Normal Service Resumed

GH watches Australia return to winning ways

They hardly used Annabel Sutherland. They mostly did without Alana King, and without Tahlia McGrath at all. They broke 200 only once. They also did not lose a game. The Women’s T20 World Cup was from Australia a statement win - under new captain Sophie Molineux, a return to the clinical proficiency of their vintage years. There to finish it, Ellyse Perry, collecting her eighth winner’s medal in nine finals. Has there been a career quite like it? The answer might well be no.

Also quite good at this

The final? Though it rightly involved the oldest rivals and hitherto unbeaten teams, it wasn’t quite the showpiece one would have wished for. It could have done with a better pitch than the dry, slow, low yardage that Lord’s rolled out. The Long Room was thinly populated, the crowd patriotic but subdued. Mind you, the Australians left them little to cheer. Even Nat Sciver-Brunt, fresh from her bold semi-final innings, struggled to break free, taking three boundaries from her first fourteen deliveries then two from thirty-nine more. The Australian batting was then rather a clinic, with Beth Mooney and Phoebe Litchfield adding 100 in sixty-seven balls. Mooney’s lofted cover drive off Sophie Ecclestone and Litchfield’s reverse swept six off Linsey Smith lit up the balmy afternoon.