T20 World Cup preview: Australia the favourites to win the trophy on home soil
Australia expects. On March 8 - International Women’s Day - the Melbourne Cricket Ground hosts the final of the Women’s T20 World Cup. For several years, Cricket Australia and the International Cricket Council have been hatching a bold plan: to get 95,000 people through the gates and #FillTheMCG, which would be a record crowd for any women’s sporting event ever.
Meeting those ambitions depends on Australia, the behemoths of the women's game, making the final. Australia, who sit comfortably atop both the T20 and one-day international rankings, yet again enter the T20 World Cup as favourites. Of the five editions of the tournament last decade, only one - when Stafanie Taylor and Hayley Matthews led the West Indies to a brilliant heist in Kolkata in 2016 - has not ended with Australia lifting the crown. They have won 26 of their last 31 T20Is, and boast a who’s who of the best players in the game - three of the world’s top six batters, three of the top eight bowlers and the only Ellyse Perry. Australia’s pioneering investment in the women’s game and the Women’s Big Bash means that they have a depth the envy of all-comers; indeed, an Australia A side of those not in their squad would stand a strong chance of making the semi-finals.
The International Cricket Council has quintupled the prize money available for the winners of the tournament, from $200,000 in 2018 to $1 million this time, part of a broader ambition to equalise prize money in the men’s and women’s game by around 2030. For Australia, the stakes are even higher. If Australia win, Cricket Australia will make up the $600,000 gap between what the T20 World Cup winners receive in the men’s and women’s editions. So if Australia are victorious, they will become the first ever women’s champions paid equally to the men’s winners.
England have the best prospects of stopping that bit of history. They are second favourites, and have the look of a stronger side that that who were thumped by Australia in the final in the Caribbean in 2018. Captain Heather Knight has been in outstanding form, but much will depend on the opening pair Amy Jones and Danni Wyatt, and how Tammy Beaumont performs in her new role as a finisher in the middle order providing power at the death.
Despite a humbling 10-wicket warm-up loss to Sri Lanka, it would be a considerable surprise if England do not make the semi-finals in their first tournament since Australian Lisa Keightley, who enjoyed great success in the Women's Big Bash, took over as head coach. That reflects their batting depth - with Nat Sciver back, England may well select Lauren Winfield as a specialist batter at number eight - and also their luck with the draw. Three of the four top-ranked teams - Australia, New Zealand and India - are in Group A.
Like England, India secured a victory over Australia in their recent tri-series - though Australia still claimed the crown. India and New Zealand both have power-packed batting line-ups - Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur and, potentially, the 16-year-old prodigy Shafali Verma for India; Sophie Devine and Suzie Bates for New Zealand - with the potential to power huge totals.
The most formidable team outside this favoured quartet are South Africa. The six-hitting prowess of Chloe Tryon and Lizelle Lee makes them likely semi-finalists from Group B. The West Indies, champions in 2016, have much work to do to get close to reprising that feat.
Most intriguing of all is the presence of Thailand, who pipped Ireland to the final spot in the tournament. Thailand’s journey - the bulk of their side are converted softball players - represents a fascinating new opportunity for the women’s game: they are the first team to rise at a wholly different rate to their men’s side, with Thailand men ranked a lowly 65th. This holds out the hope that, as is true in other sports - there was a women’s Football World Cup final between China and the US way back in 1999 - women’s cricket could develop a different hierarchy to the men’s game. The recent announcement of Brazil announcing full-time national contracts for their women’s national team shows how savvy emerging nations recognise the possibilities of paying heed to the women’s game.
There will be another intriguing development away from the cricket, too. For the first time in any ICC event, TV umpires will call the front foot no-balls, a significant development in cricket’s sometimes uneasy embrace of technology.
All of this - and even the prospect of Katy Perry performing a full concert at the MCG immediately after the final - awaits. The next two and a half weeks might just be the most momentous in women’s cricket yet.
