Cape Town, Feb 27 (IANS) As Australia competed another three-peat of winning Women’s T20 World Cup titles with a 19-run victory over South Africa in the final at Newlands, opener Beth Mooney stated that the team never gets tired of winning trophies and are aware of teams trying to match up to their levels.
“There’s as many as there is out there. We don’t get tired of it. Something we speak about as a group is making sure we’re always evolving along the way. We’ve seen in this tournament there are teams around the world getting better and better as the years go on and we know that we’re being hunted.”
“People are looking at us for what we do and how we go about it, so certainly it won’t last forever, but we’ll enjoy it for as long as we can and hopefully we can keep piling up those trophies,” she said in the post-match press conference.
Beth, the left-handed opener, was named Player of the Match for her unbeaten 74 off 53 balls coming on a tricky pitch for batting, which had already hosted two semi-finals of the tournament. Despite being scratchy, Beth soldiered on to bring up her fifty and carry her bat throughout the innings to take Australia to 156/6.
Her knock on Sunday added another chapter to list of emerging tall for Australia in a big final. In the 2020 Women’s T20 World Cup, Beth had slammed 78 not out off 54 balls as Australia defeated India in front of 86,174 fans at the MCG. She would go on to notch up another half-century in the Commonwealth Games gold-medal match against India.
“I wasn’t too happy with how I was hitting them. I actually asked one of the girls who ran out if she could ask Shell (head coach Shelley Nitschke) if she wanted to retire me – because I was hitting it that bad. That didn’t quite make it to Shell.”
“It just goes to show if you hang in there long enough and get the pace of the wicket – I probably didn’t have a great plan through the middle there, stepping across and trying to hit it too square – but once I stayed a bit stiller and hit it a bit straighter, it wasn’t too bad.”
“I think I’ve gotten to a bit of a sweet spot with how I prepare and how comfortable I am with my game. I just thrive off being able to grit and fight and probably go through those tough innings that don’t feel as good but perhaps get the teams over the line that I play for,” she elaborated.
Beth also heaped some praise on all-rounder Ashleigh Gardner, who was named Player of the Tournament for scoring 110 runs with the bat and taking ten wickets with her off-spin, including taking 5/12 against New Zealand.
“She’s matured immensely across the last few years off the field and with her own game she’s probably in a sweet spot as well in terms of how comfortable and confident she is.”
“She’s making some match-winning contributions very consistently for this Australian team, so I’ve been really impressed with what I’ve seen from Ash and she’s going to be around for a long time, so hopefully she can continue to produce those games.”
–IANS
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