Why rising star Emma de Broughe chose cricket over hockey

It was the flow-on effect of the devastating COVID-19 global pandemic that took Emma de Broughe from a well-defined pathway to international hockey and instead installed her as one of the brightest talents in Australian cricket.

Named the Betty Wilson Young Cricketer of the Year at the recent Australian Cricket Awards, de Broughe crowned a memorable summer that has also included a maiden WBBL berth and inclusion in a 26-player squad for next month's three-day match in Adelaide that brings together the nation's most promising players.

But the 23-year-old opening batter admits she was leaning strongly towards hockey as her principal athletic focus when it became clear she would not be able to pursue both the winter and summer sports at the highest level.

She's not alone among her SA Scorpions teammates as a multi-sports specialist, with Courtney Webb (AFL), Kate Peterson (javelin) and Darcie Brown (netball) all managing dual allegiances at various times, but de Broughe's hockey pedigree was undeniable.

Despite first gaining selection in South Australia's under-18 cricket squad for national championships at the age of 14, de Broughe saw hockey – with its long history of international competition that included the prospect of Olympic representation – as a game that afforded greater opportunities.

A member of Australia's successful team at the Oceania qualifying event for the 2018 Youth Olympics in Argentina, she was named in the Jillaroos (national under-21 women's hockey) squad two years later and earned a scholarship at the South Australian Sports Institute in 2020-21.

By that stage the former state under-15 cricket captain had also won her first Scorpions cricket contract (in the same 2019 intake as current Australia fast bowler Brown), and juggling the demands of two training and competition schedules was proving problematic.

That's when the pandemic intervened, and the landscape changed almost overnight.

"We dealt with probably two or three years of me trying to do both at a high level," de Broughe told cricket.com.au of that time when she was also undertaking a psychology degree at University of Adelaide.

"I was leaning more towards hockey because I probably had more opportunity there.

"I was playing junior Australia competition with hockey but then COVID hit and the major tournament I was working towards, which was the Junior World Cup (scheduled for Potchefstroom in South Africa in 2021) got cancelled.

"Then a few other things got cancelled, and I was going all right in cricket at that stage so I was like 'I think I'm just going to need to give cricket a go, and go on that journey'.

"I did well for the rest of that year with cricket and then made my decision, because there wasn't much hockey on and cricket offered a whole lot better lifestyle at that stage.

"With hockey, we were training until 9.30 at night, and then waking up at 5am to do gym sessions or something like that, whereas here (at Adelaide Oval) we get to train throughout the day.

"So I felt like if I put all my eggs in that basket then I could get a lot stronger and work on my game a lot more.

"Plus we had the hubs (during COVID) and all the cricket stuff went ahead, whereas the hockey didn't and that made my decision for me."

A self-confessed sports junkie, de Broughe had settled on the hockey-cricket combination after trying and discarding myriad other team games during secondary schooling at Sacred Heart College in Adelaide's west.

With a competitive instinct honed by spirited backyard battles with older brother Jackson, she signed up for whatever tournament was available which meant stints playing Australian rules football, basketball and soccer as well as some even more obscure options.

"I just love everything sport has to offer - the physical side, but also love the team aspect of it," the committed cyclist and runner said.

"I think it's awesome to play as many sports as you can when you're young, and even just the movement patterns and being a generally good all-round athlete can help so much in whatever you eventually focus on.

"But maybe down the track, the way it's heading for women it's probably becoming a bit more like how men's sport operates with people making decisions earlier about which sport they want to specialise in and then sticking with it."

Ultimately, de Broughe recognised cricket and hockey were the avenues that offered serious beyond-school competition, and even then fortune's fickle finger was pointing towards the summer game.

As unlikely as it seems, the slightly built right-hander began her cricket journey as a pace bowler who concedes her repertoire consisted mostly of "gentle outswingers".

But when fate brought a belated call-up for SA's under-18 squad when still in middle school, de Broughe found herself cast in the role of allrounder.

"I think I replaced Amanda-Jade Wellington on that first trip, then about five players ended up getting injured doing random things like someone stepped on the boundary rope and rolled their ankle, plus a few more injuries.

"And I'm pretty sure I ended up batting at number five or something like that, and bowling some decent overs even though I was quite young.

"I would have been pretty small as well - I didn't grow or get any stronger for a while, so would have looked even younger than I was, I reckon."

Remarkably, that was one of five national under-18 carnivals at which de Broughe participated although the demands of a dual-sport training regime meant she soon dropped the pace bowling and has recently started rolling out a brand of off-breaks in the practice nets.

In line with her preference for team sports rather than individual pursuits, she did not have specific sporting idols when growing up although she admits to developing deep admiration for former Australia cricket legends Meg Lanning and Rachael Haynes, and was at Adelaide Oval to see the pair farewelled earlier this month.

Her first chance to rub shoulders with the game's contemporary greats came after she performed strongly at the 2017 under-18 national championship and became one of eight players – along with current SA teammates Webb and Josie Dooley – chosen as WBBL rookies, with each assigned to a Big Bash club.

Two years later, de Broughe was named (with Brown) in Lanning's XI for a WBBL exhibition match in Canberra against an Ellyse Perry outfit that included current Australia batter Phoebe Litchfield.

The following month, she made her Scorpions debut against New South Wales in Adelaide and her batting has flourished to the extent she posted a maiden WNCL century against ACT last season and was pivotal in SA reaching consecutive competition grand finals in the past two summers.

In 2022-23, she was the competition's fourth-highest run-scorer behind Tasmania duo Elyse Villani and Lizelle Lee, and WNCL Player of the Year Webb with 554 runs at an average of 42.61 and four half-centuries in addition to her breakthrough ton.

"Opening the batting, you're going to have to cop a few low scores along the journey and I think you need a bit of luck in that role," de Broughe said of her development at the top of the order alongside close friend Bridget Patterson.

"You see a lot of people maybe start their innings off with a nick through slips that goes for four, and then they're away.

"So you cop a few low scores, but I feel I've built some bigger innings better this year and been able to add a bit more power to my game.

"Probably pulling balls a bit better, and then hitting down the ground against spin is something I've worked on a lot and I feel a lot more comfortable pulling that out earlier in my innings."

It's that perceived lack of brute strength that perhaps prevented her from earning a WBBL contract until this summer when Melbourne Renegades – who had lost bowlers Sophie Molineux and Tayla Vlaeminck for the season due to injury – opted for another top-order batter.

Initially an auxiliary squad member, de Broughe forced her way into the Renegades starting XI midway through the campaign and finished with a strike rate of 132.8 from her five innings which exceeded Perry's (131.5), Litchfield's (130.4) and even player of the tournament Chamari Athapaththu's (127.2).

"The last couple of years I'd really wanted to play WBBL and didn’t get the chance with the (Adelaide) Strikers," de Broughe said.

"So I'd been searching around to see if anyone needed me or wanted me, and it was great the Renegades gave me the opportunity.

"I'd had a decent last year where I played the whole club T20 competition in Adelaide and really worked on getting my strike rate up without worrying about trying to stay in the whole time.

"It was about trying to accelerate earlier, and the team (Renegades) plus the coach (Simon Helmot) really backed me to do that.

"It was just playing through the line a bit harder and I didn't really need to add too much, just get a full swing in.

"And I think one thing that helps in Big Bash is that fielders are hanging back on the edge of the ring, so even if you're not hitting the ball really hard you just need to tap it into a gap to get off strike, and you can still do that.

"Whereas in fifty-over cricket that's a bit more difficult because everyone is pressing in a bit harder."

There's also a few transferable skills from hockey - which de Broughe still plays at club level in Adelaide during winter - that she believes have aided her batting.

She agrees the wristy, inside-out drive through extra cover – used regularly by India's Virat Kohli and others raised on spin-friendly pitches in the sub-continent, where hockey is hugely popular – is an example of a technique that melds low hands with a horizontal bat, as in her other specialist sport.

And de Broughe is grateful that Scorpions coach Luke Williams and others with whom she works closely have not deemed it necessary to take her slightly hybrid approach to batting and turn it into a pure cricket technique.

"They don't try and change too much here, unless you've got a big technical deficiency and then you work on that with them," she said as she prepares for the Scorpions’ final matches for the WNCL season against NSW in Sydney tomorrow and Saturday.

"My grip is a little bit different to what most people have for cricket.

"I operate with more of a split grip, and I think that stems from hockey.

"It allows me to access the point region quite well, and manipulate through different angles with more wrist.

"And through the leg side, that whip is quite similar to hockey.

"So I think those two things, as well as the hand-eye aspect if you play both throughout the year, it makes both sports quite easy to pick up quickly when you transition from one to another."

As the eighth recipient of the Betty Wilson Young Cricketer award, after Molineux (2017), Georgia Redmayne (2018), Georgia Wareham (2019), Vlaeminck (2020), Hannah Darlington (2021), Brown (2022) and Courtney Sippel (2023), de Broughe joins a prestigious cohort.

The fact the prize is decided by playing peers around the nation resonates more loudly with her than does the precedent of most previous recipients going on to represent Australia, although she also harbours clear ambitions to reprise her hockey path and compete at international level.

To further help prepare her game for conditions beyond Australia, de Broughe is planning to accompany Dooley on a flying visit to India once WNCL commitments are completed and before she begins the first year of her psychology honours degree with a view to a future career in law enforcement.

"We're thinking of going to India to train for a week or so," she said, adding Dooley has travelled there previously and was therefore in charge of logistics.

"Not to play matches, but to have people who are prepared to bowl at you all day so you get to face as many balls as you want, and in different conditions facing different bowlers.

"Here, you get accustomed to facing the same bowlers and the same coaches throwing with the side-arms at training, so I think that would be a really cool experience.

"I think we'd probably do a little bit of coaching with it as well, and help out some people over there and then they help us train – a bit of a win-win situation.

"Playing international cricket would be awesome, and it's always something I've had in the back of my mind.

"So I'll keep trying to score runs in WNCL and try to add a bit more to my game, as well as keep progressing my T20 side and hopefully some opportunities arise whether it's Aus A or those sorts of tours that occur."

Should cricket commitments arise outside of summer season under that scenario, it will also put paid to opportunities to keep indulging her passion for hockey.

Last winter, de Broughe played a full season with the Seacliff hockey club in Adelaide only to miss the grand final because the date clashed with a Scorpions trial game.

The frustration led her to consider whether the demands of professional cricket might finally mean the end of her split affiliation with the games that provide mutual benefits in terms of year-round fitness and those crossover skills.

But she's not prepared to permanently pack away the hockey sticks just yet.

"They (SA Cricket Association) let me play club hockey still, but I think we'll have to sit down and put some things in place because there were a few clashes last year," de Broughe said.

"That's when it starts to get a bit difficult.

"I'd dealt with that so much throughout the first couple of years playing cricket and that was one thing I just couldn't deal with any more, trying to work through those clashes and having two groups  pulling me in totally different directions the whole time.

"So I think once we start our pre-season games with cricket, I'll just have to stop playing club hockey and leave it there.

"But I don't think pre-season games start until just before September … so there's still a decent amount of time for hockey."