Australia are sizzling favourites for his or her seventh title on the girls’s T20 World Cup beginning Thursday of their first match look for the reason that retirement of four-time tournament-winning captain Meg Lanning. New skipper Alyssa Healy faces a problem within the United Arab Emirates, main a group that has solely failed twice to win the 20-over trophy for the reason that competitors was first staged in 2009. The 34-year-old wicketkeeper-batter has been a member of all six of Australia’s prior title wins however stated she was getting into this yr’s match with “no actual expectations”.
“It is the most effective in opposition to the most effective and whoever could be most constant or win these little moments alongside the best way can get the job accomplished,” Healy wrote in a column for the Worldwide Cricket Council’s web site.
She nonetheless stated her group was brimming with younger expertise, naming up-and-coming all-rounder Annabel Sutherland, 22, and batting phenomenon Phoebe Litchfield, 21, as gamers to observe.
Australia face formidable rivals India and New Zealand of their group. They arrive within the UAE contemporary from a 3-0 T20 sweep of the Kiwis.
India’s prospects have been buoyed by the runaway success of the Girls’s Premier League at dwelling for the reason that 20-over competitors’s inaugural season final yr.
“If I speak about this group, we now have a number of gamers who’ve been taking part in for a very long time they usually know their roles very well,” skipper Harmanpreet Kaur stated.
“That is the most effective group we’re going for a T20 World Cup with.”
India completed runners-up in 2020 and misplaced within the semi-finals in 2018 and 2023.
New Zealand’s Sophie Devine will step down as captain on the finish of the match after taking part in in each World Cup, incomes two runner-up finishes.
“The T20 World Cup’s been an essential automobile within the improvement and development of the ladies’s sport,” Devine stated.
Sri Lanka and Pakistan spherical out the primary group whereas Bangladesh, England, Scotland, South Africa and the West Indies make up the second.
‘Breaking the limitations’
The South Africans, who misplaced to Australia in final yr’s remaining in Cape City, have a brand new captain in Laura Wolvaardt who’s eager to construct on that efficiency.
“Reaching our first-ever World Cup remaining in 2023 was a giant landmark second for us,” she wrote on the ICC web site.
The Proteas surprisingly beat England within the semi-finals.
“It was a giant ‘breaking the limitations and pushing the boundaries’ second for the group.
“Earlier than that, we would made the semi-finals on various events, so to have the ability to go that one step additional was essential for us as a bunch.
“Now we would prefer to go that one step additional and raise the trophy.”
Heather Knight‘s skilled England facet, which incorporates Nat Sciver-Brunt, Alice Capsey, Sophie Ecclestone and Lauren Bell, will probably be eager for revenge after they meet the Proteas on October 7.
Bangladesh face Scotland at Sharjah within the opening match of the match, the place the prize cash is for the primary time equal to the lads’s version with a $2.34 million purse for the winners of the October 20 remaining.
That may be a 134 p.c enhance on the $1 million awarded to the Australians after they clinched the title in South Africa final yr.
The ICC stated the transfer was supposed “to prioritise the ladies’s sport and speed up its development”.
Bangladesh had been slated to host the match however it was shifted to Dubai and Sharjah after weeks of political unrest in July and August ousted the federal government of autocratic ex-premier Sheikh Hasina.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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