Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
Revealing details about our lives is done with the touch of a button, anything from sending a picture of what you’re having for dinner to a WhatsApp group, to a celebrity documenting their Caribbean holiday on Instagram.
Social media has made professional sportsmen and women more accessible than ever, bringing them closer to the fans who idolise them and ultimately pay their wages.
It feels valuable to have the opportunity to learn about the person behind the athlete. What makes them tick, what they do away from sport and the real-life experiences that have shaped them as human beings seem more interesting than how well they are hitting the ball in the nets or which end they prefer to bowl at.
Which brings us to Meg Lanning, who has managed to piece together a career as perhaps the best batter to ever play women’s cricket while barely revealing anything about herself.
Lanning is captain of an Australia side that is probably the strongest international sports team, male or female, on the planet. By the time the 30-year-old finishes her career, she is likely to have numbers matched by no other woman. Her cut shot is so precise, it could take the head off a dandelion from 100 yards.
And yet, even those who have played in the same team as Lanning admit to knowing little about her. The biggest revelation from a near-forensic trawl of the internet is that she doesn’t like eating coriander.
Watching Lanning in action paints a picture of an ice-cold winning machine. Automatic, unflappable and almost emotionless.
A conversation with her reveals the opposite. Lanning is likeable and modest, open enough to admit she is a “guarded” person who finds captaincy much more stressful than she makes it look.
She hates one nickname – ‘The Megastar’ – and laughs at another: ‘Serious Sally’.
“I don’t tend to open too much,” she says. “I’ve got a small circle of friends who I really trust and I go along with them rather than worrying too much about what’s happening on the outside.”
The fourth of five children, Lanning’s early cricket was with younger sister Anna, herself a good enough batter to play for Melbourne Stars. A narrow concrete path was their pitch, with a wall on one side and windows on the other encouraging them to play straight.
Lanning’s sporting ambition was actually to play hockey for Australia at the Olympics, with cricket only taking over around the age of 17. She made her first international hundred at 18 and was captain at 21, the youngest person to do either for an Australian cricket team.
Even now, in her ninth year as skipper and undisputed leader of a team that dominates women’s cricket, Lanning has to battle with her reserved nature.
“The biggest challenge that I have found, even today, is building relationships with everyone in the team and trying to understand how to best get the most out of people,” she says.
“It doesn’t come naturally to me.”
With an eye on life away from cricket, Lanning has completed a degree in health and exercise science. Because of the commitments of her day job, a three-year course took eight to finish.
In that time, Australia have not lost any of the three Ashes series in which Lanning has been in charge (she missed one through injury), and won three of the four T20 World Cups.
