The hosts are out to seize on rare glimpses of Australia appearing beatable and write themselves into historyThere have not been many times since Australia won the last T20 World Cup at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2020 that the team has looked beatable. Since that memorable win in front of a record crowd, Australia has only lost three T20 internationals - two to New Zealand and one to India via a super over in late 2022. Australia have always been a dominant team, but that win seemed to set them on a course of becoming near-indestructible.There are also not many ways to beat Australia. Opposition teams must feel trapped in a horror movie at times - they manage to...
It is not simply a special group of players at the top right now, but a seemingly never-ending talent factoryIf you have watched more than a fleeting moment of the Women’s Cricket World Cup over the past month, you will be intimately acquainted with Gin Wigmore’s Girl Gang – the song that accompanies the entry of the teams on to the field each match and plays on a seemingly continuous loop the rest of the time. On the surface it is an upbeat, peppy tune. In the context of the Australian team, though, its lyrics take on a more ominous tone. Suddenly the lines “I got the strength to tear it apart” and “we’re taking over the world” do not...
England all-rounder reached a spectacular 148 which was all in vain against Alyssa Healy’s record-breaking 170 for AustraliaAs the Olympic hurdler Rai Benjamin discovered in Tokyo last year, when he finished second to Karsten Warholm in one of the greatest races of all time, you can smash a longstanding world record and still end up losing. Nat Sciver can now relate. Her one-woman assault on one of Australia women’s best ever bowling attacks was the heartbreaking equivalent of breasting the tape just after it’s been broken by the person in front of you.In the mathematical and therefore most important sense, England got nowhere near the opposition’s total of in this World Cup final. And yet it felt so much closer...
Australia’s coronation may have felt inevitable but their manner of victory and strength in depth are still remarkableIf there was a sense of the inevitable to Australia’s coronation as Women’s World Cup champions, the manner in which they got there was still enough to make jaws drop. Alyssa Healy had form lighting up big stages, with her fast 75 at the MCG two years ago setting up a win in the T20 World Cup final. In this tournament the opening bat had 50 overs to play with, and ended up using 46 of them. The result was a monolith of 170 runs, a single innings that was bigger than some teams in the tournament managed with 11.Granted, Natalie Sciver responded...
All-rounder says England’s experience of pressure and the 2017 Lord’s win will help her team in the World Cup finalAfter the first three games it felt as if we were going to go home before the semis even started, and now here we are. We’re really excited to have got to the final of another World Cup. In our semi-final against South Africa, things fell into place and everything went how it should do. I can’t believe it was Sophie Ecclestone’s first five-for – she’s only 22 but she already feels like part of the furniture. And I’m always happy when Danni Wyatt scores runs!On the morning of the semi-final, 14 out of 17 of us went for brunch in...