You would have to be living under a rock to have missed the #FilltheMCG campaign that Cricket Australia has been running for the last year or so.

That trophy has a serious case to claim a frequent flyer membership with the amount of travel and socialising it's done to spruik the dream scenario at every given opportunity.

And with the pledge, came a heavy responsibility on the Australian women's cricket team to make it all the way to the final.

After a shaky start and a clear shift in momentum, they've done just that, and now alongside their cricket-mad opponents India, there's a very good chance it all might come to fruition.

Right now we know at least 75,000 tickets have already been sold to the final and the aim is to beat the 90,815 world-record crowd for a women's sporting event currently held by California's Rose Bowl Stadium for the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup Final.

But it turns out the idea actually started five years ago — before the Women's Big Bash even existed.

Indian captain Harmanpreet Kaur and Australian captain Meg Lanning pose with the T20 World Cup. ( AAP: Ellen Smith )

The roots of the #FilltheMCG campaign

In a board meeting back in 2015, the now-CEO of Cricket Australia Kevin Roberts first raised the idea of running separate women's and men's T20 world cups.

That concept seemed ambitious a year ago, so you can imagine back then it might have sounded a little crazy.

While it's true your everyday Australian probably knew who Ellyse Perry was and maybe diehard cricket fans knew our women's national side was pretty successful, it was still a time when the team were fighting hard for recognition in the media and among the public — despite regaining the Ashes on English soil that same year.

The likes of Beth Mooney and Ash Gardner were yet to debut and Meg Lanning had not long taken over the captaincy of the team we knew then as the Southern Stars.

None of the women were considered full-time professional athletes or were on appropriate wages.

And in fact, only five of the current playing group were in the Australian setup at that point: Ellyse Perry, Alyssa Healy, Meg Lanning, Jess Jonassen and Megan Schutt.

The inaugural season of the Women's Big Bash was in the works, the suggestion to separate the tournaments would have definitely been ahead of the times.

Speaking with the ABC, Kevin Roberts said the initial idea was a simple way they could pay respect to the female players we have in this country.

"It was to ensure that the women's tournament stood on its own two very capable feet, rather than being in the shadow of the men's tournament," he said.

"We've shown that by separating the two and doing the same now with the fifth edition of the Women's Big Bash in Australia, that there's fantastic benefits in terms of people regaining an appreciation of the skills and the great character of the female players."

With its own unique window, the separate World Cup has allowed media to focus solely on the women's performances, generating a greater span and more in-depth coverage.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 59 seconds 59 s Australia beat South Africa in a rain-affected thriller semi-final

This facet of the plan was one of the key points that led the drive behind it — and that goes beyond the Australian media, given it's dominating headlines right around the world.

"When there's only so much space for storytelling, at any given point in time, giving the women's tournament clear air has enabled the telling of those stories right through to the performance of Bangladesh and Thailand doing their nations proud as newer entrants," Mr Roberts said.

But like all great ideas, it takes more than one person and Mr Roberts is very quick to point out some of the other key figures that evolved the mission.

A group effort, from executives to players

Then-CEO of Cricket Australia James Sutherland — whose daughter Annabel has featured for the host team — along with the CEO of the T20 World Cup Nick Hockley, initially set their sights on filling out the Sydney Cricket Ground.

It was a couple of years later that the prospect of a world-record crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground took shape.

"It was basically James Sutherland and Nick Hockley that did the hard work of making the standalone tournament idea become reality," Mr Roberts said.

"They needed to take up the proposal with the ICC and convince them that it was a good idea to separate the events, and then a couple of years after that, it was John Harnden from the local organising committee who said 'why don't we set our aspirations even higher and look at setting a world record for a women's sporting event at the MCG?'

"So it was a really nice involvement from a number of people on the Cricket Australia board through executives, to then the local organising committee and the World Cup itself."

While the Australian players were initially overwhelmed by that suggestion, a couple of key figures in the dressing rooms encouraged the group to be bold and take on that responsibility as gamechangers.

Which is not surprising given they've established themselves as frontrunners when it comes to blazing the trail for girls and women in male-dominated sports.

"The Australian team is full of amazing ambassadors for our country and really humble cricketers, so I can imagine when conversations started there would have been some really interesting responses to that because it's just something that hadn't been contemplated before," Mr Roberts said.

"To their credit they've set records on the field for a number of years in terms of their success in the international game, and as they do with all aspects of trying to improve their performance, the team embraced it and went with the plan."

'This is bigger than cricket'

While we saw the true spirit of the Australian side in their eagerness to get on the field on Thursday and their determination to do everything they could to get the best out of the wet conditions in Sydney, they simply wouldn't be playing the final if the SCG ground staff hadn't pulled off their second miracle of the summer.

Already salvaging the men's Big Bash final after almost a week of solid rain, the ground staff worked swiftly to prepare the pitch for the second World Cup semi-final match (after the first had been washed out) when the rain eased for a short period on Thursday.

"It's credit to everyone involved in the SCG and also those that have gone before them in terms of the amazing drainage," Mr Roberts said.

"We were really optimistic that in the event it stops raining that there would be a match.

"Clearly we don't control the rain but what can be controlled is the quality of the drainage and the professionalism of the ground staff in getting the ground ready for play so soon."

So what would it mean for women's cricket and more broadly women's sport if all goes to plan and the record is broken on Sunday?

And what would it mean to the people that forged such an ambitious idea five years ago in a board meeting, when women's cricket was just looking to find its feet?

"I think it will be such a milestone in that this is bigger than cricket and bigger than sport," Mr Roberts said.

"This is about empowering women and girls the world over and to play some small role in that will be something that brings pride for so many people that work in cricket in Australia and people at the ICC who supported the proposal to separate the men's and women's events."