CRICKET: Sophie Molineux sweats on final selection call as Alyssa Healy’s Australians brace for summer scorcher in Perth

Sophie Molineux said she’d be back ‘sooner or later’. It’s been the latter but after two years fighting injuries, she’s in the frame to make Australia’s Test XI against South Africa on Thursday.

Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney during game two of the Women's T20 International series between Australia and South Africa at Manuka Oval.

A resolute young woman named Sophie Molineux was in the early throes of injury rehabilitation when she jagged a ticket to watch Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open. He was the best show in town but Molineux left early. A physio session was in her diary. The brisk departure revealed a lot about her character. She wanted to do everything right.

I know what I would have done. I’d have ditched the treatment and had a day out at Melbourne Park. She wasn’t playing any time soon. Paint the town red! Put your stress-fractured foot up for a while! No harm done!

She was diligent. It was January, 2022, and we had a quick chat outside RLA. I was covering Nadal – vamos! – and had a pen and paper in my top pocket. I was glad. Because I could scribble down something she said, and how she said it.

There was just something rather deep and strong and meaningful about Molineux. Two sentences seemed worth keeping for down the track. You sensed she would be good to them. Some people just have an indomitable spirit, don’t you think? You don’t have to know them to feel like you know them.

Molineux should have been playing for Australia in the Women’s Ashes at the time. She’d been ruled out of the 2022 World Cup in New Zealand. She was about to lose her Cricket Australia contract. It was a majorly dire time.

Good luck, soldier, I offered. She gave a thousand-yard stare but then squinted and said, “I’ll be right. Sooner or later.”

Those were the exact words I wrote down and kept.

I’ll be right.

Sooner or later.

Sophie Molineux, captain of Victoria talks to her team before taking the field during a WNCL match with South Australia.

Sooner was December, 2022, but everything went wrong in her comeback. She ruptured her ACL in the WBBL. Kissed another year of cricket goodbye. Two serious rehabs lasting two years – for a horror run of injuries, that’s Nightmare on Elm Street and The Shining combined.

Her second comeback was last December. She would probably need time to get back in a groove after the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune had wiped her off the map for so long.

But she’s been so impressive, quickly, for Victoria and Melbourne Renegades that she was rushed into Australia’s sparkling Test squad to play South Africa in Perth from Thursday.

She just might make the final XI. It’d be emotional. And bloody hot. The forecast is for 40 degrees. The 26-year-old Victorian is an accomplished left-arm tweaker who can bat, and a classy left-handed batter who can tweak, and a bit of an old soul, and a tough cookie, and a good egg, and extremely popular among her peers, and a long-term Australian player when fit, and potentially the next national skipper, and this has been a long, hard, brave slog.

You wouldn’t blame her for having a good old cry right there on the spot if she gets the nod to play. Sooner became later after her day at the tennis … but later’s better than never.

I’ll be right.

She got that right. Will she play? We’ll know on Thursday morning. Regardless, what a triumph. “We’re actually still settling on a couple of spots,” captain Alyssa Healy said at the WACA Ground on Wednesday.

“It’s been really challenging to finalise the XI with the 14 players we’ve got in the squad because all 14 could do a job for us. It’s been quite tricky. The girls are chomping at the bit. They’ve thoroughly enjoyed bowling with the red ball in the nets. It feels nice to be here and running out in tour whites and baggy green because it’s just a really iconic place to play Test cricket.”

Molineux was in the gymnasium at Melbourne’s Junction Oval last week when selector Shawn Flegler called with news of her call-up.

“I don’t know what come over me but I just got a little bit teary,” Molineux told cricket.com.au. “There was a bit of silence there and Flegs was like, ‘Are you there?’ And I said, ‘Yep, sorry, sounds awesome.’ Of course, I’ve always hoped that I’d come back into this Australian squad but probably didn’t think it’d be this soon.”

Indomitable. Twenty-seven months between games for Australia. She needed to find her baggy green cap before jetting to Perth. She suspected it was at her parents’ house in Bairnsdale, three hours from her base in Melbourne.

“The last time I saw it, it was in the study in Bairnsdale, sitting in the sun, ageing as if I’d played a hundred Tests, so I had to move it,” she said. “I don’t know how but it ended up in a drawer at home in Melbourne. The white pads were an issue. They were in Bairnsdale but my aunty was on a quick trip up to Melbourne so it worked out well.”

Healy said: “It’s been really cool to have her back. Having somebody with that little bit of experience, and I think I heard her say it’s like her first day of school again … having that sort of energy around the group again is really cool. It’s great to see her back and playing good cricket again, first and foremost, after a tough trot. She’s doing all the right things at the moment and putting her hand up for selection.”

Healy said the summer scorcher in Perth was playing on her mind. If she wins her seventh straight coin toss, does she really want to bowl first when it’s 40 degrees? “I won’t lie,” Healy said. “It’s been spinning around in my head … but we’re fit enough to handle it.”

A four-day Test lends itself to a draw but the skipper vowed to chase victory at all costs. “I want to see a result in this Test match,” she said. “I would assume everyone in the change room is of the same opinion.

“If we’re in a position where we want to go for a win and it might come at a cost, so be it. We want to see a result. We want to be at the right end of it. The heat is going to be a big factor but gut feel suggests we can get a result in these four days.”