Do we like Ellyse Perry?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A long, clean career spent lifting women's sport, with no harmful words or acts found, though we found little on her wider views.
Perry is the rare Aussie athlete who has been at the top for most of her adult life. She has played at every edition of the Women's T20 World Cup so far, and the 2026 win at Lord's was her seventh title in the format. She finished the tournament with 198 runs.
Her game has always been about the long haul. After the final she called the tournament “run so well” and said she simply loves the challenge of trying to get better. She also said she can't really fathom walking away, so expect her in Pakistan in 2028.
Scandals are thin on the ground, and that's the point. The closest we found to a stoush was in 2017, when she was pulled from the attack in an Ashes one-dayer over her deliveries. Captain Rachael Haynes questioned the call, and said Perry was laughing about it by the end of the game.
In 2019 Perry, Meg Lanning and Alyssa Healy were left out of a T20 event in India after a communication mix-up. Cricket Australia apologised and denied using the players as pawns. Perry didn't pile on. She called the board “wholly supportive” of growing the women's game, which says something about how she handles a setback.
On the harm check, we found no remarks from her aimed at LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet. We found no conspiracy theories or culture-war grifting either, and no sign she keeps company with people who push them. She mostly keeps to cricket, so we can't tell you much about her wider politics. That's a gap in the record, not a red flag.
The good stuff is mostly about women's sport. In 2021 she talked about how women's cricket was once not seen as a legitimate vocation, and welcomed the investment and acceptance that have come since. She has spent a career being the proof that it was.