Perry, Cameron get Stars home

View: Full scorecard

Australia can kick-start their women's World T20 title defence on the back of Tuesday's thrilling six-wicket win over South Africa, star allrounder Ellyse Perry says.

It was Perry who came to the rescue, smashing an unbeaten 41 off 29 balls as two-time defending champions Australia, chasing 116 to save their tournament, sneaked home with eight balls remaining in Sylhet.

Perry and Jess Cameron (27 off 24) smashed an unbeaten 60-run partnership to steer the Southern Stars to victory, which was sealed with Perry's sixth four of the match, after coming together with the situation looking dire.

Having lost their opening match to New Zealand, all of Australia's remaining group fixtures effectively became 'must win' - and that looked far-fetched when they slumped to be 2-12 and then 3-34.

Quick Single: Full recap of Australia v New Zealand

But the nature of the comeback victory, in addition to the stellar bowling efforts of Julie Hunter (2-13), Erin Osborne (2-20) and Rene Farrell (2-19) who combined to restrict South Africa to 9-115, encouraged Perry enough to suggest their tournament was up and running.

"That was really important," Perry told AAP.

"I think in tournaments like this where there's not much time between matches and it's really cut-throat, momentum is really important.

"It's good to get a win and I think kick start our tournament."

The batting recovery mission was started by Delissa Kimmince (17) and Alex Blackwell (24), before Perry and Cameron stepped in to finish the job.

Quick Single: We felt in control: Perry

Perry said run-scoring actually became easier as the overs passed, saying the new ball was the most effective period for wicket-taking.

"One thing that we've seen happen quite a lot in this tournament so far is really slow starts from all the sides," she said.

"But conditions are really good to play in and there's a lot of opportunity to make those runs up towards the end. Fortunately tonight Jess and I were able to do that."

Australia will now face Ireland on Thursday, where a win would well and truly put their title defence back on track - but Perry insists that hasn't been raised in team meetings.

"We haven't really discussed defending the title," she said.

"When you come to a World Cup it's a really different situation to the last one.

"So, while we had huge success at the last one, we don't see it as ours to defend, rather that it is ours to try and win again."

Keep up to date with all the action throughout the tournament on Twitter via @SouthernStars.

Photo courtesy of 2014 © IDI/Getty Images