Nicole Bolton will depart for the Ashes in good spirits after over-coming a first-ball duck with a half-century in Australia's final warm-up match before leaving for England.
Bolton took a break from the game midway through last season's WBBL but returned to the fold when the squad for the Ashes tour was announced.
The Australian squad prepared for the trip with a training camp in Brisbane which included two games against Australia A who will tour England concurrently with the main side. Bolton, who was opening the batting, bagged a first-ball duck in the first of the matches but responded with 72 off 64 balls in the second.
"I felt a lot better than the other day," Bolton said. "I got a first-baller so I was pretty keen to take the first ball of our innings and get through the first one today. It was really nice to get out there and spend a bit of time in the middle.
"I think I was having an internal battle after the first game; we had optional training on the Tuesday and I'd already opted myself out of it, so when I made a first-baller I was like, 'maybe I do need a hit'.
"But I backed myself in today and I'm just really pleased with that different approach, being a bit more positive and relaxed. It was nice to get some runs and spent some time out there."
The multi-format Ashes begins with the one-day series, followed by the one-off Test before concluding with three T20Is. Bolton, a player predominately used in the longer formats, only has two T20Is under her belt but has experience of two Ashes Tests in 2015 and 2017 alongside 47 ODIs where she averages an impressive 43.93 and has scored four hundreds.
However, she knows there is no certainty that she will slot back into the side with a logjam for the top-order batting positions between her Rachael Haynes, Alyssa Healy, Meg Lanning, Ellyse Perry, Beth Mooney and Elyse Villani.
"The thing with our line-up is we have batters who are in tremendous form and they can adjust to every format so it's a really hard line-up to crack," she said. "I know I've got to bide my time, all I can do his train really hard, put runs on the board and make sure my fielding is up to scratch. It's a tough line-up to get into at the moment, but you want competition."