WOMEN GIVE CHEER TO AUSTRALIA

IN a year blighted by a ball-tampering scandal that brought the Australian men’s cricket team to its knees, the nation’s women have given fans no small reason to cheer.

Meg Lanning’s team secured their fourth World T20 trophy in Antigua on Saturday, thrashing England by eight wickets to earn plaudits at home and abroad. Though being paid a fraction of their male counterparts, the team’s achievements stand at odds with the men, who have lurched to four series losses across Test and one-day international formats since “sandpaper-gate” broke at Newlands in March.

With the next T20 World Cup only 14 months away on home soil, Lanning speaks of dynasty-building in much the same way men’s captains Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting did in decades past.

“We want to be a very consistent cricket team and I think we have done that over the last few years without the success at world tournaments,” Lanning said. “So hopefully this win is sort of the start of something. I’ve got no doubt that this group is capable of something special. The T20 World Cup is in Australia in 2020, which is going to be massive (and) I think we’ve shown that we can be the world’s best team.”

Three of Australia’s top men players remain suspended from the balltampering episode, including captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner.

Lanning’s team, however, have been an exemplar of sportsmanship on and off the field, and have little need for the puffed-up aggression that made the men’s side one of the game’s least likeable.

That may be because only a few years ago, Australia’s top women needed jobs to support their cricketing ambitions, a burden unimaginable to most male professionals, said star all-rounder Ellyse Perry.

“In some ways, I think that gives you a bit of a grounding and real levelheadedness that potentially – through absolutely no fault of their own – the guys haven’t had in the last 10 or 15 years because the game is so demanding and they’re travelling 11 months of the year,” she told British media. |