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.”
“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.”
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.”
Andrew McGlashan is a deputy editor at ESPNcricinfo