"Moons would much rather prefer the company of dogs than humans."

Andy Richards is living a retired life in Brisbane these days, but over the years as a cricket coach, he has thrown more balls at Beth Mooney than any other player. Much of what he says about Mooney comes from an educated guess.

'Educated' because he has been witness to her journey up-close for nearly 13 years - from the time when she was an 11-year-old turning up at the Harvey Bay Cricket Club to coaching her at Queensland, Brisbane Heat and Australia A.

And 'guess' because Mooney is an extremely reserved and private person, within a very tight-knit group of friends, including Richards' daughter Keeley, with whom she played cricket and soccer at the junior levels.

But he's certain about one thing - Mooney is fuelled by inner determination. He riffs off a story from June 2015, when as a 21-year-old, she was on the verge of breaking into the Australian team, where in a meeting with the recently-appointed head coach Matthew Mott, she was told that she needed to get fitter if she wanted to have a long career as an Australian cricketer.

"That stung her a bit personally," believes Richards, because he noticed a change in her. "It then went on and drove her. She hates running, but she bought herself a good push bike, and kept riding it everywhere. She spent hours and hours and got fitter and fitter. You see her now. At that stage she decided that this is something that she wanted to do and play at the top level."

For Richards, she is a driven, determined and tough player. So it's unlikely to come as a surprise to Richards when Mooney continued to keep wickets in the match against Pakistan despite twice dislocating her finger. This injury happened only a match after she had to hand over the gloves to Georgia Voll due to back issues which had forced her to retire hurt. The Australian players expressed no bit of surprise that Mooney continued to carry on with that pain.

"She's tough and she's done that a lot for us over the years, and that's no different," skipper Sophie Molineux repeated the words that were previously uttered by Nicola Carey.

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There is not a lot that people know about Mooney, but 'tough' is often a classic attribution given to her. And not without reason. In 2022, Mooney had fractured her jaw during a training session. 10 days after her surgery, she returned to the side to play the Ashes Test.

This extreme bravery may not make sense to outsiders, but in the sporting world, it is hailed as an act of commitment - a player the team needs. Mooney likes to posture that way - bail her team out of crisis, not be the reason for one.

It's not as if the Australian team would have been any less dominant without her; but on rare occasions when they find themselves in trouble, courtesy a top-order collapse, Mooney does a sharp rescue act. The last such act took place during the 50-over World Cup last year, when she bailed the team out against Pakistan. Batting with the tail, she took the team's total past the 200-run mark after they were reduced to 76 for 7. It wasn't a one-off act.

Mooney's gameplay is neither built on power nor on grace. It's disciplined and meticulous, and one that's forever evolving. There aren't apparent weak areas either; if at all there is a region she isn't quite comfortable scoring - on the leg side, square of the 'V'. Otherwise - she can score in all parts of the ground. She is strong through the offside, and with the pull. She can use her feet well to chip the ball into vacant spaces, while also hanging back at the crease. Lately, she has even developed her ramp and lap shots; all this while being quick between the wickets. She can do all this by keeping the risk-percentage low. Richards terms it all as an 'obsession to do well'.

"From an early stage, she always wanted to be a 360 degree batter. That was certainly something that we did a lot of work on early. Until she left Harvey Bay and moved to Brisbane, she was predominantly a back foot player - because she mostly played against men, and they would try to bounce her. So she became very adept at playing the hook shot. It was a bit of a learning process when she came to Brisbane and started playing women's cricket. Because women's cricket is predominantly a frontfoot game. There aren't too many bowlers who bowl short. So she had a tendency to stay on the backfoot and punch the ball through covers. She worked very hard on stepping through the ball on the on side... It's one of those adaptions that have happened through the course of time."

When Mott had given feedback for not selecting her on the England tour in 2015, she also went ahead and levelled up her game beyond just fitness.

"But it was on her to realise - what I've been working on over the years hasn't been working, I've to find something else. Over 7-8 years in the Queensland environment, there was a lot of time to work on it. And she was always willing to work on it."

In saying so, Richards admits that much of the current version of Mooney is down to what she has picked up at the international level. "She got better once she got into the Australian environment and was really allowed to focus properly. Getting away from me was probably a good thing. After you have a coach for a period of time, you need a different voice and she got that with Motty.

"Moreover, she's got a great cricket brain. No matter what sport you're playing, she has what very few others have. She knew what to do in games and where to be - whether she's on the football field or any other sport. She had a real sense of what it takes. It was certainly one of the things we noticed when she was very young. It allowed her to become more aware of her own game quicker. A lot of players take a long time for that."

It is probably an explanation to why Mooney is able to drag her team out of tricky situations, and put them in positions of strength - all of that with ample calmness. Her awareness is one of the most visible aspects of her game.

Richards, who has experienced that as a coach, concurs. "She calculates where she needs to be at what time, particularly in T20s. I know in the Australian side, particularly in the ODIs, Motty always liked to bat her at five or six. I would prefer she batted up the order but Motty liked it there because she was his banker when things went wrong. She was the one who picked up the pieces at the end. She's done that time and time again in many forms depending on where she's batted.

"You'll often see she'll be the one that bats through to that 17-18 over mark and gets them home. She's done it so often. I'm not going to say it's easy but it's easy for her. She gets into a zone and says, 'okay, this is what I need to do. There are my gaps, that's where I need to play'. She's never been a big hitter of the ball. The majority of her runs come in fours and not sixes. Sometimes she might be slow to start but she always catches up. The self-awareness of her game is as good as I've seen from any player."

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But there is one aspect of Mooney's game which Richards believes hasn't been explored enough - wicketkeeping. "She was always an athlete. She's not an athletic looking person - and that's not a derogatory term - but she has balance. We were sort of most impressed initially, not only with the batting, but with her keeping. Her wicketkeeping is something that has always been a magnificent skill that she's had, and that was from an early age. She was just a good catcher of the ball. And she's coachable - that's what all coaches want in an athlete."

Once, frustrated that her ward was not getting chances to keep wickets for Australia, he jokingly told the Australian selectors, 'If I offered to change her second name to Gilchrist, would that make a difference?'

"I think they saw the funny side of that," Richards said. "For me, she should have been the Australian keeper a long, long time ago. I think her hands and her glove work are as good as any in the game. She gets an opportunity now, that's not casting any aspersions on Midge (Alyssa Healy)."

Richards agrees that his views come biased in favour of Mooney; after all, he had once promised her while watching a game at the Allan Border Fields, that if she kept her head down and worked hard, she would be able to play for Australia one day. Mooney has played for Australia for more than a decade now, during which she has won multiple World Cups, a Commonwealth Games gold medal, and scored over 7000 international runs.

But for all her cricketing sharpness, she hasn't quite been seen as the leader in the Australian setup. Richards isn't surprised. Partly, he believes it could be because of her introversion. But he also thinks Mooney's inability to be the smartest with communicating thoughts may often lead her to be misunderstood.

"Moons is sometimes too honest," he admits "That doesn't always work with some players. A good captain has the ability to understand the skill level of every player in that team, and guide accordingly. That forthright nature doesn't always work from a captaincy point of view."

Are juniors scared of her?

"I don't think so," says Richards. "Maybe from the outside. But once they come into the environment, I don't think I've heard of anyone say they are scared of her. She is her own self critique, but she is also very self-reflective. If Moons is having a bad day, just stay out of the road."

Richards states that from personal experience. "You always get an honest answer from Beth. Sometimes whether you like the answer or not, it was honest and it was always her opinion. And I never had a problem with that. It makes for an easy relationship from a coach-player point of view.

"She's certainly not outwardly social. She's always been that inward person. The honesty from her is... Some teammates and others from time to time struggle a bit with that honesty, particularly in the women's game. But when she's honest you know where you stand, and that's a much better way to be than wondering whether or not she's telling you one thing and then thinking something else."

But in saying so, Richards also comes to her defence. "Captaincy is a very tricky job. Just because you are the best player doesn't make you the best captain. Because you have duties to fulfill off the field - Moons is not interested in that. That's not necessarily her make-up. And that's okay. She can provide very good assistance. If you ask any player who bats with Mooney at the other end, they will tell you what a great resource she is to have at the other end. That's the relevant part. Behind the stumps, she's a fabulous lieutenant and deputy with what's going on in the field."

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Richards doesn't meet Mooney too often these days. The last time they crossed paths was during the WBBL season when Richards was volunteering. While Mooney is now playing the role of a senior player in the side, Richards has his own set of worries for her. Like a concerned guardian, he wants to sit and discuss 'life after cricket' with her.

It irks him that her career and achievements have flown under the radar, but he is happy to see her in a good space in life. Almost defensively, he justifies, "There is a good heart in Moons. It just takes a while to find it."