"I've got titanium plates in my face, two down here near my chin and one up near my ear." Australia's Beth Mooney is smiling as she talks through the brutal injuries sustained while batting in the nets in January 2022. For most, damage like that - her jaw was fractured by a "rogue" delivery sent down by Coach Matthew Mott - would be enough to make you consider whether perhaps another, more gentle, vocation would be preferable. Ten days after though, Mooney was batting at three in a Test match and helping Australia to yet another Ashes success. "I wasn't [quite] eating through a straw, but I was restricted to milkshakes and mashed potato and gravy," remembers Mooney. "I couldn't really open my mouth for the first couple of weeks, for sure."

At 31, Mooney has won it all: four World Cups, a Commonwealth Games gold medal and three Ashes series among countless individual awards. Earlier this year she became the first Australian woman to score a century in all three formats of the game. For any other athlete, these accolades would see you front and centre of every advertising campaign in the land, but among an Australia team packed with superstars such as Ellyse Perry and Alyssa Healy, Mooney is happy to be a little more reserved.

"I think they [Perry and Healy] definitely kickstarted the women's game becoming a bit 'pretty' back in 2015-16. So, they've earned the right to be those beacons for us in this generation, for sure," said Mooney. "And it's no skin off my nose, I'm more than happy to be out of the limelight and let them do all that." To quietly – and brilliantly – do her job is something that comes naturally to a player who had to fight her way into the Australian side. And while all good batters need to have a degree of selfishness, there's no sense that someone with close to 6,000 international runs ever sees herself as the primary focus.

"I'd like to think I'm pretty selfless, but you've got to be a little bit selfish as well to play at this level," she said. "I'm just happy to have found a way in this generational Australian team. "It might be your day but it probably won't be, so you've really got to jump on board with your team-mates and enjoy seeing their success." Mooney has more good days than bad, and there are few players more suited to rescuing a side from 76-7 in a World Cup match, as was the case against Pakistan this month.

"It was a bit dire, wasn't it?" says Mooney. "You go into games having a bit of a plan, an idea of how it's going to pan out and that certainly wasn't on my bingo card when I woke up. "I thrive in those situations, wanting to be the person that can change the outcome of the game and I enjoy the problem-solving side of it, having to adjust and adapt as the game goes on." If there's one message that consistently surrounds this remarkable Australian side, it's the need for relentless hard work. Mooney epitomises this attitude. In the third T20 international of Australia's 16-0 win in the 2025 Women's Ashes, the Queenslander ran 54 of her 94 runs during a match-winning innings. No Australian player had previously scored as many in a T20 with non-boundary runs.

"I probably didn't really understand what it took to play at the elite level until I left home," she said. "And there's one thing about knowing what it takes but there's another thing about learning how to work hard and be uncomfortable." Time and again, Australian players are quietly pushing themselves to the limit. "There's a real sense of pride with the way we work," Mooney says, "and people not having to be told that they have to go for a run or go to the gym, everyone just does it because they know how important it is." Even though you don't get the impression Mooney would ever put in less than everything, she knows to be successful is to be relentless: "You know that if you let your guard down slightly, it doesn't take much for someone who's playing really well in domestic cricket to take your spot."