Phoebe Litchfield ready to take WBBL driver’s seat with Sydney Thunder and continue rise to Australian team

“I just remember her strolling into the NSW set-up and hitting balls in the nets and everyone turning around and looking and saying, ‘Who’s that?’,” Healy recalls.

It would soon be a question on many lips. A video of the then 16-year-old in one of her early net sessions for NSW went viral, earning retweets from the ICC and the praise of Mark Waugh.

For the country kid at the heart of it, it was all a bit surreal.

“It was weird,” she says with a laugh to CODE Sports. “I saw the guy in the nets filming and I just thought, ‘Oh they’re filming everyone’.

“Next minute, this video goes on Twitter and Facebook and goes viral and [I’m] getting all these friend requests on Instagram. It was sort of my first experience of people on social media. People were going, ‘Oh my god this is you’. It was pretty wild.”

Wilder things were to come. That same summer, Litchfield achieved what few social media sensations ever do.

She lived up to the hype.

In her debut campaign for the Thunder, Litchfield became the youngest player to ever notch a WBBL half-century. She would later take on India for the Governor-general’s XI, stride out to bat opposite Ricky Ponting in a charity match and then partner the great Brian Lara in the middle. And all this before her 17th birthday.

These feats were attained because of a technique taught to her by her father, Andrew Litchfield, and honed playing among boys and then men for Kinross Wolaroi.

Growing up away from the big smoke in the NSW town of Orange, Litchfield was only able to link up with her NSW teammates during school holidays and match-days. But even back then, long before the viral clip, she had cricket onlookers talking when she was promoted to the senior men’s competition before she could get her L plates.

“They were like, ‘Who is this girl, what is she doing here?’ so they’d slow down or bowl me a half-tracker and I’d hit it to the boundary,” she recalls. “Then they’d speed up. By a couple of games they knew who I was. It’s a small town, so everyone knows each other.

“They were awesome to me and always kind. I was really exposed to high level cricket at a young age, which I think boosted me in the right direction.”

These days, Litchfield has made the move to Sydney where she is balancing university studies for a communications degree with her cricket career. The shift appears to be working: Litchfield has just notched her first List A century for NSW in the WNCL.

“You get a duck and you go back and they’re (uni friends) just normal people, they don’t really watch cricket. It’s nice to have friends outside the cricketing world to keep the balance socially,” she says.

“At times I’d love a one-on-one hit for an hour with dad but the things I’ve learnt down here and having specialist coaches is really beneficial, so I’m loving it.”

Still only 19, Litchfield is primed for a big season with the Sydney Thunder.

Named the WBBL’s ‘Young Gun’ of the year last summer, she enters the world’s premier women’s T20 tournament in strong form after her WNCL innings against a potent WA attack.

“It’s given me probably more self-belief than anything that I can play at this level,” she says.

Could an international call up be next? Spots in Australia’s all-conquering women’s team remain at a premium, but with Rachael Hayne retired and Meg Lanning on an indefinite break from the game, this season looms as her biggest opportunity yet to take the next step.

“I wouldn’t want to put any pressure on Phoebe because she has obviously come off a really great weekend and she’s only a young cricketer,” Healy says. “She’s incredibly talented and obviously that left-handed option is something that in the Aussie side we really look to in the middle-order. Naturally there are those questions.

“Yeah, sure, I think I could see Phoebe playing for Australia for a long period of time.”