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Ellyse Perry’s 19-year international cricket career can be summed up by one simple mantra.
“If you’re not changing and evolving, then you’re probably not going anywhere,” Perry said recently.
“And I feel like that has been the biggest joy of my career.”
Come Saturday, Perry will become the first woman to play 350 matches for Australia across all formats, in the third T20 against India at Adelaide Oval.
The veteran allrounder is also on track to be the most-capped woman worldwide by April, with India’s Harmanpreet Kaur and New Zealand’s Suzie Bates the only players with more matches.
And she will do so after one of the greatest career evolutions in the game’s history, after debuting as a 16-year-old multi-sport prodigy in 2007.
Until as recently as the 2013 ODI World Cup in India, Perry regularly took the new ball for Australia while routinely batting as low as No.9.
Fast forward 12 years to last year’s World Cup in the same country, and Perry averaged 35 with the bat at No.3 and didn’t bowl a ball.
“I like not necessarily being the same person or the same player for extended periods of time,” 35-year-old Perry told AAP.
“I’ve loved doing both skills, I grew up playing club cricket batting and bowling. And when I went to the nets with dad I would always have a bat and a bowl.
“All those different periods and opportunities to grow and change between that have been what’s been made it so fulfilling and given me so much motivation.”
Perry often notes the rapid rise of the women’s game throughout her career, but the shift in her own cricket has been far more gradual.
She was a new-ball bowler for the first 14 years of her career, and remains Australia’s leading wicket-taker across all formats with 331.
But the allrounder also moved up to the middle order by late 2013, and within years was a regular at No.3 and No.4 while scoring an Ashes double-century.
Even beyond that her game has had to change, upping the ante significantly in T20 cricket to go from being dropped in 2022 to striking at above 130 in recent years.
In some regards, Perry’s entry into international cricket as a bowler who batted No.9 was a false economy.
As a junior she was a genuine allrounder, before having to bide her time in the tail as a high-school kid entering the Australian team.
“I never found it weird. In some respects batting is probably a more mature skill set,” Perry said.
“You have to learn so much about yourself and how you actually deal with yourself out there in the middle when you have that helmet on and it’s just you out there.
“You learn how you deal with all the thoughts and emotions that come with that, as well as the circumstance of the game and what to do from here.”
As for when that happened for Perry?
“I don’t think there is one specific moment,” she said.
“It is almost this gradual creep where you feel like it. So it’s not even a conscious shift.
“That just gets backed up by consistency and results, and you have a bit of a blueprint of who you are as a batter and how you go out there.”
All of which begs the question, does the Sydney Sixers star still see a future for herself bowling in international cricket or has she gone full circle as a batter-only?
Perry has sent down just 33 overs for Australia across all formats in the past two years, and last bowled her full allotment of overs in an international in 2020.
“I hope so. I still spend a lot of time working on that and bowling at training and trying to evolve and develop the way I do that.
“It’s always been the way I play cricket. I really enjoy both facets of the game. Until I stop playing it is something I always want to work on.”
