The senior allrounder on how Australia are preparing for the T20 World Cup, focusing more internally than on the chasing pack
Valkerie Baynes01-Oct-2024It’s the US$2.34 million question: who can end Australia’s dominance of the Women’s T20 World Cup? But Ellyse Perry, who has played in all of them and is therefore preparing to make her ninth appearance at the tournament, believes the competition has always been wide open and that might just be the key to Australia’s success.”Particularly the T20 World Cups, I don’t think they’re ever not open,” Perry told ESPNcricinfo. “It’s such a fickle format and the way that the games fall is really unpredictable a lot of the time.”I just think that every team is playing more consistently now, so you’ve got to be in the right place at the right time sometimes and we’ve been fortunate that that’s gone our way a lot in the past, but I think, like any other tournament, it’s wide open at the start.”Related
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Australia have long played like champions, winning six of the eight Women’s T20 World Cups to have been staged so far, including the past three in succession and three more on the trot from 2010 to 2014.But, by Perry’s account, they have also prepared like champions, focusing more internally than on the chasing pack.”Most of it has really just been focused around what we can control as a group, where we can spend time and effort improving and the best things that as a collective we can lean into to make sure that we’re in the best possible position,” she said.”I don’t think you can really worry too much about any other team or what they’re doing. You’re only reacting then, as opposed to trying to just find the best space and opportunities that exist for the team.”
It’s a great challenge for everyone and I think as a group we’ve had a little bit of change over the last couple of years, so the chance to go out there and test the work that we’ve been doing is really coolEllyse Perry
Without the retired Meg Lanning, Australia are now led by the experienced Alyssa Healy. And, while they appear to have moved on from influential spinner Jess Jonassen since Sophie Molineux’s recovery from injury, they have also introduced some fresh faces with the likes of allrounder Annabel Sutherland and top-order batter Phoebe Litchfield.Australia have looked more beatable in the format since their 2023 World Cup triumph than they have in a long while, however, beaten by England 2-1 in the T20 leg of last year’s Ashes series and losing match each to West Indies and South Africa at home. They won their most recent series, hosting New Zealand, 3-0 but twice suffered batting collapses and were bowled out for only the second time since early 2020.Ellyse Perry has been part of six Women’s T20 World Cup wins with Australia•Getty Images”It’s going to be really tough and really competitive if international competition’s anything to go by,” Perry said. “In the last 12 months it’s just been some great cricket played by lots of different countries and obviously in different conditions as well and teams are going to have to adapt really quickly.”So it’s a great challenge for everyone and I think as a group we’ve had a little bit of change over the last couple of years, so the chance to go out there and test the work that we’ve been doing is really cool.”Despite Perry’s experience in the tournament and her standing in the game – she was recently named No.1 in ESPNcricinfo’s top 25 players of the 21st Century – the T20 World Cup retains a sense of unfinished business for her. Her highest score of 42 came in 2016, when Australia lost their crown to West Indies, and her impact was limited from down the order in 2018 and 2023, while her home campaign in 2020 was curtailed by injury.”I really, really enjoyed the opportunity more than anything” – Perry on her time at the Hundred•ECB/Getty ImagesBut she was speaking on her way to the airport in August, travelling home from the Hundred, where she scored 203 runs at an average of 29.00 and strike rate of 125.30 and took eight wickets for Birmingham Phoenix. That was after topping the run charts at the WPL with 347 at 69.40 and 125.72. She was also in the top-five batters at the most recent edition of the WBBL with 496 runs at 45.09 and 131.56.It is in the franchise leagues that Perry, now 33, has enjoyed a resurgence in her short-form game, new learnings keeping things fresh for a player who made her debut aged just 16.”I really, really enjoyed the opportunity more than anything,” Perry said of her time at the Hundred. “A chance to be a part of a different competition with some fresh faces that I hadn’t played with before was just really enjoyable. From that perspective I’m just incredibly grateful for the chance to be a part of it and certainly learned a lot along the way too.”Every time you get some exposure and opportunity to play really high-level cricket, it’s just great. You try things that you’re working on or just batting with different people or being out in the middle with different people, you always pick up new things.
The amount of women that are getting opportunities to play cricket as a career and hopefully inspire a new generation of cricketers, not just young girls but young boys, is quite phenomenal reallyEllyse Perry
“We all feel really passionately about the countries that we’re from, but at the same time I think there’s a lot more to it than that and just the chance to share different bonds with different people across the course of your career is a real privilege and you can make lifelong friends out of that.”Friends will become rivals again when the tournament begins in the UAE on October 3 with that US$2.34 million winners’ cheque on the line, Australia will be opening their campaign against Sri Lanka in Sharjah on October 5. It is the first time women will receive equal prize money to the men at an ICC event, which forms part of an ever-changing landscape in the game, which Perry couldn’t have imagined when she started out.”It was probably hard to imagine,” Perry said. “It just kept evolving at such an amazing pace and yeah, it’s probably a good thing that I couldn’t imagine that either because it doesn’t limit the possibility of what’s the potential for the next five or 10 years.”To be a part of it has been amazing and also just really cool to see the amount of women that are getting opportunities to play cricket as a career and hopefully inspire a new generation of cricketers, not just young girls but young boys, is quite phenomenal really.”
