Ellyse Perry

Or not even the next ball, the current ball.

The one that's about to be bowled at you.

I've tried meditating a lot in, I guess, the traditional sense of sitting down and just trying to be with my thoughts in the present moment.

And I find that exceptionally hard.

But for whatever reason, picking up a cricket bat and standing in the cricket nets is probably the closest I get to meditating.

Really?

I think in a lot of senses or just being active, whether that's going for a run sometimes as well.

But more often than not in a cricket environment or when I've got a bat in my hands and a helmet on and I'm standing alone by myself at the crease just watching a ball being bowled at me, that feels more meditative than a lot of other things.

Yes, definitely.

Yeah, I love training, probably more than competing.

Oh, really?

And I think it is that sense of like, you know, there's no other distraction when you're batting.

You've just got yourself and a bat.

And I suppose because I've done it for a large portion of my life now, it's become so natural.

And it just gives me this sense of being able to just be exactly who I am in that moment and just respond to a ball being thrown or bowled at me.

Well, I think it's both.

I think implicitly over a long period of time, I've honed those skills to be able to just, and probably not even intentionally in that sense, like not from a, like, I'm going to use this as a way of meditating, but like I've done it so often and for so long with purpose that it's become that, you know, and you can't get better if you're not focused on the tasks that you're trying to achieve.

So I think it's just kind of naturally evolved into that, you know, and

You could ask my dad or my older brother.

Like when I was 10 years old down at the Nets, I certainly wasn't meditating when I was batting.