Slights & sliding doors: The will of Georgia Redmayne

On a grey, rainy January day at Allan Border Field in Brisbane, Australia's world champion ODI outfit is rolling a bright new talent off its endless production line.

Phoebe Litchfield, the country New South Wales teenager with the seemingly permanent spring in her step, is bouncing around the outfield as she warms up ahead of her international debut.

Barely 100 metres away, behind the Stuart Law Stand and far away from the cameras, Georgia Redmayne steers her knee scooter down a gently sloping concrete ramp towards the National Cricket Centre.

For the uncapped Redmayne, who in her perfect world would have been standing in Litchfield's shoes, the sudden buzz around the place is little more than a minor inconvenience from her current routine. Around seven weeks after surgery for a ruptured left Achilles tendon, she has been seeing Queensland Cricket physio Elyse Potter for regular updates. Still she has to endure at least one more week of zero weight bearing on her injured leg. The lack of progress is bothering her.

"She's very impatient," laughs Potter, "because she's desperate to get back."

 

Back inside the boundary, Litchfield grins broadly as she is presented with her Australia cap by Beth Mooney. The afternoon arrives and the 19-year-old opener strokes and dances her way to an unbeaten 78. Australia cruise to an eight-wicket win, with player-of-the-match Litchfield taking a convincing first step on a path she seems preordained to tread.

Redmayne meanwhile, has long since wheeled back up the ramp, climbed carefully into her car, and driven the five minutes to her home in Hamilton.

A month later, she thinks back to that day. 

"I feel like there's been a few 'What if?' moments since I've been injured," she says. "I see Alyssa Healy get injured, and I'm like, 'Well that's never happened'. How about the timing? Before this season, I've never missed a single match because of injury in my whole career.

"But it's one of those things that happens, isn't it? Even if I was fit … I don't know where I would have been in the pecking order.

"And it's good to see Phoebe go out and take her opportunity. I'm never really surprised when people go in and do well in Aussie colours – I feel like the Big Bash prepares you to play at that level. We do have such a strong depth of talent. Whoever gets the lucky chance, I'd back them to do pretty well."

Which, if we're dealing in binaries, makes Redmayne unlucky. Under different circumstances, it could have been her.

"It could have," she says. "But would it have been? Who knows? We'll never find out."

* * *

Georgia Redmayne purchases a bottle of water from the appropriately named Keepers Café. Back at Allan Border Field, her home away from home for the past four years, she limps over to a round, black table that is hidden from the harsh Brisbane sun by a large umbrella. She pulls out a chair and sits, then begins revisiting the four most challenging months of her cricket career.

Redmayne was exhausted, emotional, and still in her black Heat playing pants when she arrived home from Adelaide on the final Friday of last November. Everything that could have gone wrong the previous evening had; on top of her season-ending injury, which had occurred quite innocuously just a split-second after taking a catch, the Heat went down in the final over of their WBBL semi-final. Then when she finally returned to the team hotel at 2.30am after a reflective few hours in the changerooms with her teammates, her swipe card refused to open the door to her room.

"Luckily our physio had a two-bedroom place to herself," she says, "so I bunked in there, still in my playing kit."

Her left leg propped up on a couple of pillows, Redmayne drifted off with the assistance of some painkillers. The next morning she was woken by a phone call, telling her she had 30 minutes to be at the airport, so she could fly back to Brisbane in time for an MRI scan that afternoon. With her new crutches already causing pain in her armpits, and the adrenaline having long worn off, she hobbled to reception, acquired a replacement swipe card, threw some essentials in a backpack, and left the building.

"It was chaotic," she says. "I didn't even have time to pack my bags."

 

The previous night there had been a tearful conversation with her mum, Robyn. Georgia is the youngest of three. Both her brother and sister live in Sydney, which means they don't share her luxury of being able to quickly escape back to their hometown of Alstonville in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. Their parents, Robyn and Richard, have lived in the same house for 35 years. Georgia still refers to it as "home"; for her it is a happy place, and that is to do with both her history there and the people who still inhabit it.

They were there that night in Adelaide, watching as she stumbled behind the stumps, and then fell to the ground. They were powerless as she was assisted from the field.

Much later, it wasn't the physical pain that finally brought Redmayne to tears, but the realisation of just how much cricket she was going to miss. Robyn knew exactly what that meant to her daughter.

"To see her so upset," she says, "that was shattering to me."

At the top of Redmayne's list of disappointments was the back half of the WNCL season in which – with Jonassen on national duties – she was set to lead the Fire again for the first time since their 2021 final win in Melbourne. It compounded another loss that might have hit her harder than she had initially realised.

"After missing out on the India (tour) selection (a week earlier), I was like, 'At least I'll get to go back into the WNCL and lead that team again'," Redmayne says. "I was really looking forward to doing that, so to miss out on that was tough."

Her parents flew to the Gold Coast the next day but rather than driving south to Alstonville, her mum headed to Georgia's place. There she stayed for the next six weeks.

"Mums do these things," Robyn shrugs. "Someone needed to be there because she had to have ice regularly … and you can only order so much food in by yourself, and it was a bit hard on crutches to cook. But she was amazing. I was happy to help her."

Redmayne went in for surgery the following Tuesday. The initial weeks thereafter were mainly spent on the couch, where occasionally she would let her guard down to Robyn, and vent about the opportunities she was missing.

"She wasn't so much emotional as stern. Cranky. Every now and again, (she would) have an emotional moment, when (she) realised she had six months of no cricket," her mum says.

"But more angry. Like, 'This could have been different'.

"I said, 'Well you're putting that on yourself – it's not your fault'.

"It's important to realise that you can't control everything."

Redmayne understands this in principle but sometimes she can't help but allow external matters to gnaw at her anyway.

"I feel like there's no point being frustrated by things that are within your control, because you have the power to change them," she points out. "But I do get frustrated by things I can't control, because I try to be pretty organised, and work really hard, and there's only so much you can do; at the end of the day, some things are taken out of your hands."

Image Id: 76093C54E61C4074A5F2E16BE4A5AEBA Image Caption: Redmayne reacts to the sudden pain in her Achilles // Getty

Selection is a relevant case in point. She was stung by that omission from Australia's T20 tour to India last December. Selectors went with Litchfield as the back-up batter, and according to Redmayne, explained to her they were looking for better fielders.

"Which is hard, being a wicketkeeper, but that was the feedback that I got," she says.

"So that was a bit of a hit. I kind of knew it was always going to be touch and go anyway, but if you've got some numbers on the board, it is a little bit tough."

It was also a third blow in short time, following on from a broken finger and a hamstring injury, before her ruptured Achilles spelled the end of her summer. Redmayne's default persona is one of positivity, and she has a philosophy that centres on trying to make people smile. But recent months – comfortably the worst injury run of her cricket career – have tested that, particularly when she found herself thinking about what might have been.

"I think so," she nods, "but I probably try not to let it show too much. This year was harder, especially because before the Big Bash, there was a lot of hype around Rachael Haynes retiring and Meg Lanning not playing, (so there would be) spots open in the Aussie squad (and people were asking), 'Who's gonna take them?'

"And then when you start the season well, there's a bit of hype around that, and then you maybe start overthinking it."

As a high achiever in cricket, academia and medicine, Redmayne has become accustomed to hard work, perseverance and her natural aptitude being enough. Commit yourself to something, and it will ultimately pay off. But sometimes there are matters beyond her control.

And so it boils down to this: Redmayne fears there will forever be unfinished cricketing business if she doesn't play for Australia.

"It's something that I do think about a bit," she says. "I do get a bit concerned about that.

"I don't want to look back and be like, 'Oh, maybe I could have given it a bit more, maybe I could have achieved more'. So I'm trying to do my best, and trying to see how far I can go."

Robyn senses it, too.

"I think that will always sit highly for her," she says, "(in terms of) 'This is what I missed in life', or 'This is what I achieved'. That will always be there."

* * *

As the weeks unfolded in Brisbane, Robyn noticed her daughter slipping into a new way of being. Given she couldn't play, Redmayne resolved to find other ways to contribute to the Fire squad. Instead of disappearing into the lonely world of rehabilitation, she threw herself further into the group environment.

"She sits in on all the training sessions," Robyn says. "It's seven o'clock at night and she's still out there with the team in the middle of the park, and she's on her walker, and I'm like, 'You actually don't need to be out there', and she's like, 'No, I want to support the girls'."

Redmayne laughs as she looks around at her familiar setting, and acknowledges the point.

"I feel like I'm here now more than I am when I'm fit," she says. "At training I can still do scoring, or take some fielding stats. I'm someone who likes to really contribute. You want to try to stay useful, don't you?"

Robyn sees her daughter's determination and competitiveness and smiles, because she suspects they might be traits she has passed down.

"But she's also very sensitive and thoughtful," she adds, "and she probably gets that off her dad."

She knows much of Georgia's love for the game is based on shared experiences, and the sense of camaraderie that team sport can bring. It is what she is missing most. It is why she is still coming to training sessions and games, why when the girls ran five post-training laps of the oval recently, she was there beside them on her scooter, willing them on even as the two kilometres began to tell on her one good leg.

Redmayne found that sense of working as a collective in medicine as well, during her two-year internship at The Tweed Hospital on the NSW-Queensland border. On some of those long, difficult days, she felt side-by-side with her colleagues, in the trenches.

Running parallel with that, always, has been her personal ambition, pushing her forever upwards. But it is not blind, or ruthless. Robyn sums up the dichotomy best in describing Georgia as a child.

"She always had to be the first off the escalator," she says, "but she didn't like to leave people behind all the same."

Queensland Cricket high performance coach Mark Sorell, who has worked closely with Redmayne on her batting and particularly her wicketkeeping since she arrived in Brisbane, sees those two qualities working in sync. They were why she was named vice-captain after her first season.

"She's got this ability to balance the personal desire to be better herself with a genuine interest and joy in what other people are doing," Sorell says. "She supports that, celebrates it, and that's why she's a leader in our group."

Image Id: 80633259128345349E5592C02A985F53 Image Caption: Redmayne has relished leading a young Fire squad // Getty

Perhaps it is why she pursued dual careers for so long. In 2021 she chose to go all in on cricket, because the shifting landscape of women's sport meant she was financially able to, and the career timeline was more pressing. In the period since, she has realised a couple of things.

First, she misses aspects of being a doctor, particularly the intrinsic exchange of help and gratitude, which is what initially steered her down that path. She received a card once from a patient she had assisted at a particularly low point, and still today, she keeps a photo of it on her phone.

"Just to have that impact on other people," she says, "it's really nice to know that you can help people in the toughest moments of their life."

She has learned too that cricket is a team sport with individual leanings, capable of sating all her needs. Sometimes, though, she does let herself wonder how her life would look if she had set about things differently.

"I only really came into the cricket system when I was 22, so I feel like I'm a bit of a latecomer to it," she says. "I grew up always thinking I'd study, get a job, and cricket was just something I'd do on a Sunday.

"Sometimes I think: What if I'd gone full out on cricket when I was 18? Where could I have been?

"And then I've turned that around and thought: What if I never got asked to play in Tassie by (then head coach) Julia Price, and I'd just played club cricket? Where would I be now in medicine?

"Sometimes you feel like you haven't been able to fully do one because you've had the other. But I'm pretty lucky that I've been able to do two, even if it's sometimes been to the detriment of both."

Around five years ago, Redmayne was told plainly that she would never become a doctor and play for Australia. That she should channel all her energies into one or the other and stop wasting her time.

Robyn remembers hearing about it, and the chain reaction it set off in her daughter.

"Could you imagine saying that to somebody?" she says. "So Georgia was determined. The following year she graduated and started working as a doctor, and then she made the Australian squad."

Redmayne doesn't like being told 'never', nor is she interested in her fate being determined by the judgements of others. This past year she has been part of an online leadership course run by Australian cricket legend Belinda Clark. One particular piece of advice has stuck with her: don't define yourself by other people's opinions of you, or the limits that are put on you.

And so the comment simmers away just under the surface, fuel for a fire that continues to burn even as she is presently reduced to taking one slow, careful step after another.

"Since 2018, that's been my driving motivation," she says. "I've got the doctor part, I just need to get the Australia part. I've gotten close – I've captained Australia A, and I've been in the Australian squad, but yeah, I'm a stubborn person who likes to prove people wrong."

* * *

Redmayne eases her way through the glass doors of the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane, cautious but deliberate in her stride, trying to walk the way physio has advised. Typically, it is taking longer than she would like.

"I'm trying to get rid of my limp," she says. "Hopefully not much longer, and I'll be walking normally."

She catches the elevator up to the gym on level one, and runs into a friend who asks about the surgery. She shows him the scar, one straight line down the Achilles with much smaller lines running perpendicular all the way through, like a cartoon sketch.

"Hopefully the surgeon did a double knot," she grins.

The gym is empty. Redmayne points to the anti-gravity treadmill.

"I went on that this week," she says. "It felt good. Actually normal. Then when I got off, it was like, ah… yes, my leg's heavy again."

It was another step in the process though, the structure of which is important for her. Every week there are small progressions, and goals she must tick off. She has climbed onto the exercise bike, just tentatively for now as they work out her loads. But it is another step.

 

Image Id: 2333852613214772A8FF73AD976B19C3 Image Caption: Redmayne made a century for Australia A in 2019 // Getty

 

There have been frustrations and setbacks already, as well as sources of inspiration. Redmayne has a schedule she is following, and she wants to follow it to the letter, but it doesn't always work out like that. 

"I always like to be achieving things when, in my head, I want them to be achieved," she says. "When I speak to (physio) Elyse, I'm like, 'But I'm supposed to be doing this this week'. She's like, 'You can only do what you can do', and I'm like, 'But the timelines ... ".

As she records small details such as her daily steps, she is aware too of a broader picture. She remembers those times in the trenches, the 70-hour working weeks during which lives were often on the line. In her current predicament, she can afford to maintain her positive outlook, and smile.

"(Playing cricket) is a much easier lifestyle," she says. "A lot more stress free. I started reading articles on other cricketers who had done their Achilles, all these interviews, they were saying it was really dark times, 'worst part of my career' and all this stuff. And I was like, it can't be that bad, surely?

"And yeah, it's tough, but there are worse things in life than being paid to do rehab."

Recently Redmayne and Potter paid a visit to the Queensland Academy of Sport, where they sat down with Olympics steeplechaser Genevieve Gregson, who suffered a ruptured Achilles during the 2021 Tokyo Games. The meeting gave her a chance to see and interact with a real life example of someone who has come through the other side.

"Just asking questions, and seeing the stages she went through with her rehab and getting a good idea of some of the exercises and progressions was really cool," she says.

"She actually fell pregnant during her rehab period, but she said she still felt like she could have been back running competitively in five-and-a-half, six months. So I was like, 'five-and-a-half, six months, that sounds great – yeah, I can do that'.

"And then one of the physios there was like, 'Some footballers get back in four-and-a-half, and I remember Elyse's face was like, Don't even think about it."

Redmayne has spent enough time now worrying about the cricket she is missing. The WNCL season is over. She was lined up to play in the Fairbreak Global tournament in Hong Kong next month, and like every other player, she would've thrown her hat in the ring to be a part of the inaugural Women's Premier League. But her focus now has shifted to a potential comeback tour to England with Australia at the end of June, roughly six-and-a-half months after her surgery. 

"I'd love to try to be fit and available for that," she says. "That's something I'm striving for. We'll see what happens."

Reaching that goal would mean returning to the national reckoning, where Redmayne is desperate to be. There is a saying that she likes to keep in the back of her mind: shoot for the moon, because even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars. Standing between her and an international cap however, are Healy and Mooney. There is an irony there in that both women were playing List A cricket as 16-year-olds, an age at which Redmayne had scarcely viewed it as a possibility.

In the 50-over format, she could hardly have done more, with a batting average closing in on 58 since joining the Fire in 2019, and an overall List A century rate of one every 8.67 innings, which is bettered only by Lanning among current Australians.

As a wicketkeeper, her 49 dismissals across the past three seasons of the Big Bash are comfortably the most in the competition. She laughs as she remembers her former Tassie coach and former Aussie women's 'keeper Julia Price good-naturedly branding her technique "ugly" when she first came into the fold, but working with Sorell, and learning from Englishwoman Sarah Taylor during the Hundred tournament in 2021, has helped her refine her craft.

"The biggest growth I've seen over the last couple of years has been her working out, 'This is how I want to 'keep, and I'm not going to try to be anybody else'," Sorell says. "I've said to her from day one, 'Let's just catch like Georgia Redmayne'.

"As 'keepers we can try to copy someone else, or look to be like someone else. It's all good, healthy stuff but Georgia is definitely more comfortable now in her own space. She's got fantastic hands. Quick hands."

 

Image Id: 954655B3FFDF40C89450BCDAA538EC36 Image Caption: Redmayne is averaging almost 58 for the Fire // Getty

 

Sorell sees his protégé's claims. He sees her ability. But he also sees her competition.

"I've got an unashamed bias, but I'd have to say she's got as good a hands as anybody up to the stumps, there's no two ways about that," he says. "'Keeping to (Heat and NZ leg-spinner) Melie Kerr, Jess Jonassen, two world-class spinners, she just doesn't miss a beat.

"But she's in a tough era. That's the difficult thing for her; in any other country she would probably be the 'keeper – I think there was some chit-chat between her and Melie Kerr about her jumping ship to New Zealand (laughs).

"From what I see, she doesn't let it get to her, but I'm sure there are times where internally she is thinking, This is crazy."

Redmayne knows she is living through a golden era for Australia, but also the dawn of something greater for women's sport. She feels connected to both of those things and yet, as she counts her daily steps and records the statistics of her teammates, she is trying to resist a current sense of treading water.

"I'm someone who just wants to be playing," she says. "That's probably why in my head, I'm trying to be very much positive and optimistic, trying to get back as quick as I can."

It is why she is bothered any time she lags behind the recovery rate of an Olympian. And why she decided to prioritise her rehab over a tempting opportunity to pick up locum work during her layoff.

"I'd hate to have injury rule me out of too many more things," she adds. "I don't mind missing out from selection, but I don't want to miss out because of injury, because you don't want those what ifs."

Sorell calls Redmayne a cricket snuff. He knows that whenever he is watching a game, he can text her some thoughts or commentary on proceedings because she will be watching too. This past month she has seen the Australians in South Africa, marching through another unbeaten World Cup campaign. Healy, who turns 33 this month, has made no definitive statements around retirement. Mooney, a month younger than Redmayne, is going nowhere. Then there is Litchfield as a top-order batter, as well as others knocking at the door.

"You've just got to wait for that perfect timing and opportunity that arises, I suppose," she says. "And being a wicketkeeper, there's only really one spot in the team, so you do have to wait very patiently at times, and sometimes the injuries don't line up at the right time.

"But it's one of those things … I can only really control what I can control, and try to keep playing as well as I can, try to keep winning games of cricket for whoever I play for, I suppose…"

She trails off, and there's a feeling that hangs in the air, that maybe she is trapped in a kind of cricketing limbo, though she wouldn't be the first.

As a kid, she counted Mike Hussey as among her favourite players. Hussey, like Redmayne, was stuck behind a golden generation, left to wonder if his chance in Test cricket might ever come. When it did, as a 30-year-old, he built a record across the following seven years that puts him firmly among Australia's great modern-day batters.

"And Adam Gilchrist was my other (hero), as a local boy from Lismore," says Redmayne, who turns 30 in December. "He had to bide his time, and he certainly made his mark, too.

"It's nice to know that other people have been in a similar boat, and they did pretty well when they got a go.

"It's good inspiration sometimes when you feel like you're really pushing hard against a wall."

* * *

Six days later, Redmayne is back in the gym, working her way through a set of 10-second calf raises. She walks toward a bench, a little less gingerly this week, and bouncing a tennis ball in step. Her pulled-up red socks hide a left calf that has wasted away through lack of use. She smiles, enthused by what might lie ahead in the next half hour.

"I'm assuming I'm going to get to catch the ball while balancing, so I'm very excited to be bringing some skills into it," she says. "I think it's more balance-based but in my head, I'm thinking like, wicketkeeping, taking the ball – I'll bring a stump with me next week too."

She is continuing to push against that wall, and right now, she is in a hurry to push harder than ever. Reflecting recently, Robyn realised this injury was the first time she had seen anything stop her daughter in her tracks. They both know the tide will again turn.

Redmayne knows too that missing out on an Australia cap could well eat away at her in retirement, but one benefit of having had two careers – one in the bubble of professional cricket, one in the real world – is perspective.

"At the end of the day you've got to look back on what you have achieved," she says. "Like winning that (2021) WNCL final, I remember thinking: I don't think you can get a moment better than this.

 

Image Id: 96517B0C810D463C8FDDB15F5B6BE2DA Image Caption: Redmayne celebrates her match-winning hundred in the 2021 WNCL final // Getty

 

"I've been pretty lucky to play cricket in places like India, Sri Lanka, England, Dubai, New Zealand. I've been able to do some pretty cool stuff. I wouldn't have achieved any of it if I'd stopped back in my third year of uni, when I thought I was going to retire before I'd even debuted in WBBL.

"So I've been lucky to somehow breathe life back into my career, and achieve a whole lot of things.

"I do still think there's plenty of time to make a mark, whether it's international cricket, domestic cricket. I don't want to say, 'Yeah, obviously (I would perform for Australia)' because you never know, you could get your one chance and get a good ball and then never get a chance again.

"But if you don't believe in yourself, no-one's going to believe in you. So I don't know if I'll get that opportunity, but I'd like to think that if I got it, I'd be able to give it a good crack."

She stands slowly, heads back into the gym, and embraces the next 30 minutes of movement, another small progression in a grander plan.

This weekend she might sneak down to Alstonville and spend a couple of days with her parents to celebrate Robyn's upcoming birthday. For now though, a slow walk in the afternoon sun is the lone item on her agenda.

There she will count her steps, and ponder her unfinished business.