Australia are sizzling favourites for his or her seventh title at the ladies’s T20 World Cup starting Thursday of their first match appearance since the retirement of 4-time match-winning captain Meg Lanning.
Fresh skipper Alyssa Healy faces a speak in the United Arab Emirates, main a crew that has simplest failed twice to in discovering the 20-over trophy since the competitors became first staged in 2009. The 34-year-ancient wicketkeeper-batter has been a member of all six of Australia’s prior title wins but mentioned she became coming into this year’s match with “no staunch expectations”.
“Or not it’s miles the most attention-grabbing towards the most attention-grabbing and whoever will even be most consistent or in discovering these cramped moments alongside the very most sensible diagram can get the job performed,” Healy wrote in a column for the International Cricket Council’s web pages.
She alternatively mentioned her crew became brimming with younger abilities, naming up-and-coming all-rounder Annabel Sutherland, 22, and batting phenomenon Phoebe Litchfield, 21, as avid gamers to undercover agent.
Australia face formidable competitors India and Fresh Zealand of their community. They arrive in the UAE original from a 3-0 T20 sweep of the Kiwis.
India’s potentialities were buoyed by the runaway success of the Girls’s Premier League at dwelling since the 20-over competitors’s inaugural season final year.
“If I talk about this crew, we like got a pair of avid gamers who were playing for a really lengthy time and additionally they know their roles in actuality smartly,” skipper Harmanpreet Kaur mentioned.
“This is the most attention-grabbing crew we are going for a T20 World Cup with.”
India performed runners-up in 2020 and misplaced in the semi-finals in 2018 and 2023.
Fresh Zealand’s Sophie Devine will step down as captain at the end of the match after playing in every World Cup, incomes two runner-up finishes.
“The T20 World Cup’s been a considerable car in the boost and boost of the ladies’s game,” Devine mentioned.
Sri Lanka and Pakistan round out the indispensable community whereas Bangladesh, England, Scotland, South Africa and the West Indies execute up the 2d.
‘Breaking the boundaries’
The South Africans, who misplaced to Australia in final year’s final in Cape City, like a brand original captain in Laura Wolvaardt who is enthusiastic to originate on that performance.
“Reaching our first-ever World Cup final in 2023 became a large landmark 2d for us,” she wrote on the ICC web pages.
The Proteas surprisingly beat England in the semi-finals.
“It became a large ‘breaking the boundaries and pushing the boundaries’ 2d for the crew.
“Earlier than that, we would made the semi-finals on a replacement of events, so so that you just can go that one step extra became principal for us as a community.
“Now we would favor to go that one step extra and steal the trophy.”
Heather Knight’s skilled England aspect, which entails Nat Sciver-Brunt, Alice Capsey, Sophie Ecclestone and Lauren Bell, will be enthusiastic for revenge after they meet the Proteas on October 7.
Bangladesh face Scotland at Sharjah in the opening match of the match, the effect the prize cash is for the indispensable time equal to the lads’s version with a $2.34 million purse for the winners of the October 20 final.
That would possibly perhaps be a 134 p.c boost on the $1 million awarded to the Australians after they clinched the title in South Africa final year.
The ICC mentioned the switch became meant “to prioritise the ladies’s game and glide its boost”.
Bangladesh were slated to host the match but it became shifted to Dubai and Sharjah after weeks of political unrest in July and August ousted the authorities of autocratic ex-premier Sheikh Hasina.
