Sometimes sport makes you sit back and go, “Wow, how good is that!”. You just have to be able to acknowledge brilliance when you see it and think to yourself how lucky you are to be passing through a time when the best of the best are strutting their stuff.
The Australian women’s cricket team are one of those teams. This is their world. We’re just in it watching.
In a time when the women’s game has grown in leaps and bounds, the Australian women’s cricket team have not only relished the journey to new levels of professionalism but perhaps shown to the world that they were already there. Their ability as a collective to be so consistently excellent in every facet of the game for so long is really something to behold.
The fact that their latest success took their captain, Meg Lanning, past all comers in terms of the number of ICC trophies she has captained is perhaps the greatest testament of all. You could argue that they are the best team on the planet.
Breaking down their cricket is an exercise in measuring excellence. First let’s consider the veterans of the group. They all should rightly go down as all-time greats. Ellyse Perry, Lanning, Alyssa Healy, Megan Schutt, Beth Mooney are future hall of famers, and I’ve probably missed out on naming a couple of others.
Australia celebrate their ICC Women’s T20 World Cup triumph. (Photo by Ashley Vlotman/Gallo Images/Getty Images)
These women have played a lot of cricket together and in doing so have set the standards on which so many others have built their game. They have all committed themselves to building something extra special and have achieved their goal.
Leadership is a key part of any kind of success and leaders play a key role in any kind of team. History will look back on Lanning as a captain for the ages. It’s not just about the success she has been able to draw out of her teams but also about the way that she has done it.
Dubbed ‘Serious Sally’ early in her career, the thing about Lanning’s leadership has been twofold. Firstly, it has never had any noticeable effect on her success with the bat – she has always remained one of the game’s premier batters. Secondly, there is the way that she has marshalled her troops. There is always a calmness about Lanning and her leadership. She controls her troops in a way that always suggests that she is in complete control. Rarely does she rush a decision or rush one of her players; she always looks to play out the plan. It’s a wonderful approach and it’s an approach that pays off.
Teams need to make runs to win games of cricket, and the Australian women’s cricket team have built a batting list that can only be described as formidable. The technical brilliance of the likes of Perry, Lanning and Mooney is complemented beautifully by the mix of technique and power that Healy and Ashleigh Gardner bring to the crease.
It really is a list with little to no weaknesses. Akin to the top six the men’s team rolled out at the start of the century, it is a list that can not only capitalise on any start but also recover from any collapse. There is a sense of absolute completeness about it.
This completeness that exists in the batting list can be seen in the bowlers as well. Such is her greatness, Perry is a key part of the team with the ball as well as the bat. The class of Perry is complemented by the accuracy of Schutt and the coming pace of Darcie Brown and Tayla Vlaeminck. Their ability to strike with a new ball is high.
Then there are the spinners. The two finger spinners are world-class with an ability to manipulate flight and pace. Then there is Alana King, the leggie who just seems to be getting better and better. There is no making up overs in this group.
The best cricket teams – the absolute best ones – have the ability to never look out of a contest. They have the ability to always find a way, to never fall away. This fact was never better shown than in the recent T20 semi-final in South Africa. The Aussies looked out of it and the gam looked there for the taking for the Indians. However, with a special effort from Perry on the boundary line that ended in a run-out of the opposition’s best player, the Aussies got rolling and won the game.
Sometimes you just have to sit back and go, “How good are they!”. After all, it’s their world. We’re just in it, watching them do their stuff.
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