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In The Death of Stalin, Jason Isaacs played Soviet general Georgy Zhukov, who was known among other things for wearing a uniform festooned with medals.
In the film, Isaacs wore fewer medals than Zhukov actually did because the filmmakers felt that the reality looked just a little bit too ridiculous.
Ellyse Perry (centre) has claims to be Australia’s greatest World Cup player.Getty Images
Were Ellyse Perry to wear medals for every World Cup win of which she’s been involved, the look would be similarly outlandish. At 35, Perry has played in eight cup-winning teams for Australia dating back to 2010, and is currently competing for a ninth. The unbeaten Australia face India on Sunday night in this T20 World Cup.
By any measure, Perry must be considered Australia’s greatest World Cup cricketer, male or female, with a combination of brilliance and longevity making her an asset to teams led by multiple captains across three decades.
Other contenders for the title would include the likes of Ricky Ponting (three World Cups, two as captain), Meg Lanning (seven cups, five as captain), Steve Waugh (two cups 12 years apart, the second as skipper), and a group including Adam Gilchrist, Glenn McGrath, Mitchell Starc, Glenn Maxwell, David Warner and Josh Hazlewood (three cups each).
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But there’s more to Perry’s place at the top of the list than simply the numbers of cups (or medals) won. Her career is a snapshot of the women’s game growing enormously, from a curtain-raiser concern for men’s games, to a standalone attraction that has filled stadiums in Australia, India, England and beyond.
Within that narrative, with peaks such as the 2020 T20 World Cup final at the MCG that Perry missed with a heart-wrenching hamstring tear, is also the story of how the all-rounder has evolved her game after the fashion of the greatest players.
Go back five years, and it was no certainty that Perry would still be playing for Australia in T20 matches in particular. Wonderfully straight with the ball and correct with the bat, her technical precision led to a temporary cul-de-sac as far as batting power and aggression were concerned. A little like Virat Kohli or Steve Smith at times, Perry was something of a T20 slowcoach.
In 2020, I asked Belinda Clark (another World Cup great) about how Perry might improve in T20. It was an incremental process that included carrying the drinks as Australia won gold at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. It also took place against a backdrop of the growing franchise circuit, from the WBBL, to the Hundred in the UK and the burgeoning WPL in India.
Ricky Ponting leading his team out for the semi-final of the 2003 World Cup in South Africa. Ponting would go on and make an unbeaten 140 in the final.Getty Images
Clark, who was a lead advocate for making T20 the banner format for women, pointed out the risk/reward conundrum was one every athlete faced. In Perry’s case, she was taking time to find the right shots to take the best risks.
“You can’t stay on the top or be at the top of your game 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year – it just doesn’t happen,” Clark said of Perry.
“She will go away, think about it, find a way, [and] come back. But absolutely I’ll back her to solve the problem in front of her because she’s done it before, and she’ll continue to do it.
Mitchell Starc has a fearsome reputation as a white-ball bowler.AP
“This isn’t just a female athlete discussion either. If you look at the methods, the technique of all of the players at the beginning of their career, and at the end, you’ll see marked difference.
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“The constraints of the game will dictate what the end product looks like, so if you can get the game to reward people taking risk, then the players will find a way. This game’s all about risk/reward, and you need to stack the odds in the favour of those who take the risk.”
Since late 2022, interrupted briefly by a back stress fracture in 2023, Perry has lifted her strike rate from 105.47 to 135.68, while at the same time raising her average from a tick over to 27 to nearly 35. The risks and the rewards have both risen.
One of Waugh’s mottos (and tour diary titles) was the phrase “Never Satisfied”. It was not hard to detect a trace of that attitude in how Perry reflected on her game during the week. Just as Australia are looking to improve on semi-final appearances at their past two World Cups, so is Perry searching for the kind of performance that will showcase how highly her skills have evolved.
“I’ve taken a while to kind of develop and really find the way that I want to play the game and contribute best to the group consistently,” Perry said of her T20 batting. “I’m probably [still] not happy with it.
“One of the things that I love most about playing sport is the constant challenge of getting better, and sometimes that’s physical, and sometimes that’s like expanding your mind in the way that you think.”
Perry, then, is looking for another defining moment in a career of many. Should this tournament provide another trophy to add to her haul, there’s a chance it may also inspire her to carry on to another World Cup – 10 titles would be something else.
Daniel Brettig’s top five Australian World Cup cricketers
Ellyse PerryRicky PontingMeg LanningSteve WaughMitchell Starc
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Daniel Brettig is The Age’s chief cricket writer and the author of several books on cricket.Connect via X.From our partners