Australia Women cricket team's star all-rounder Ellyse Perry is trying her best to beat the clock to recover from surgery on a hamstring injury and make a return to international cricket, as she hopes to feature in the series against New Zealand women, which begins from September 26, 2020.
Perry picked up a hamstring injury during the ICC Women's T20 World Cup 2020 against New Zealand in March and had to miss the historic final against India that the hosts won at the MCG last year with over 80,000 people watching in the ground and over a billion watching around the world.
However, since T20 World Cup 2020 final, there is no Women's cricket due to the Coronavirus pandemic and the all-rounder got enough time to recover from the injury before the game starts.
She was named in Australia’s extended 18-member squad for their September’s limited-overs series against the White Ferns, which include 3 One Day Internationals and 3 T20Is, though her inclusion is subject to fitness.
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However, the star women cricketer is confident that there's “a very real possibility” of her being fit enough to feature in the first T20I of the three-match series on September 26, but at the same time, she accepted her reality of possibly not being able to play all six games of the upcoming series.
The six games between Australia and New Zealand Women would be played in the span of 12 days – which would be the first women’s series after six months, and Perry doesn’t want to push herself too hard in order to be able to play in the forthcoming Big Bash League starting late October.
There are high chances that Perry could play only as a batter against New Zealand, but she insisted that she will prefer to play as an allrounder against the White Ferns and she will make a call on it in the next few days.
As per Cricbuzz, Perry stated: “It's probably something I'll re-assess in the next couple of weeks. Everything is tracking pretty well and we are using the next couple of weeks to make sure things keep progressing. I'm fairly unrestricted now with running, batting, bowling and it's probably just those little more specific things around match fitness and especially fielding - just getting into all different kinds of positions which are potentially compromising for the injury I had.”
She continued, “Certainly my preference is to play as an allrounder. That's who I am as a player, that's always been my role in the side and I don't want to upset the dynamics of the group if I can help it because it gives us an option when I'm playing as an allrounder. That's probably a call we'll make in the next couple of weeks. But I very much want to be involved in both batting and bowling and hopefully, that transpires. If I'm on the field, I don't need to hold back.
Across the series with both the T20 and one-dayers then looking ahead to the WBBL I'm sure they'll be some considerations around managing [workload], making sure I play the vast majority of cricket and we don't go too hard, too soon. It's just about making sure that we cover all bases before I play again. If I'm playing, I want to be fully fit and be able to play in the way I always play.”
She signed off by saying, “It's more just about managing the frequency of matches that I play in this series because ... it's quite condensed and games are fairly close together. It might not be possible or sensible to play all those games, but hopefully, there's an opportunity where I'm able to play in some of them. It's a few weeks away so there's a couple of things to tick off, so it's more about managing how many games rather than the intensity I play at.”
