There are very few things Ellyse Perry, the athlete, cannot do. One of the best fielders in the world, she is a menace for batters trying to find the boundary rope. Her batting was always incredibly efficient, she has even evolved to get better with changing times. She is a footballer, in more than one sense of the word. She has scored a goal for the Matildas at the Fifa Women’s World Cup and has also won Australia a cricket World Cup by deflecting the ball off her feet.
But it all started with the ball in hand. Not just in her international career, but all the way back as a kid. Perry used to follow her brother Damien, three years older, trying to do whatever he was up to. She remembers their dad Mark teaching him how to bowl one night in the kitchen at home. “I was like ‘oh, I want to learn that’. Then that sort of extended to us going outside in the backyard and dad just showing us how to do that sort of whole movement to bowl a cricket ball,” Perry said in an interview with the Royal Challengers Bangalore digital team last year.
The journey that started in that kitchen led to a remarkable night in Delhi as she bowled the best-ever spell in the brief history of WPL and her storied T20 career, picking up 6/15 in a stunning display of stump-to-stump seam bowling that took RCB to the WPL playoffs. In that video interview, after being introduced as ‘by far, the G.O.A.T’ , Perry looks down to the floor and shakes her head with a shy smile. She may not be comfortable with the compliment, but on the evidence of what 22,800-plus fans witnessed at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Tuesday night and for many years leading up to it, it is a sentiment hard to argue against.
After restricting Mumbai Indians to 113, Perry returned to shepherd the run-chase with Richa Ghosh as RCB won by 7 wickets.
A career (and #WPL) best 6-wicket haul for the remarkable Ellyse Perry.
In her first 344 matches from 2007-23, Perry had never taken a 5-wicket haul in T20 cricket.
She’s now taken her two best career analyses in the format (5-22 inthe WBBL and 6-15 today) in the last 5 months. pic.twitter.com/XzXgptsc1t
— hypocaust (@_hypocaust) March 12, 2024
Magical spell
It all started in the 9th over. After getting hit for a four by makeshift opener Sajana Sajeevan, Perry had gone 45 deliveries without picking up a wicket this season. When it rained though, it poured. Over the next 15 deliveries, she picked up six wickets, all of them either LBW or bowled.
First up, Sajana’s off-stump was rattled by one that nipped back in from a good length. This was around middle-of-the-stump height. Next ball, Harmanpreet Kaur, who played one of the best innings in the WPL in the last match, realised that the game can be a great leveller as she played on a delivery from around the fifth-stump line.
The hat-trick ball was also zoning in at the stumps but Amelia Kerr kept it out. Not for long though, as the first ball of the next over, Kerr came down the pitch but was beaten on the inside edge by one that angled in. The not-out decision was reviewed and the New Zealand allrounder found plumb in front.
Amanjot Kaur walked in and played a swagger-filled pull shot for four first ball, but Perry was having none of it. Another nip-backer from length immediately followed and Perry’s sequence of wickets read: W-W-0-W-4-W.
Not for the first time on the night, Perry would once again bounce back from being hit for a four to take a wicket next ball. And once again, it was a heat-seeking missile targeting the top of off-stump as Pooja Vastrakar perished. Then, for her final act, she dismissed Nat Sciver-Brunt, trapped in front by another perfect delivery.
“The match was very important for us. For someone like her to step up and deliver today. I was at mid-off and I was like ‘wow’, it was a pretty sight to watch,” RCB captain Smriti Mandhana said after the match.
“Some times it just goes your way, doesn’t it? Sometimes, I am just getting walloped all around the ground, then some days it is like this. I really enjoyed bowling tonight, been working on it a little bit. Felt like it was suitable conditions for me, it did a little bit off the wicket. It went my way,” Perry remarked casually.
Mandhana started the night on a defiant note. ‘One run doesn’t define us,’ she said, referring to the last-ball heartbreak against Delhi Capitals. RCB head coach Luke Williams addressed a sombre dressing room that night, saying “I still think our best games are in front of us. I know that and I just hope that we really believe that.”
On a night when they simply had to deliver, a very elite Perry delivered and how.
Brief scores: Mumbai Indians 113 all out in 19 overs (Sajana Sajeevan 30; Ellyse Perry 6/15) lost to Royal Challengers Bangalore 115/3 in 16 overs (Ellyse Perry 40 not out, Richa Ghosh 36 not out) by 7 wickets
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