Star all-rounder Ellyse Perry missed out in the semi-final against South Africa and final against India during the recently-concluded ICC Women’s World T20 held in Australia. Playing the last league match against New Zealand, Perry pulled out due to a hamstring injury.
This injury meant that the 29-year old for the first time, since the inception of ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in 2009, would not feature in the playing XI of a World T20 game. However, sitting outside, Perry made sure that she contributed to her team’s success, if not with bat and ball, but with her encouraging words.
The reigning champions defended their title and redeemed themselves in front of a jam-packed Melbourne Cricket Ground as they beat the first time finalist India, to whom they had lost the first match of the competition.
Talking about what transpired in the Australian campaign after the defeat in the opener against India, Mott said in an interview with ESPNcricinfo.: “Traditionally what happens in cricket, and this is only in my experiences, but because you share so much information about bowling and batting is more of individual pursuit, we rarely have actual batting meetings, they’re normally part of the full meeting. But we actually called a batting meeting, we just opened it up and said ‘how do you think we’re going, what do we need to do to actually be the best we can be, and be true to ourselves’ and the honesty around that was incredible.”
Mott added, “The players revealed the problems they were facing and Perry’s presence helped the team move in the right direction. Ellyse Perry was at that meeting because she goes in both meetings as an all-rounder.
She says ‘to be honest, we just need to make sure we’ve got soul in this group, and we look out for each other, be a little bit more overt with our body language and maybe the odd fist-bump and something like that when someone has hit a good boundary’. I think if you look back to us in the first two games compared to the last few, you definitely saw a greater appreciation of a partnership, and I reckon that was pivotal.”
On March 8, Australia won the World T20, their fifth in seven editions, and continued to rule women’s cricket.
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