She fought her way back as an allrounder and continued to develop her short-format game, likely helped by increased exposure through the WPL and the Hundred in addition to the WBBL. But that development, she says, is still a work in progress.
“This format’s probably been one that I’ve taken a while to develop and really find the way that I want to play the game and contribute best to the group consistently,” Perry said after her Player-of-the-Match performance in Leeds.
“I’m probably not happy with it. I’d love to keep evolving and developing. One of the things that I love most about playing sport is the constant challenge of getting better. Sometimes that’s physical, and sometimes that’s expanding your mind and the way that you think.
“Perhaps maybe that has changed a lot over the years, as I hope it would for anyone if you were here for that long. You don’t want to be the same person when you finish as where you start. I guess I think differently to when I first started.”
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t really care what suits me,” she said. “I’m really happy to play whatever role I need to play for the team. I guess with Phoebs out at the moment, everyone’s moved up a spot.
“In T20 too, you just never really know, unless you’re opening, what circumstances you’re going to walk into. So we’ve got a really complete style of play that we want to execute each game, and everyone just goes back to that and where you fit in with that.”
Litchfield, who has missed Australia’s past two games, is said to have been training well and she has until Sunday to prove her fitness for the clash with India at Lord’s.
Meanwhile, Australia will be anxiously waiting on Mooney’s condition after she dislocated the same finger twice during the Pakistan match. While she was twice patched up on the field and went on to take three catches and had a hand in two run outs, how she pulls up afterwards will be crucial.
“That’s pretty typical Mooney in terms of battling through different challenges,” Perry said. “She’s really gutsy. She dislocated the same finger twice. She’s also turned into a bit of a ball magnet, completing runouts and taking caught behinds and just did it with no fuss really. That’s just another example of Mooney’s toughness.
“There’s many times where she’s had to battle something and get through it, but then also perform. It’s not that she’s just out on the field trying to make up the numbers. She always performs when she’s been challenged with something. She’s amazing.”
Australia now have four wins from as many games, having laid down a marker with a 65-run defeat of South Africa in their opening match. South Africa are the only team to have beaten India in three games so far and the tournament’s group of death is living up to that billing with the contest for a place in the knockouts likely to come down to the wire between those three sides when only two can progress.
“It was really nice and really important for us to start the way that we did in Manchester against South Africa,” Perry said. “That’s given us a really good platform, but in any tournament, it really matters more how you finish.”
As she keeps striving to evolve, one thing we know right now is that Perry isn’t finished yet.
Valkerie Baynes is a general editor, women’s cricket, at Cricinfo
