Being Molly Strano: The Aussie whose story illustrates benefits of professionalisation

Two years on from the most recent of seven international caps, it wouldn't be too much to describe Molly Strano as one of the game's leading female domestic cricketers.

The highest wicket-taker in the history of the Women's Big Bash, she has been a victim of her own country's success: nowhere else would 119 wickets in a flagship competition equate to so little further recognition.

But Australia are stocked to the point of embarrassment: when leg-spinner Georgia Wareham went down with a serious injury ahead of the winter's Ashes series and subsequent World Cup, Strano's name hardly entered the conversations around her replacement. Ashleigh Gardner, her competing off-spinner, also happens to be one of the most destructive batters around.

Strano is a student of the game, though, so while she still harbours ambitions of a return to the international fold as a top priority, she also recognises what it means to be representing the WBBL on the other side of the globe, without the world-stage pedigree of many of her peers.

"That domestic players can get picked up and be parachuted into other domestic competitions as well, I guess that is a compliment to the WBBL and how strong a product that is," she tells The Cricketer. "So, hats off to Cricket Australia. It's testament to them that their product is so strong that people like myself can get picked up out of domestic competitions to come abroad."

^{Molly Strano has a terrific domestic record but has had little international recognition [Getty Images]}

Putting her name forward for a wildcard slot was a punt, more so this year than last, with so many potential overseas options already in the country for the Commonwealth Games. So, she describes the phone call from Charlotte Edwards "saying she wanted me to be part of her team" as a major shock and, more pertinently, a realisation of the esteem in which she is held further afield than the tournament that she's made her own.

"You just assume that only Australian eyes are on it," she reflects, "but I guess it's an indication that people are watching from afar and respect the product enough to be able to pick up people like myself.

"You just assume that the shopfront floor is the international stage, and overseas players who get picked up will have had to have played international cricket."

There have been other examples in the recent past to disprove that theory, but they were generally consequences of the complications caused by the pandemic: Issy Wong, Eve Jones and Maia Bouchier were all part of the WBBL, while uncapped Australians Katie Mack and Sammy-Jo Johnson both earned Hundred deals last time around.

"We are incredibly lucky in Australia: as a domestic player, I'm semi-professional and I train most days of the week; I'm incredibly well looked after by Cricket Tasmania, so I consider myself extremely fortunate"

Elyse Villani and Heather Graham, similarly on the edge of the Australian setup, are both also involved in this year's edition. They are representative of the enviable depth – manufactured by major structural changes – that have left all others in Australia's wake.

Since a memorandum of understanding with the Australian Cricketers' Association in 2017, all Australian players – regardless of gender – have received the same base pay rate, and when the WBBL was relaunched as a standalone event in 2019, it was just the next logical step.

Around the same time, a parental leave policy was introduced, with players who become pregnant able to move to a non-playing role until the birth of their child, while being eligible for 12 months of paid parental leave, with contract extensions guaranteed for the following year.

As Strano puts it, the MOU "just shook everything up from a domestic point of view".

She says: "We were able to train rather than training at night and everyone having to work full-time. We were able to adjust our priorities a little bit, where cricket started to be more of a priority for us rather than being just a hobby.

^{Strano will play for Southern Brave in the 2022 Hundred [Getty Images]}

"We could dedicate more time to our craft, which has definitely paid dividends across the country. Even the standard of our WNCL competition has improved tenfold since that new MOU and the changing of the conditions in the domestic landscape. It has helped everyone.

"I think the best result of the improvement of the domestic structure is that when people do get picked for Australia, they're so ready. They're battle-hardened, they've played some really strong domestic cricket, they're readymade for the international circuit. That's one of the great benefits of having a really strong domestic system – when they get called up for international duty, they're ready to go."

English cricket is gradually catching up, with The Hundred a key project in speeding up that process. Alice Capsey, Issy Wong and Lauren Bell have all started their international careers with a confidence that suggests the plan is working. But – after giving their great rivals a three-year head-start – it is difficult to see a changing of the guard anytime soon.

Over the next three weeks, however, Strano will at least get to experience the cream of the crop of the revamped regional structure: her Southern Brave squad features 10 members of the all-conquering Southern Vipers, not to mention their head coach, whose exploits since retiring have earned her a WBBL job for good measure.

Thinking back to the old days before those game-changing interventions "feels like an eternity ago", and there remains a sense of gratitude for what has come since. "Sometimes, I don't know how it's happened," she laughs, attempting to analyse how a "no-fuss off-spinner who doesn't turn it a huge degree" has retained her place at the top of the tree in a competition that at one point or another has hosted all of the leading players in the women's game.

"There was definitely a transitional phase where people were getting accustomed to what cricket looked like and what impact that had on their livelihood," says Strano, looking back on the early days of domestic semi-professionalisation.

^{The Australian is the leading wicket-taker in WBBL history [Getty Images]}

"There were probably instances where people went the other way and probably trained too hard. The dust probably started to settle after two years once people had got their heads around what the new normal looked like for a domestic cricketer. I don't think it was instantaneous.

"Some people even had the luxury of not having to work and just solely dedicating themselves to cricket."

Those thoughts feel particularly important in the game's current context, less than a month on from the international retirements of Deandra Dottin and Lizelle Lee, both of which were accompanied by statements pointing to internal issues. While the Australian juggernaut bounds on and The Hundred kicks into gear, they hardly represent global norm in a game that can ill-afford for the best players to step aside.

"It's heart-breaking to see those names withdraw themselves from the international scene," says Strano. "They are proven performers and entertainers, and they get people through the gates to watch the game.

"We are incredibly lucky in Australia: as a domestic player, I'm semi-professional and I train most days of the week; I'm incredibly well looked after by Cricket Tasmania, so I consider myself extremely fortunate."