'I'd made peace' - Nicola Carey knew Australia career could have been over

Nicola Carey was comfortable with the fact she may never play for Australia again but is confident she returns to the fold a much better cricketer having priortised time in the domestic game.

Carey, who has been capped 50 times across ODIs and T20Is, declined a Cricket Australia (CA) central contract in 2023, having found herself regularly carrying drinks on tours or in squads, in order to commit to the Tasmania domestic system at both state level and the WBBL with Hobart Hurricanes.

Now, nearly three years later, she has been recalled for both white-ball legs of India's multi-format visit which begins with the first T20I at the SCG on Sunday.

"I'd made peace that if it [representing Australia] didn't happen, I was so okay with it," she said on the day the squad came together in Sydney. "It was literally just about playing more games of cricket, and that was just the path that I thought was the best way to go about it for me.

"I didn't really have any goals or expectations of where that would get to in terms of making this team or that team, or anything like that. I just wanted to go back, try and get better, and just go with it and see where it takes me. It's bizarre that it brought me back here, but it's kind of cool at the same time.

"Maybe that's the risk you take, potentially never being able to play again, and I was really okay with that, because I guess I had other things I wanted to achieve in terms of seeing where I could get with my cricket."

Carey was an unused squad member at the 2018 T20 World Cup in West Indies but played five times, including the iconic MCG final, at the 2020 edition. She was also part of the 2022 ODI World Cup, playing once, before being left out of the squad for the 2023 T20 World Cup, shortly before she made her career call.

"I fully understood why I wasn't playing cricket," she said. "It's just the nature of the game, isn't it? The team's elite, it still is. It's really hard to crack into the XI, it still is.

"I probably felt like … I was sort of plateauing. I probably wasn't that good anyway, so I needed to get better, and I guess I had to think about what was the best way to do that for me, and that was the option that I went with.

"I don't regret the decision that I made. It's definitely helped my game, and I have really enjoyed the last little period, where I've been sort of embedded in the Tassie set up, as the WBBL, or the Tigers stuff, and it's been really enjoyable."

Her first season in the WNCL after stepping away from a contract saw her pile up a tournament-leading 696 runs in the 2023-24 campaign and she has put together a consistent run with Hurricanes in the WBBL, helping them to a maiden title this season. An uptick in her T20 batting strike-rate and an emergence as a new-ball bowler are both significant developments, and she was peer-voted as the 2026 domestic player of the season on Thursday.

Carey also returned to the Hundred in 2025, having first played in 2022, and earned a maiden WPL deal with Mumbai Indians.

"When you're on tour, it's a lot of top-up training. It's get what you need to be ready for the game," Carey explained of the challenges of being a reserve. "If you want to work on something, it's probably a little bit more difficult, which makes complete sense. The priority is the playing XI, getting them ready.

"[But] then I used to find it really tricky coming back to Big Bash. I used to feel really underdone because there was usually [a series] before it. You'd come back and you'd think, they're welcoming back their Australian players, you're meant to be leading the way.

"Whereas now, you have a huge block of training, to the point where you're like, I'm sick of training, let's start playing some games. So I've gone into the last few seasons feeling ready to go. Whether it comes off or not, it's a different story."

When a message from Shawn Flegler, the national selector, popped up on Carey's phone while she was in India she was taken by surprise but didn't need any persuading even though the situation may arise again where she's carrying the drinks.

"It didn't take any convincing to come back," she said. "I feel like I was an okay player [previously], but I feel like I probably didn't really know my game that well. I definitely needed to work on a heap of things. I feel like now I'm in a place where I've been able to work on things.

"There was a bit of work that I actually really needed to do to work out what that looked like for me as a player. So, I feel like I've done that."