After a winless, disappointing 2025-26 season that Victorian cricket fans are eager to put behind them, a new leadership era has begun for the state’s Women’s National Cricket League (WNCL) side. Nicole Faltum, the team’s veteran wicketkeeper, will be officially announced as the squad’s new skipper this Thursday, stepping into the role previously held by Australian national team champion Sophie Molineux.
Even before her formal appointment, Faltum has already moved quickly to reset team culture and lay the groundwork for a turnaround, bringing a fresh, player-centric philosophy to the struggling side. In one of her first symbolic gestures as captain, Faltum created a blank team canvas emblazoned with every squad member’s initials and a sketch of the WNCL championship trophy, a visual tool she said she used to manifest a successful upcoming campaign that resonated strongly with her teammates.
Faltum has already held extensive collaborative meetings with players and coaching staff, and says she has never seen the Victorian program more aligned on its core goals heading into a new season. Her leadership philosophy centers on three key pillars: authenticity, enjoyment, and relentless performance.
“I made a point to be clear from the start about how I want to run things and shape this program,” Faltum explained. “One of my core priorities is encouraging every person in this group to be 100 percent authentic to who they are. We will have shared team values and standards, but there’s no one-size-fits-all way to contribute – that’s something I want every player and staff member to feel.”
For Faltum, prioritizing fun and passion for the sport is non-negotiable, even at the elite level. “This is our job, and we are here to perform, but so many people would love to be in our position playing professional cricket,” she said. “We can’t lose sight of how lucky we are, and that joy has to come through in how we play.”
That focus on culture does not come at the cost of ambition, Faltum emphasized: “There’s no hiding it – I want to win every single game we play. At the end of the day, everything we do revolves around performance, and that’s going to be our driving force.”
Victoria’s disastrous previous campaign, which ended with the squad rooted at the bottom of the ladder without a single win, has given Faltum a clear starting point for improvement. She argues that many of last season’s struggles stemmed from gaps in cricket IQ and game awareness – areas she says are entirely teachable with intentional preparation.
“People often joke that teams get accustomed to either winning or losing, and while that’s partly just a narrative, there’s a lot of truth to it too,” Faltum noted. “When we reflected on last season, most of our issues came down to decision-making and game awareness that we can actually work on. We’ve already made that a core focus of pre-season.”
Faltum explained that the team’s pre-season work balances on-field skill development with off-field tactical learning: “Half of our work is hands-on skill work, but the other half is breaking down past matches in the meeting room. When you take the emotion and pressure of a live game out of it, even experienced players can learn new things about the game – that’s been really rewarding for all of us so far.”
Beyond tactical preparation, Faltum has prioritized building personal connections with every member of the squad. Alongside the shared team canvas, she gifted each player a personalized towel embroidered with their initials, and wrote individual handwritten cards highlighting each player’s unique strengths and value to the team.
The squad will head to Mildura next week for a pre-season training camp to finalize preparations, and will kick off their 2026-27 campaign under lights against South Australia on September 29. For Faltum and her side, the blank canvas of the new captaincy era offers the chance to build something special after a year to forget.