a few of the girls and they are obviously very disappointed in the result that that's not what they went over to India to do," Lanning said.

"Sort of understanding that there's a lot of good teams out there now and that they gave it their all and sometimes you don't get the result that you want.

"There's always things you look back and think maybe you can do differently or improve. And I guess when you don't get the result that you want, it probably makes you really look at things that you might need to do differently.

"So I'm sure they'll reflect on that as time goes on. It's not really the time to do it straight after the event. I think it's nice to take a little bit of time, which I'm sure they'll do.

"But they had a very good tournament up until that point and even the semi-final, they played well. Just unfortunately not good enough to get over the line.

"That's the game and we sort of move on and I'm sure they'll get another chance to improve and get better when the next series comes around."

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