Ellyse Perry may have fallen one-short of yet another Ashes hundred, but one run should not take away from an exhibition of an innings, writes Katya Witney.

Even the most obsessive statistician could be forgiven for doing a double-take on first glance of Ellyse Perry’s Test match stats. Coming into the Trent Bridge Test, her batting average was 75.20 after 17 innings. That included two hundreds (one unbeaten double) and three fifties since her debut in 2008. When those innings are whittled down to the last six years, a double-take should turn into a stunned silence.

Across the eight innings she has played in that time, she has been dismissed three times. Once for 18 and once for 41, both in the Canberra Test match against England last year, and once for 116 in Taunton in 2019. In those innings, she has racked up 619 runs, and her determined grit at the crease means her average across that time reads 206.33.

While we should be loathe to directly compare individual stats from the men’s and women’s games, given the imbalance between the number of matches played, one does stand out in Perry’s case. The only player of either sex who has a higher batting average and has scored more runs than Perry is Don Bradman. It’s a sensational stat that looks good in a graphic, but if nothing else, it illustrates the position Perry holds in the game, and the esteem with which she should be regarded.

At every point in her innings today (June 22), she looked nailed on to score a third Test century. In a chanceless innings, frustrating England as she has done so many times before, the closest England got to getting her out all day was debutante Lauren Filer’s first ball in international cricket. An immediate review of an lbw showed an inside edge, and that was that. The only blip in a near-perfect innings.

The most impressive thing about her knock in isolation was the way she played Sophie Ecclestone. While Jess Jonassen fell trying to sweep and Alyssa Healy and Tahlia McGrath both had their stumps shattered by balls that beat their outside edges, Perry didn’t offer a single chink for Eccleston to exploit. So much of how batters play spin today revolves around sweep shots – but it’s not something Perry typically plays. Her scoring against Ecclestone came through her footwork. The assuredness of her movements forward and back, attacking the bad balls and being content with defending the good, was a schooling in how to negotiate England’s most potent weapon.

And then, on 99, she cracked. Australia had lost two wickets in three balls after the rain delay, but if Perry had stayed there, their grip on the game would’ve stayed ironclad. Three overs later, she flashed at a wide delivery from Filer, her hands far away from her body and her feet pretty much stationary. It was the only bad shot in her innings, and it flew to Nat Sciver-Brunt at gully.

For anyone, being dismissed on 99 is gutting. In women’s Tests, it must be truly excruciating. Their scarcity means that cementing your name into the record books relies on capitalising on every single opportunity.

Perry is lucky. She has already guaranteed her place as one of the greats. It may not hurt any less, but no one who watched that innings today and be in any doubt about the kind of player they were watching.

This is Perry’s 15th year of Test cricket. She is the only one of Australia’s players to feature in every single one of their Test matches over the last decade. Her career has spanned entire eras of women’s cricket. To her, the absence that one run today will mean the world. For those who were at Trent Bridge to watch today, 99 was more than enough.

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