Well done Aussie girls for winning the World Cup

By Kersi Meher-Homji

A champion is a champion and Australian women cricketers proved it on Sunday. In the Final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, they defeated India by 85 runs to hold the Trophy for the fifth time.

Watched by a record crowd of 86000, openers Alyssa Healy (75 runs off only 39 balls smashing 7 fours and 5 sixes) and Beth Mooney (78 off 54 balls with 10 fours) put on 115 quick fire runs off only 70 balls.

Healy was the popular Player of the Match and Mooney the Player of the World Cup.

Indian fans are disappointed at the failure of India losing the Final convincingly but they should remember that the team did all Indians proud with their performances in this T20 World Cup. They finished at the top in Group A and entered the Final for the first time ever in the World Cup.

The performances of the aggressive opening batter Shafali Verma, the spin bowling of Poonam Yadhav and Radha Yadav and the all-round performance of Deepti Sharma have been promising. Rather than criticizing their one poor show, let us applaud them for winning all their previous matches including their win over the Aussies in the opening match.

The biggest disappointment was the poor form of India’s skipper Harmanpreet Kaur. But let’s look at the positives and applaud the Bharat team.

At the presentation a disappointed Kaur said, “The way we played in the league games was outstanding. Today it was unfortunate that we dropped those catches. I still have a lot of faith in my team. The upcoming one-and-a-half years is very important. We need to focus, especially in fielding. But I trust this team. It is part of the game, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. You have to keep learning.”

A delighted Australia’s captain Meg Lanning said, “I’m just really proud of this group of players and staff. We’ve had everything thrown at us, ups and downs. It was tough, definitely, especially after we lost that first game. There was a lot of expectation on us, inside and out. Definitely some tough times in there but we stuck with each other, had each other’s backs. Coming in they [the injured players] were a big part of our plans, we had to go to Plan B and C. It’s been massive, 86000 people at the MCG, I have never seen it before and didn’t think I’d be part of it in the middle.”

Congratulations, Australia.

 

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