Australia are scorching favourites for his or her seventh title on the girls’s T20 World Cup beginning Thursday of their first match look because the retirement of four-time tournament-winning captain Meg Lanning. New skipper Alyssa Healy faces a problem within the United Arab Emirates, main a crew that has solely failed twice to win the 20-over trophy because the competitors was first staged in 2009. The 34-year-old wicketkeeper-batter has been a member of all six of Australia’s prior title wins however stated she was coming into this 12 months’s match with “no actual expectations”.
“It is the perfect towards the perfect and whoever may be most constant or win these little moments alongside the best way can get the job executed,” Healy wrote in a column for the Worldwide Cricket Council’s web site.
She nonetheless stated her crew was brimming with younger expertise, naming up-and-coming all-rounder Annabel Sutherland, 22, and batting phenomenon Phoebe Litchfield, 21, as gamers to observe.
Australia face formidable rivals India and New Zealand of their group. They arrive within the UAE contemporary from a 3-0 T20 sweep of the Kiwis.
India’s prospects have been buoyed by the runaway success of the Ladies’s Premier League at house because the 20-over competitors’s inaugural season final 12 months.
“If I speak about this crew, we’ve got a number of gamers who’ve been enjoying for a very long time and so they know their roles rather well,” skipper Harmanpreet Kaur stated.
“That is the perfect crew we’re going for a T20 World Cup with.”
India completed runners-up in 2020 and misplaced within the semi-finals in 2018 and 2023.
New Zealand’s Sophie Devine will step down as captain on the finish of the match after enjoying in each World Cup, incomes two runner-up finishes.
“The T20 World Cup’s been an vital automobile within the improvement and development of the ladies’s sport,” Devine stated.
Sri Lanka and Pakistan spherical out the primary group whereas Bangladesh, England, Scotland, South Africa and the West Indies make up the second.
‘Breaking the boundaries’
The South Africans, who misplaced to Australia in final 12 months’s ultimate in Cape City, have a brand new captain in Laura Wolvaardt who’s eager to construct on that efficiency.
“Reaching our first-ever World Cup ultimate in 2023 was an enormous landmark second for us,” she wrote on the ICC web site.
The Proteas surprisingly beat England within the semi-finals.
“It was an enormous ‘breaking the boundaries and pushing the boundaries’ second for the crew.
“Earlier than that, we would made the semi-finals on a variety of events, so to have the ability to go that one step additional was crucial for us as a gaggle.
“Now we would prefer to go that one step additional and raise the trophy.”
Heather Knight’s skilled England aspect, which incorporates Nat Sciver-Brunt, Alice Capsey, Sophie Ecclestone and Lauren Bell, will probably be eager for revenge once they meet the Proteas on October 7.
Bangladesh face Scotland at Sharjah within the opening match of the match, the place the prize cash is for the primary time equal to the lads’s version with a $2.34 million purse for the winners of the October 20 ultimate.
That may be a 134 p.c improve on the $1 million awarded to the Australians once they clinched the title in South Africa final 12 months.
The ICC stated the transfer was supposed “to prioritise the ladies’s sport and speed up its development”.
Bangladesh have been slated to host the match however it was shifted to Dubai and Sharjah after weeks of political unrest in July and August ousted the federal government of autocratic ex-premier Sheikh Hasina.
(This story has not been edited by EDNBOX workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Matters talked about on this article