Ellyse Perry

Some players find their sport. Ellyse Perry was found by two of them. By her teens, she was good enough to represent Australia in both cricket and soccer, and from there the story became one about choice, commitment and an extraordinary career that is still going. It all began in Wahroonga, a suburb on Sydney’s north shore.

In July 2007, at just 16, she made her ODI debut against New Zealand in Darwin. Cricket was not her only calling, though. She was also a talented footballer, and while the cricket was taking off, she was playing youth football for the NSW Sapphires in 2008 and then for Canberra United in 2009. From there it was a short step into the Matildas squad, and in 2011 she appeared at the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which made her the first player to appear at both an ICC and a FIFA World Cup. For a few years she carried both careers, and both kept paying off.

On the cricket side, the big moments arrived quickly. She had made her T20I and Test debuts against England in 2008, and in 2010 she was named Player of the Match in the T20 World Cup final in the West Indies, as her bowling helped Australia win the title. Two years later she was part of the side that won the 2012 T20 World Cup, and in 2013 she moved on to the 50-over game in India. In the final against the West Indies, she took three wickets while playing through an ankle injury that later needed surgery, and Australia lifted the trophy.

By then it was getting hard to be in two places at once, so in 2014 she settled on cricket. The decision freed her to build on what she had started, and the awards followed. She was named Player of the Series in the 2013-14 Ashes and again in 2015, and at the 2014 T20 World Cup in Bangladesh, she won Player of the Match against South Africa with an unbeaten 41 as Australia took a third title in a row. All that consistency set the stage for the innings that changed how people saw her. In November 2017, she made 213 not out in the day-night Ashes Test at North Sydney, the first double century in a Women’s Ashes Test.

A year later, at the 2018 T20 World Cup, she added another landmark, becoming the first Australian cricketer, male or female, to take 100 wickets in T20Is, and Australia won the tournament. The peak came in 2019 in England. Her Ashes series that year was perhaps her best, as she became the first player in the world to score 1,000 runs in T20Is. She was named Player of the Series, and she finished the year as the ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year for the second time. In 2020 the honours kept coming, with a third Belinda Clark Award and the title of ICC Female Cricketer of the Decade, and later that year Australia won the T20 World Cup at home.

From there came another run of trophies. At the 2022 ODI World Cup in New Zealand, she won back-to-back Player of the Match awards in the group stage as Australia took the title, and a few months later, she was part of the squad that won gold at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. In October 202,2 she became the first player to captain 100 games in the Women’s Big Bash League, leading the Sydney Sixers, and in 2023 she helped Australia win a 6th T20 World Cup in South Africa. By then she had also reached 5,000 international runs and 300 wickets, which no woman had done before.

As the years passed, her role began to change, though not entirely by choice. She was dropped from Australia’s T20I side in 2022 before a back stress fracture added to her challenges. But the setback also prompted her to rethink her game. When she returned, she had evolved into a more attacking batter, with her bowling taking a backseat after 2023. The shift paid off in the 2024 WPL, where she finished as the leading run-scorer for Royal Challengers Bengaluru with 347 runs, helping the franchise clinch its maiden title. She tasted World Cup glory again in July 2026, as Australia defeated England to claim a record-extending 7th Women's T20 World Cup title.