The unyielding relentlessness of Australia
If it’s a World Cup final, their men and women always turn up with unmatched ruthlessness and professionalism. Their Women’s T20 World Cup win underlines that
If you have watched the Women’s T20 World Cup final on Sunday till the end, the chances are you didn’t miss that eye roll from South Africa captain Sune Luus. We all know what it meant. Australia? Again? You got to be kidding! Is there no team good enough to stop this juggernaut? Apparently, no. The last time the cricket world was in a similar state of disbelief was in 2007 when the Australian men’s team cantered to their third consecutive ODI World Cup.
The women’s team has now repeated that feat twice. This was Australia’s second hattrick of Women’s T20 World Cup titles—2010, 2012 and 2014 and 2018, 2020 and 2023—in eight editions. It is only the third instance in tournament history of a team winning the trophy without losing a match. They have also won seven of the 12 ODI World Cups.
With the Cape Town triumph, Meg Lanning has overtaken Ricky Ponting as the captain with the most ICC titles, after the 2014, 2018 and 2020 T20 and 2022 ODI World Cup wins. South Africa were the misty-eyed finalists, beating England in the semi-finals and daring to dream big. But there is something about World Cup finals that brings out the best in Australia, a ruthlessness that negates conditions and opposition.
Australia turn up at these finals year after year with the same intensity. The onus is thus on the other teams to break this monotony. Only India were able to run them close, in the semi-finals. That apart, Australia played like champions, winning the final with clinical precision despite being pitted against an entire nation that cheered on as the 12th player. “They are a well-oiled machine,” Luus admitted. “Their level of professionalism is insane. The world has been looking up to their team for a very, very long time. They're the best for a reason. If you look at their structures and pipelines, everything is lining up and everything is in order."
No one represents the professionalism and consistency, and fitness and skills Luus referred to than Beth Mooney, who has scored 298 runs at an average of 99.33 and a strike rate of 136.69 in six T20I finals now. Her unbeaten 74 on Sunday capped an unprecedented run of four fifties in T20I finals, the most by any batter.
"We don't get tired of it,” said Mooney. “Something we speak about as a group is making sure we’re always evolving along the way. We've seen in this tournament there are teams around the world getting better and better as the years go on and we know we're being hunted. People are looking at us for what we do and how we go about it, so certainly it won't last forever, but we'll enjoy it for as long as we can. Hopefully, we can keep piling up those trophies.”
How do you beat Australia? “Just don’t turn up. It’s too hard, don’t bother going,” came the tongue-in-cheek response from Mooney. Was it not a veiled jibe at the other teams for not cracking the Aussie code? When a team is so predictably phenomenal over more than a decade, they can’t be faulted for thinking they are too good for the rest.
You can sense that sense of superiority dripping from every word of Alyssa Healy–who has been part of all six T20 World Cup winning Australia sides–during an ABC Sport interview before the final where she said Harmanpreet Kaur was run out not because her bat got stuck in the pitch but because she hadn’t run quick enough or stretched her bat enough. Healy is within her rights to remind the world of the gap between them and Australia. It also highlighted the bare-knuckle attitude Australia are famous for bringing to the game. Only, it’s the women’s turn this time, backing up their uncontested claim to greatness with the numbers that matter.
Australia are not taking this superiority for granted though. “The fact is that we are getting pushed and that is pushing us,” said Australia coach Shelley Nitschke, who had won her first ODI World Cup in 2005 in South Africa. “We were playing South Africa here in their first T20 World Cup final so the game just continues to grow, our challenge is to evolve with it.”
Will the world catch up with Australia? Most likely. It’s taken a while for England and India to emulate Australia’s domestic structure and the Women’s Big Bash League but now that it’s in place–WPL starts in a few days–the gap is bound to be reduced. But there’s no doubt Australia remains the team to beat.