{"id":3636,"date":"2025-09-24T11:01:58","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T03:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/?p=3636"},"modified":"2025-09-24T11:02:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T03:02:00","slug":"from-couch-to-crease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/from-couch-to-crease\/","title":{"rendered":"From couch to crease"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When Australian spinner Jess Jonassen removed Anya Shrubsole to hand her country a seventh ICC Women&#8217;s Cricket World Cup title in 2022, a delighted Georgia Voll celebrated from her sofa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Little did the then 18-year-old know that just three years later she would be a major part of her country&#8217;s quest to become the first team to defend the 50-over global title since 1988.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now 22, the Queensland native&#8217;s performances, including her maiden ODI hundred in just her second senior international match against India, have thrust her name firmly into the spotlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And despite entering a dressing room brimming with legends of the game, Voll feels at home in Shelley Nitschke&#8217;s squad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s quite funny, I&#8217;ve spoken to a couple of the girls who were at the World Cup in New Zealand, and it feels like ages ago,&#8221; recalls Voll, who smashed 81 from 68 balls in her most recent outing as part of Australia&#8217;s 43-run over India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I remember sitting on the couch watching, never thinking I&#8217;d be at the next one. I didn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Looking from the outside in, [the Australian squad is] an intimidating group because of how successful they&#8217;ve been for so long. Coming into it, you&#8217;re not really sure if you deserve to be there, to be honest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;[But] the games [I&#8217;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&#8217;s [Alyssa Healy] shoes was a huge task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Having hit the ground running in ODIs, Voll was handed her T20I debut in this year&#8217;s Ashes series with England after Healy went down with a foot injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A Test bow soon followed as Voll helped Australia to an historic 16-0 whitewash across the multi-formatted series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since then, Voll, who has plied her trade back home for Women&#8217;s Big Bash side Sydney Thunder since 2024, has featured in subsequent series against New Zealand and India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was only then that she thought she was in with a shot of featuring at her first major tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Going through the next couple of series, I started thinking, &#8216;maybe this could happen, maybe I could play a one-day World Cup in India&#8217;. Not many people get to do that, so it&#8217;s pretty special to be here now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t think about it too much. I was just focused on playing really good domestic cricket. Things started to fall in line last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;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&#8217;t want to focus too much on it.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since breaking through at international level, Voll has immersed herself amongst the squad&#8217;s more experienced players in order to soak up as much advice as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She added: &#8220;They tell me to keep doing what I&#8217;ve been doing. When you step up to the next level, there&#8217;s this expectation that you need to do things a certain way, but the one thing I&#8217;ve learned is to just be myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;What I&#8217;ve done so far is enough to get me here, so I&#8217;m going to continue backing that and trusting the training I&#8217;ve done to get me into this position.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Australian spinner Jess Jonassen removed Anya Shrubsole to hand her country a seventh ICC Women&#8217;s Cricket World<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[69],"class_list":["post-3636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsbeat","tag-cricket"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Georgia-Voll.jpg",1028,1296,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Georgia-Voll-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Georgia-Voll-238x300.jpg",238,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Georgia-Voll-768x968.jpg",640,807,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Georgia-Voll-812x1024.jpg",640,807,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Georgia-Voll.jpg",1028,1296,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Georgia-Voll.jpg",1028,1296,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Georgia-Voll-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Georgia-Voll-590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/category\/newsbeat\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Newsbeat<\/a>","tag_info":"Newsbeat","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Georgia-Voll.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3638,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3636\/revisions\/3638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}