By 
Australia’s women’s team have once again become the T20 World Cup champion. This is a team that deserves to go down in history as one of the best ever.
This is not just for women’s cricket, but for all cricket. They have steamrolled all teams in women’s cricket over the past decade and deserve to have an exalted status.
In all cricket we look at Sir Don Bradman’s Invincibles, Sir Clive Lloyd and Sir Viv Richards’ marauding West Indies of 1970s and 1980s, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting’s Australia from the late 1990s to mid-2000s. This Australian women’s team deserves to be celebrated at the same level.
They are just as ruthless as those champion sides of the past.
Much like those champion sides except Bradman’s squad, this Australian women’s side is dominant across all formats. We sometimes see sides doing well in white ball formats, but struggling to do well in the red ball format and vice versa. But that is not the case with this Australian women’s team.
They have won every possible crown available in women’s cricket over the years. The core has remained the same, the other personnel may have changed over a period of time, but they have maintained a ruthlessness that is quite unique for women’s cricket.
For a while England and Australia were the top two in women’s cricket. But it is now safe to say now that Australia has pulled away and is comfortably the numero uno side across all formats in women’s cricket. They are the side to beat, they are the ones who set high standards and they are the ones who set trends for others to follow.
More importantly this Australian side knows how to win, they know how to not panic. Look at their semi-final clash against India, you just knew that this Australian side will know a way to come out of the rut that they found themselves in. India’s captain Harmanpreet Kaur and Jemimah Rodrigues were running away with the clash, but you just knew that this Australian side will find a way back.
It is their fielding which is just sensational, almost on par with the great sides of the past. This fielding ability sets them apart from the other women’s sides in world cricket. They are therefore just unbeatable. Somewhere down the line other sides will catch up from time to time, but no other side will achieve the impregnable record that this Australian women’s side have achieved.
They have no one hero, but several heroes. They have the likes of Alyssa Healy, Beth Mooney who start with the bat. Then there are the likes of Megan Schutt, Ashleigh Gardner with the ball. Ellyse Perry on the field, with the bat, with the ball and on the field is just sensational. Overall it is their captain Meg Lanning who deserves all the credit for leading this band of sensational performers to new highs.
Remember it is this same Lanning who took a break from the game in 2022 for her mental health. Even while she was away their second-string side managed to come to India and beat the host 4-1 in a T20I series. Lanning fitted right back without much fuss, thereby underlining just why they are so good as a squad.
More importantly there is consistency in what they do as a squad and it is not ad hoc. This is a lesson for most sides, especially India where the coach gets appointed for a short-term and not much thought is applied for long-term success.
For now let us celebrate this wonderful set of cricketers and imbibe the best qualities that they have.
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