When a player like Meg Lanning needs to ask for a break it should ring alarm bells

Meg Lanning is never one to give much away. An intensely private person, she is known for predictable answers in interviews and her dislike of team meetings. She is a woman of few words and for years has appeared something of a cricket machine.

Aside from a brief stint on the sidelines for shoulder surgery after the 2017 World Cup, Lanning has been an ever-present figure in the game since her debut in late 2010 at just 18 years of age. Throughout her time in the team, the profile of women’s cricket has risen exponentially, exposing Lanning to greater levels of media and public attention – something that has never appeared to quite sit comfortably with a player who would rather let her actions on the cricket field do the talking.

It was perhaps surprising then, that she was asked to take on more responsibility and visibility in January 2014 when, after the retirement of Jodie Fields, Lanning was thrust into the captaincy at age 21, having had never held a leadership position at any level before. The marketing contract that Lanning – with Ellyse Perry, Alyssa Healy and Holly Ferling – received to essentially be the faces of women’s cricket in Australia led to even more time in the public eye and more pressure to be one of the ‘golden girls’ of Australian sport.

This pressure only increased in the wake of the sandpaper scandal involving the Australian men’s team in 2018, when the very culture of cricket was called into question and Cricket Australia turned hurriedly to its sparkling women’s team – who had never been caught up in any scandals – in a bid to distract from the poor behaviour of the men.

The cumulation of all this – the public-facing roles, the increased visibility of the sport and the pressure to maintain not