In the summer of 2006, 16-year-old Alyssa Healy was selected as wicketkeeper for the Barker College First XI – the first girl to play in the NSW Combined Associated Schools cricket competition.

Rallying to preserve the past, a Barker old boy launched an email campaign against her inclusion as “disgraceful”. But the Herald’s Stay In Touch columnist David Dale reported the college’s sports master, Matthew Macoustra, was fully supportive of the niece of a former Australian wicketkeeper, saying she had earned her place in the team. The master also took a brave stand against a “spineless, gutless person” that spoke eloquently about those who preferred the past to the future.

Alyssa Healy on Tuesday, the day she announced her retirement. Credit: Kate Geraghty

And what a future Healy’s has proved to be.

Just four years after her Barker debut, Healy began a truly stellar international career that coincided with a new era in........

© The Sydney Morning Herald