Australia’s battled-hardened army of impact players far outnumber those in any other team in South AfricaAshleigh Gardner picked up a career-best, player-of-the-atch 5-15 against New Zealand after making just three with the bat during the group-stage fixture of the ongoing T20 World Cup. Georgia Wareham hadn’t played any international cricket in nearly 16 months but dealt Bangladesh a body blow with her match-winning 3-20 upon slotting back into Australia’s XI.Alyssa Healy had been on the sidelines with a weeks-long calf injury but struck vital fifties in two of her first three innings after returning to the line-up. Grace Harris’s tone-setting 3-0-7-2 – her best T20I figures – against Sri Lanka was only the second instance she had bowled for Australia...
Despite a rare defeat in their final warm-up match the five-time champions’ pedigree and form point to a sixth titleThe air of invincibility around Australia as they head into tournaments is such that the prospect of any opponent with hopes of standing in their way might seem like an exercise in futility from the outset. The eighth edition of the Women’s T20 World Cup, which begins this week in South Africa, nears its kick-off hinged on a similar premise.Five-time winners in the showpiece 20-over event, current holders of the ODI World Cup and inaugural Commonwealth Games gold medallists, Australia saunter into the tournament as firm favourites. Since the start of 2018, they have placed first at all major events, scripted...
Last week England’s brilliant all-rounder said she was taking a break. The women’s game has grown so fast, but at what cost?It’s fine to be sad. It’s fine to cry, even if it seems a little silly because, after all, it’s not like you knew her personally. It’s fine to feel bereft, disorientated, to sense the floor subsiding just a little.Equally, it’s fine to feel nothing at all, perhaps even wonder what all the fuss is about. Though she meant different things to all of us, her loss will touch us all. And with any luck, she’ll be back for the tour of West Indies in December. Continue reading...
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...