Ellyse Perry (b.1990) has represented Australia in both cricket and soccer, making her the only current dual international in Australian women’s sport. Perry made her extraordinary international cricket debut with the Southern Stars against New Zealand in Darwin in 2007 at the age of sixteen, never having played a home match at senior level. She remains the youngest Australian ever to play international cricket. Having made her Test debut against England Women in 2008, she was opening bowler in the team that won the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in Mumbai in 2013 and in 2015 she was named player of the Women’s Ashes in England. By November 2016 she had notched 17 half-centuries over her past 23 international innings. Meanwhile, two weeks after her international cricket debut she played her first match for the Australian national women’s soccer team, the Matildas, in Hong Kong, scoring a goal against the home team in the second minute of the match. Since then she has played a total of eleven matches for the Australian team and three matches for the Young Matildas. Reportedly, when playing for Canberra United, she was asked to choose between cricket and football; instead, she left Canberra and joined Sydney FC. Excluded from the Matildas squad during the 15-month tenure of tough coach Hesterine de Reus, and enduring various injuries, she has concentrated on cricket over the past few years. In early 2017 it was announced that she had been named the world’s leading cricketer in Wisden’s Cricketer’s Almanac. By the end of the year, she had scored 213 runs in the Women’s Ashes and was named the inaugural ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year. Studying at Sydney University over the past few years, she has been named one of the world’s most-marketable athletes and has appeared in campaigns for Adidas, Red Bull and Jockey. Perry and her husband, professional rugby player Matt Toomua, are part-owners of the Canberra café Two Before Ten and (with Sherryl Clark) she has written a series of motivational books for children: Double Time, Winning Touch, Pocket Rocket and Magic Feet.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2019
© Stuart Miller
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