Ellyse Perry is aiming to prove her fitness to play India, while Alyssa Healy could return to the top of the order
Australia remain hopeful Ellyse Perry will be fit to play as a specialist batter in the day-night Test against India, after she returned to training at the WACA Ground on Wednesday.
Perry missed the ODI leg of the multi-format series with a quad strain and has already been ruled out of bowling if she does feature in the four-day game.
The 35-year-old put in a solid stint batting in the nets alongside a running session on Wednesday evening, as the Australian squad were put through their paces in their main training session ahead of day one on Friday.
Australia will have a final session on Thursday afternoon, where Perry’s likelihood of being passed fit for the Test should become clearer.
“She’s tracking pretty well,” Australia coach Shelley Nitschke said ahead of Wednesday’s training session.
“She’ll train today and she’ll be put through her paces are so that she’s fit for the game, but at the moment, she’s tracking well.
“But the next couple of days is probably going to give us a much clearer picture of where Pez fits in.”
Perry’s involvement in Australia’s most recent Test, the day-night match at the MCG during last year’s Ashes, was severely limited after she suffered a hip injury while fielding on the opening day of the match.
It forced her to slide down the order to No.10, where she was dismissed for two as Australia batted just once in their innings-and-122-run-win.
If she is not fit to play in Perth, Australia have uncapped Tasmania batter Rachel Trenaman in the squad as a possible replacement.
They could also consider re-shuffling their batting-heavy line-up – against England last year, Tahlia McGrath was listed at No.8 – and bring in an extra bowling option, which could prove useful given the temperatures of 37 degrees Celsius-plus are predicated across the four days.
Nitschke also said a call had yet to be made on where retiring captain Alyssa Healy would fit into the batting order. Healy opened in three Tests between 2019-2022, but slid down into the middle-order after taking over the captaincy, to ease the juggle between opening, leadership and wicketkeeping.
She did not keep during last year’s Ashes Test but remained down the order as she played through a foot injury, with Georgia Voll opening alongside Phoebe Litchfield.
With Beth Mooney taking the gloves at the WACA and Healy coming off a dominant 158 at the top of the order in the final ODI, Healy could re-join Litchfield as opener for her international swansong.
While Nitschke was giving little away on Wednesday, saying Healy’s position could be influenced by the final team balance.
“That’s something we’ll discuss, the balance of the team … she’s done a fantastic job through the middle order in the past few Tests, so whether that’s something we look to maintain … (we’ll) be weighing up how we structure up, that’ll be the main thing over the next couple of days.”
Litchfield and Healy shared a net at Wednesday’s training session, in a potential early indicator of which way Australia are leaning.
NRMA Insurance Australia v India Multi-Format Series
Australia lead the multi-format series 8-4
February 15: First T20: India won by 21 runs (DLS)
February 19: Second T20: Australia won by 19 runs
February 21: Third T20: India won by 17 runs
February 24: First ODI: Australia won by six wickets
February 27: Second ODI: Australia won by five wickets
March 1: Third ODI: Australia won by 185 runs
Australia Test squad: Alyssa Healy (c), Darcie Brown, Maitlan Brown, Ashleigh Gardner, Lucy Hamilton, Alana King, Phoebe Litchfield, Beth Mooney, Tahlia McGrath, Ellyse Perry, Annabel Sutherland, Rachel Trenaman, Georgia Voll, Georgia Wareham
India Test squad: Harmanpreet Kaur (c), Smriti Mandhana (vc), Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh, Deepti Sharma, Kashvee Gautam, Sneh Rana, Amanjot Kaur, Uma Chetry, Pratika Rawal, Harleen Deol, Kranti Gaud, Vaishnavi Sharma, Sayali Satghare
March 6-9: Test match, WACA Ground, 4:20pm AEDT (D/N)
