Selfless Perry has no regrets about missing magic moment

On March 8 this year as Ellyse Perry leant against the boundary fence at the MCG and watched her teammates prepare for one of the biggest moments in the history of women's sport, her own plight was the furthest thing from her mind.

She should have been out there with them, and she would have been if her body hadn't let her down less than a week earlier, just as the most-watched women's cricket event ever was reaching its climax.

The biggest name in the game, a player who had played no small role in elevating women's cricket to levels never previously seen, was about to miss out on the biggest match in the sport's history.

But don't try and suggest to Perry that she had any right to feel sorry for herself, or have any sense of anger and frustration, as she watched on that night.

Image Id: 260C86225F7545DA92A9BAF459654E69 Image Caption: Ellyse Perry reacts after injuring her hamstring // Getty

"I don't think that's justifiable at all, to be honest," she told cricket.com.au recently.

"Personally it was poor timing and I would have loved to have played in the rest of the tournament, absolutely without a doubt.

"But at the same time, it's not about me."

And Perry's firm belief that such a landmark event wasn't about her extends to her teammates, too.

That night was not only more important than her, but more important than them as well.

"Sometimes I think about that tournament, and particularly about that final, and I don't even think it was about our team," she says.

"It was just about the event, the moment in women's cricket that it created was just absolutely incredible. Hopefully what it does for the sport has a flow-on effect.

"And I think that was something the team was really quick to acknowledge. All the past players and all the effort that's been put into developing women's cricket over the last little bit, it made that whole tournament so much bigger than just the tournament itself.

"It was more about the sport and women's sport in Australia and around the world. We all felt like that, whether you were playing or not.

"This was so much bigger than just one game of cricket or one innings or one spell of bowling from any one individual. It was about the moment.

"And to be part of that and still be amongst the group when that was all occurring, I feel very fortunate. Motty (Australia's coach Matthew Mott) and the Australian staff could have replaced me with another player, but they let me stick around. That was pretty cool."

A sense that they were a part of something bigger than the tournament itself had followed the Australian team throughout a campaign that had been like no other.

Having spent most of their careers playing in front of just their family and friends, and with little or no media commitments to worry about, they were suddenly the talk of Australian sport.

And as they overcame a shaky start to the tournament and scrapped and fought their way into the decider, where there was genuine belief a world record crowd would materialise, the sense of a higher purpose only grew.

"As soon as our sights were set on filling the MCG for the final, it felt like that and it promised to be that," Perry says. "And was just about whether it was going to pan out like that or not.

"As the tournament went on and even in the lead-up to it in terms of the interest and scrutiny on the event, I think we all knew it was going to be something.

"We just didn't know how big it was going to be."

The rest, literally, is history, making March 8, 2020 a landmark day in the history of world sport.

Alyssa Healy played the innings of her life, Beth Mooney produced another score of substance and Megan Schutt led a clinical bowling performance as Australia stormed to the biggest victory margin in T20 World Cup final history.

The final attendance figure fell just short of that magical 90,000 mark that had been so ambitiously set as a target, but no one was going to lament a crowd of 86,174.

Just like the fact that Perry wasn't playing, it simply didn't matter.

"I think it was just meant to be," Perry says.

"Everyone loves a fairy tale in sport and for us as the Australian team, it was certainly that.

"And to share that with the Australian public and everyone who has supported us for so long, it made it a very special memory that will be hard to top for a long, long time to come."