Ashleigh Barty: Daily Routine

After walking away from tennis in 2014, Barty pivoted to professional cricket, proving that elite discipline doesn’t belong to just one sport.

In 2014, after competing in the 2014 US open, Australian tennis player, Ashleigh Barty decided to take a break from the sport she’d been playing professionally since she turned 14. In an interview, Barty revealed that the cause for the hiatus. “It was too much too quickly for me as I’ve been travelling from quite a young age,” she said. “I wanted to experience life as a normal teenaged girl and have some normal experiences.”

But it didn’t take long for the athlete to get drawn back into the world of sport. This time around, it was cricket. After meeting the Australian women’s national cricket team, she became interested in playing, even though she had no competitive experience and had only played casually with her family. During her break from swinging the tennis racket, Barty signed with Australian women’s Twenty20 cricket team, Brisbane Heat, and ended up playing during the inaugural Women’s Big Bash League season.