Long before last week's Test debut, her superb delivery to dismiss England opener Tammy Beaumont and the inevitable comparisons to Shane Warne, Wellington was a fast bowler and a run machine who was once banned from her local competition for hitting the ball too hard.

But everything changed one day at Elizabeth Downs Primary School when she mistimed her landing from the monkey bars and ended up with two broken wrists.

So mortified was the school principal, he removed the offending play equipment once and for all. As fate had it, Wellington's brother Zac had done the exact same thing a few years earlier.

"The next day my principal took a chainsaw to the ground and actually cut the monkey bars down," Wellington said.

"A few years ago Zac did it, he broke his wrist on the same monkey bars and they said they would cut it down and they never did. Then I did it and they were like, 'Nope, we're cutting it down the next day', so they're gone.

"I automatically did a flip off the monkey bars at school thinking I was Superman or something and could land on my feet. I landed on both my wrists and broke it, I ended up playing cricket in two casts.

"Even if I couldn't bat I wanted to still bowl and that's what I did, I just bowled in casts – that's when I begun to spin it. It was kind of a miracle and the turning point of my career. I'm kind of thankful for it."

With plaster around both wrists, Wellington started honing her craft. Almost a decade on and she shapes as Australia's next great leg-spinner, and has a key role to play in the remaining three Twenty20s where her side needs just one win to retain the Ashes.

On day four of last week's drawn Test with England settling in for a match-saving stand at the crease and Australia's attack struggling to extract anything from the ageing North Sydney Oval wicket, 20-year-old Wellington fired in a hard-spinning leg break that took Beaumont's off bail.

It drifted in, pitched outside leg stump then spun past the outside edge to rattle the stumps.

Social media lit up immediately, comparing the ball to that which a young Warne bowled in 1993 to dismiss Mike Gatting.

Wellington is quick to play down the comparison, and doesn't want to be compared to the game's greatest leg-spinner, but she's flattered all the same to be spoken about in the same sentence as one of her cricketing heroes.

"I tell people there's no point trying to compare me to the great Shane Warne, I like to be humble and not get too into the comparisons," Wellington said.

"I always used to sit down and watch his videos and still do to this day. I'll just be on Youtube and all of a sudden type in Shane Warne and just watch him bowl over and over. I'm very humble for that [the comparisons] but I don't see myself as him."

Wellington certainly knows how to make an impression. As a diminutive 10-year-old she was banned from a C-Grade premier cricket competition where she was up against women 40 years her senior.

The ruling? She was hitting the ball too hard and there were concerns it wasn't safe for the fielders.

"The week before I think I hit 78 not out," Wellington said. "I was a 10-year-old the size of the stumps and if you said to someone walking by that that 10-year-old got banned, you'd be like, 'What that little thing?'

"I just don't understand how that's possible, it didn't compute. My brain didn't process what had happened because I thought as a 10-year-old they would want younger people playing.

"My parents were quite furious. As a 10-year-old all I wanted to do was play. It frustrated me and thinking back at it I don't understand how that actually happened."

Wellington didn't play in that competition again. Instead she started training with the Tea Tree Gully seniors.

Eyebrows were raised as the tiny Wellington turned up declaring she wanted to play cricket with them, but she earned their respect instantly when bowling the club's best player in the nets with her first ball.

Later on she would take a wicket with her first ball in international cricket.

Allan Bach, one of her early coaches at Tea Tree Gully, was so impressedthat he picked her to play senior cricket aged only 10.

On the other side was former Australian women's captain Karen Rolton.

"I made a big statement at the time that she'd play for Australia and for once in my life I turned out to be correct," Bach said.

"I put her in the senior team and a club administrator came up with a SACA official, I think they were worried about the insurance side of things.

"We had some decent bowlers and he said to me 'Allan I've never queried your team selections but I'm a bit worried today'."

There was no need to worry as it turned out – Wellington hit the winning runs on debut.

"They were afraid to actually send out a 10-year-old kid to bat against the quality of bowlers that they had," Wellington said.

"They were saying they weren't going to bowl their pace bowlers at me and then they did. The coach said they asked my dad is it OK if she goes in and bats against these 20-year-olds and dad [Ken] was like 'yeah, she'll be fine'.

"I ended up hitting a four to win the game. As a 10-year-old debuting and hitting the winning runs, I couldn't have asked for a better start."

You get the feeling Wellington's story is still only just beginning.