A few hours back, the legendary Ellyse Perry exclaimed in connection to her fellow RCB colleague Richa Ghosh, “It’s scary to think she’s so young.” The all round great of the game was quite impressed with the big hitting batter’s enormous potential especially given the fact that Ghosh is all of 20.
However, what’s rather impressive is just how far Ellyse Perry has herself come given she was all of 17 when she embraced the game that today one simply can’t imagine without her involvement.
In that regard, it’s scary to think all that she has achieved in the women’s game unleashing time and again, the full wake of her powers upon Australia’s rivals.
Here’s a cricketer who exemplifies on field excellence. Her love for rigor is known to all. Being a disciple of discipline is her second nature.
The ability to drag the body through the drudge and smile through it all; whether pain, the agony of defeat or the exultation of euphoria.
Then there’s Ellyse Perry, the tireless fielder. The one who’d dive all day, irrespective of whether she’s donning the WPL or Australia jersey or whether she plays at home at the SCG or at Bangalore, now a second home of sorts.
We admire her for her dashing batting, the ability to combine the sense of effortless hitting and the gift of timing the ball. But what one saw and may likely remember for a long time would be the recent exploits of Ellyse Perry, the bowler.
Or should one say, Ellyse Perry, the destroyer of Mumbai, one of the most talented and powerful of all WPL teams?
There’ll always be players who will look to aim for the history or record books. And then there’ll be those who’ll etch their names in them without actually strictly aiming for record breaking stuff.
The stuff of legends, in some sense, just happens to them.
Ellyse Perry belongs to this enviable league.
How so?
As a matter of fact, the Queen of international women’s cricket had only bowled six overs and emerged wicketless in the ongoing WPL season, which is when she found herself against yet another record breaking feat on March 12, 2024.
Breaking the back of the tall order of Mumbai batting, RCB’s most gifted athlete claimed something that had hitherto never been achieved in the format.
A sensational spell of six wickets that yielded just 15 runs- not more- would destroy the Mumbai Indians and Delhi and resultantly, the woman behind the most resplendent smile in the sport had let her hair down a bit.
For as long as you’ll see the great game of cricket, you’ll find athletes really going for records and putting every possible inch of effort only to often cut across a gloomy face.
But more often than not, Ellyse Perry emerges with a tour de force effort aligning great game awareness with a sense of effort that can’t be copied or tutored.
Whether she presides over a huge game or a lacklustre one, she’ll forever be regarded as the athlete who simply walks on to the ground, irrespective of where it may be with one purpose and one alone.
Which is to enjoy the game to the hilt. And a few hours back at Delhi’s famed Arun Jaitley Stadium Perry presided over an amalgamation of cricketing excellence and sheer athleticism that had fun written all over it.
If you were to think about it, you’d realise that nearly six years back in the day, when the fluent right hander scored one of women cricket’s brilliant double hundreds, a century par excellence in the Ashes, that’s all she was doing.
She was having fun and putting a purpose to her stay out in the middle.
Those familiar with Perry’s mode of operation in the sport would agree that what happens in the end on the 22 yards has a huge backstory to it.
There’s oodles of match preparation. Doing the hard yards. Committing one to the complexities of pre match preparation. But truth be told, Ellyse Perry excels not only due to her inherent talent; rather owing to her endless love for game.
In a game that often shallowly seeks entertainment and becomes a puppet to hype, it’s rare to bump into an original like Ellyse Perry, who in all these years, despite appearing in no fewer than 308 international appearances for Australia, has not stopped enjoying the game.
Isn’t that the first mighty factor we all play it for at the end of the day?
It could be said, there’s much more to come from the ebb of one of the tireless pursuers of excellence. Having just set her RCB on course to their first ever qualifier appearance, the sense of excitement isn’t likely to betray a cricketer who’s still all of 34 with still a few years to go.