Aust women set to face the music

DERBY: Australia coach Matthew Mott admits he and his side will face some tough questions after crashing out of the Women’s Cricket World Cup.

The defending champions lost by 36 runs to India at Derby following a batting onslaught from Sydney Thunder WBBL star Harmanpreet Kaur.

Kaur smashed 20 fours and seven sixes in her unbeaten 171 from just 115 deliveries as India chalked up an imposing four for 281 in 42 overs after the match was shortened due to a threehour rain delay.

In response, Meg Lanning’s side slumped to 245 all out after Alex Blackwell hit 90 from 56 balls in a lastwicket stand of 76 with Kristen Beams to give the margin of defeat some respectability.

Aside from Blackwell, Elyse Villani (75) and Ellyse Perry (38), no other player scored more than 14, and Lanning fell for an eightball duck in a rare failure with the bat.

‘‘Pat Howard the boss will certainly ask some questions so when we get home we’ll have to face the music, I guess,’’ said Mott. ‘‘We’ll go through what went right, what went wrong and there’ll be a lot of questions asked.

‘‘We came here with the expectation to win. We had a team that could have won the competition and we didn’t.

‘‘Now’s not the time. We’ll let it digest. We’re hurting a fair bit at the moment but there’s certainly a lot of areas we can work on.’’

Lanning (25) conceded she was at a loss as to how to stop Kaur and said the addition of an extra seamer instead of playing three spinners might have been a wise move.

‘‘We just sort of gave her a little bit too much to work with and it was pretty hard ground to defend once she got going,’’ she said. ‘‘In hindsight, maybe if you had someone different; but our spinners have done a great job for us . . . and it just didn’t really happen today.

Lanning and her players will return to an uncertain future. The squad is officially unemployed and the MoU dispute between Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association no closer to a resolution.

Several of the squad will remain in England for the domestic T20 competition but Lanning will return home for treatment to her damaged shoulder.

She is unsure how serious the problem is.

‘‘I’ll work that out with the medical team over the next couple of days and few weeks and we’ll decide what the best course of action is for that.’’ — AAP