It was just the second time she'd played in a cricket match that had been broadcast nationally, and the charismatic pace bowler, who has hurled her trademark thunderbolts down to some of the world's best batters, had never been so anxious.

But this time she wasn't bowling. She was solving a Rubik's Cube.

"That time Sky recorded it, that's the most nervous I'd ever been anywhere near a cricket pitch, I'll tell you that for free," Wong told The Canberra Times.

"I'd hardly played a game all summer, and I'd only played cricket once on Sky. Suddenly they chucked me this Rubik's Cube and there's cameras everywhere and I tell you what, my knees were going like a jelly on a picnic.

"My friend taught me the first half, and then I kind of forgot about it and then at the age of 15, 16 I taught myself the rest and just got a bit obsessed from there."

Wong solved the Cube in a personal best 33 seconds to the delight of her teammates, the Sky commentary team and thousands of fans across the country. She was just 17 at the time.

This summer she's set to make her Women's Big Bash debut as a 19-year-old, drafted into the Sydney Thunder to replace injured South African quick Shabnim Ismail.

Expect to see a lot of her in the WBBL, which begins in Tasmania on Thursday. Wong already has the potential to become one of the world's most marketable cricketers.

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She's one of the world's fastest bowlers, capable of sending down rockets that exceed 120 km/h. She's a livewire in the field, and can whack a ball with plenty of lower-order force.

And broadcasters can't get enough of the ever-smiling daughter of a northern English mother, and a father of Chinese heritage.

Not only does she excel at the sport, she thinks incredibly deeply about it. And there's an honesty to the way she speaks, framed by an elocution rarely observed in a teenager.

"One of the key aspects of doing the Rubik's Cube is only looking at the important bits of information," Wong says.

"There's all sorts of colours screaming at you. You move one thing and everything else moves and you worry about moving bits. The key to it is working out what you need to do and at no time are you ever looking at more than three or four squares and that's important for cricket as well.

"We had a game against the Trent Rockets at Edgbaston this summer for the [Birmingham] Phoenix. I got taken off for bowling two no balls.

"I remember coming off the pitch and being like wow I've had an absolute shocker there, and then just thinking well actually, okay you've missed two balls. But you've bowled 16 other balls there and it was just those two balls, so let's look at the important information here.

"Of the other 16 balls, let's say 10 of them are good, six of them weren't a hundred per cent but were in the right area and then you've messed up two of them.

"This is what I can do and I know I can do that and I trust myself to do that and if doesn't work once that doesn't make me a bad cricketer and equally, if it works once that doesn't make me Jimmy Anderson or that doesn't make me Brian Lara."

"If you execute that ball and she hits it over your head for six then fair play to her she's won that ball. Let's go again and compete at the next one.

"We're lucky as a bowler we get another chance as a batter if someone bowls you a jaffa then there's not much you can do about it back in the sheds and it's quite hard to let it go. As a bowler especially you've just got to be able to let it go."

Wong is still a raw talent on the field, and English commentators have already postulated she will one day break through the magical 80 miles per hour with her bowling. That's almost 130km/h in metric speak.

She's not there yet, but Thunder coach Trevor Griffin was excited about the heat she could bring this summer.

"Go and let it fly, I don't want to dampen down what Issy does, I want her to run in and bowl fast," Griffin said.

"The important thing is the message I give all the players. They do the hard work over winter and preseason and training throughout the week, after that it's just trust what they do."