Australian all-rounder Ellyse Perry “ran out of time” to prove her fitness for Wednesday‘s knockout World Cup semi-final and won’t play against the West Indies in Wellington.
Perry missed the last pool game against Bangladesh after suffering back spasms in the previous game against South Africa and hadn’t been able to train until Monday.
The 31-year-old, who won back-to-back player of the match awards before injuring herself, had been hopeful of doing enough to prove her fitness but Australian captain Meg Lanning said she only batted and didn’t look ready to play.
“Ellyse Perry won’t play. Unfortunately, just ran out of time to prove her fitness,” Lanning said.
“Unfortunately, for her and the team, a big blow, but we feel like we have got some good depth to cover it and we are going to have to do that tomorrow.”
Before training on Monday, Perry thought there was a “high percentage” she would play, but the lack of training held her back.
Lanning couldn’t confirm whether Perry would be ready to play should Australia progress to the World Cup final on Sunday.
“She hasn’t done a lot over the past week. She batted a little bit in the nets yesterday and felt OK,” she said.
“She certainly just wasn’t in a position to be able to perform at the level needed.
“We haven’t looked too far ahead, we’ll keep assessing her as we go if we are to progress, but the team and squad is very focused on tomorrow and putting out our best game because everything else is irrelevant.
“I’m sure there is work going on in the background to get her up to play if we were to get through.
“But we’re just really focused on tomorrow and the players who are going to go out and perform.
“The way we have approached every game this tournament is it’s not going to be easy and we’re going to have to put our best game out to win. That’s what we camxjmtzywe here to do, get through the group stage and win a semi-final.”
