As the defending champions of the Women’s Big Bash League, Melbourne Renegades took on Brisbane heat on Sunday, there was a familier face on the bench of the Renegades. Joosie Dooley, 25, was struck with a fatal brain stroke during a surfing vacation in Hawaii on the island of Kauai last year. The wicket-keeper batter was hospitalized for 93 days at the hospital and, on her road to recovery, had to refresh her basic human skills like walking and eating.
During her recovery last season, when her teammates asked her to send an inspirational message when Dooley was shifted from Kauai to Brisbane. She has written “Don’t f—k it up” on her jersey with the number three on it. Renegades went on to win their maiden title.
Recalling her experience of recovery and how she felt seeing her side deliver their first title, Dooley, speaking to the Age (Australian publication), said, “It was really motivational to me, it kept me going. When I first came home to Australia, five or six of the girls came to visit me in the hospital. They definitely kept me going through those tough times.”
As Dooley returned onto the bench for the WBBL opener, she would say, “Just to be there at games with them was so special – the thing that I missed the most was being part of a team, not as much the cricket, but being part of a team.”
Speaking of her diagnosis, Dooley, on the Rise of the Renegades documentary, said, “They worked out I had fluid on the brain, but that was caused by a benign tumour on my brain stem, which was probably sitting there for years. It had got to the stage where it had grown and blocked the ventricles.”
“They got a plane to fly me to Honolulu, but when I got on the plane, that was when I had the stroke. I went into heart and lung failure; they actually took me off the plane. The hospital I was going to thought I wasn’t going to make it, but my doctor [on the island] said they would just have to hope they could work a miracle when I got there,” Dooley added.
Dooely, since her catastrophic stroke, has made huge improvements, and she even participated in the first-grade T20 match in Adelaide. “One of my impairments that I still have is with my vision, so that makes it difficult,” Dooley said. “The goal is to get back to cricket. We are not sure in what capacity, but I’ll keep on pushing, and hopefully, my vision will improve a little bit,” she said, recalling her experience.
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“I had the ball hit to me like five times. They had me fielding at point and midwicket – I couldn’t field there beforehand. So when you can’t see, and you are put at a point – it’s a little bit terrifying,” she added.
Dooley would be competing in the Para-athletics competition at Brisbane later in the week. She has been preparing for the shot put and table tennis competition at the Queensland Academy of Sport.
