Australia's tilt at winning the Ashes will commence just six days after a typically rain-sodden conclusion to an Old Trafford Test saw England retain the urn.

This contest, however, is one which will be played out on a very different stage and in a very different context to that featuring the likes of Michael Clarke, Alastair Cook, Kevin Pietersen and Shane Watson.

Australia's women's team will begin their campaign to regain some lost cricketing pride this Sunday at Wormsley, the private cricket ground owned by the Getty family in Buckinghamshire.

With victories over England, albeit by slim margins, en-route to winning the World Cup in February and the Twenty20 crown last October, it is the visitors who will perhaps start as marginal favourites.

Triumph in the one-off four-day Test in Wormsley will not, however, necessarily mean Australia take the series.

Ahead lie three one-day matches and three Twenty20 matches. For the first time, and in a format which may find traction in men's cricket in the years to come, the victor will be decided across the three formats of the game. A win in the Test will earn six points with two points on offer for each of the other matches.

That innovation aside, women's cricket, like many other modern female team sports partly operates in a world of Edwardian sporting values. Team ethic and amateur principles are prominent, and in many ways remain a world away from the hyper-commercialisation of men's cricket.

It is somehow fitting then that Ellyse Perry, Australian cricket's current poster girl, manages to represent her country in football as well, much as CB Fry did for England in that era of 'sport for sport's sake' 100 years ago.

Perry, an opening bowler and a more than handy low-order batter, will likely be a key figure over the coming weeks for Australia (or the Southern Stars to use their distinctly 21st century sobriquet).

The 22-year-old not only plays two sports at the elite level, she does it alarmingly well and has the Botham-esque knack of creating something from not much. She debuted for Australia's senior national football team as a 16-year-old and scored a goal after just 90 seconds. In recent years Perry has found her football niche as an overlapping full-back and regularly sets up goals via her dead-ball acumen, invariably delivered with the same pinpoint accuracy as her 120kph bowling.

At the women's football World Cup two years ago in Germany, Perry managed to score one of the goals of the tournament with a curling effort from outside the penalty area. It was a typically inspired moment and one which lifted a deflated Australia back into the quarter-final contest against Sweden, albeit only momentarily.

Perry will be back on the football field this summer in Australia's W-League somehow combining two sports, as well as studying social sciences and economics at the University of Sydney. For now though her focus is on the other side of the globe and cricket.

For all the media attention on England's dominance in the other Ashes contest, Perry is not one to be drawn on talk of revenge or extra motivation.

"The Ashes has special significance in cricket and the traditions involved are very special," says the articulate Perry, adroitly dodging the question in keeping with her past experience as a captain of one of Sydney's leading schools. "To have the opportunity to be involved in an Ashes series is unique, and we all really respect that opportunity. From that point of view to have success would be wonderful and something we are all aiming to achieve."

In contrast to the men's game, where 10 Ashes Tests are taking place within a matter of months, contests between Australia and England's women remain relatively rare. The last time the pair met in a Test was a one-off encounter in the humble environs of Sydney's Bankstown Oval three summers ago. On that occasion Australia regained the Ashes from England winning by seven wickets, but only after overturning a first innings deficit.

Perry is expecting England to offer a similarly tough obstacle over the coming weeks where she anticipates an "evenly fought contest", with the two sides roughly "on par".

Perry is well versed in the traditions of the game through her father Mark (who turned out for NSW Colts), and she speaks with relish about the joy of touring England.

"There is so much history and wonderful tradition that is part of the way the game is played in England, which makes it a unique place to play cricket," she says. "No two grounds are the same, which means there is a fantastic challenge in adapting to differing conditions for each match."

If she were male, Perry would be rubbing shoulders alongside the globe's sporting elite. Yet for all her talents the Sydneysider remains impressively grounded. Eloquent, good-natured, thoughtful and modest, Pez as she is known to her team-mates, seems genuinely happy with her lot, despite the stark gender divide thrown up by modern sport.

Does she ever think about what life could be like if she was a male sportsmen? "The two professions are quite different," says Perry, who was recently named by a US magazine as Australia's most marketable athlete. "For most female sportspeople there is the playing side, but there is another facet of our lives such as having a career or studying as most of us do. That is a fantastic thing in a way, firstly in terms of post-sporting career options, but also it is a way to stay in touch with society and community.

"Sport can be insular occupation and it can be easy to get caught up purely in that world sometimes."

Perry describes her greatest sporting memory as Steve Waugh's Ashes century off the last ball of the day in 2003; a moment she witnessed first-hand at the SCG as an impressionable primary school student.

The setting might be vastly different but blessed as she is with a rare innate ability, it is easy to imagine Perry etching out her own unique Ashes moment this weekend.