There are not many teams that have dominated a sport as much as the Australian Women’s team have dominated cricket in the past 1-2 decades, especially in the T20I format of the game. But a significant upset in the history of the game which took place last night and saw Australia being outclassed in the Semi-Finals of the ongoing T20 World Cup has derailed their domination for the first time in 15 years in the history of the Women’s T20 World Cup.
Ever since the inception of the competition in 2009, the Australian Women’s cricket team has won it a record 6 times. The next best are West Indies and England who have each won the coveted title once each. Yup, that’s how ridiculous the difference between the best and the second best has been. But that still doesn’t show the full picture of Australia and its domination. In all the previous editions of the Women’s T20 WC barring the inaugural edition where they were knocked out by England in the Semis (2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2023), Australia has never failed to make it to the Finals. But that streak ended last night against the 2023 Runners-up South Africa.
Winning the toss and choosing to bowl first worked out in the favour of the Proteas women in hindsight as they were able to restrict the Australian batters to a meagre total of 134/5. As Laura Wolvaardt would later say, it was a combined team effort to keep Australia at bay. Coming into bat and needing only 135 eased off the pressure on the Proteas Batters and Laura Wolvaardt and Anneke Bosch welcomed the opportunity with both hands as their partnership made sure that South Africa chased down the target with relative ease. By the start of the 18th over it was all said and done.
Talking about the result, Tahlia McGrath, talked about the shock in the Australian camp since her team and the World Cup are like Bread and Butter. It’s pretty evident how big of a gap Meg Lanning’s retirement has left in the Australian stronghold. While they are still dominant they are nowhere close to where they were with the absence of Meg Lanning. Does this result which according to Wolvaardt is the “best ever win against any opposition in any format”, mark the downfall of the Australian Women’s Team?
