Triumphant Australia captain Pat Cummins basked in his side’s World Cup triumph over hosts India, capping a remarkable year by reaching “the top of the mountain”.
Australia arrived in Ahmedabad as underdogs, with the home side boasting a perfect record of 10 wins en route to the final, a monster crowd of over 110,000 roaring them on and familiar conditions.
They even had the tournament’s top-scorer in Virat Kohli and leading wicket-taker in Mohammed Shami, but were unable to match Australia’s ability to stand tall in knockout cricket.
Travis Head took the starring role with a brilliant 137, making light work of India’s under-powered 240 all out, as a six-wicket win made his country six-time champions.
It also capped a great year for Australia across red and white-ball cricket, having also pipped India to the World Test Championship crown in June and retained the Ashes with a 2-2 draw on English soil.
Reflecting on a stunning sequence of results for his side, Cummins said: “It’s crazy. This year will be a year we remember for a long, long time.
“It’s been awesome. We’ve pretty much spent the whole Australian winter away playing overseas but we’ve had a lot of success and this pips it all. Top of the mountain. We saved our best for last.
“The passion in India is unrivalled around the world. Every single person here was wearing that blue shirt and whatever the result we were never going to forget a day like today.”
Cummins had a fine day at the office. He made the bold and inspired decision to send a power-packed Indian batting line-up in after winning the toss and then produced a superb, boundary-less 10-over spell that included the key wicket of player-of-the-tournament Virat Kohli.
But he was happy to give Head his moment in the limelight, as well as sharing with some of the backroom boys who helped him reach the final after he suffered a broken left hand.
He was not fit until their fifth match of the tournament and was not even in India when Australia lost their first two group games.
“Trav does what he does. He’s really brave, he takes the game on, puts pressure on bowlers and to do it on the biggest stage showed huge character,” Cummins said.
“It was amazing. We couldn’t be happier for Trav, he’s a legend and we love him… how fun is he to watch?
“It’s also on the unheralded few, the selectors that backed him in even when he had a broken hand and the medical team to get him back out there. It was a big risk that we took and it paid off.”
Head was struggling to take in the scale of his achievement, with each of his four sixes and 15 fours stamping down the hopes of the hordes of over a billion Indians.
He had earlier taken a cracking over-the-shoulder catch to remove India skipper Rohit Sharma in full flow.
“Not in a million years (could I have imagined this)… what an amazing day. I’m thrilled to be part of it,” he told Sky Sports.
“It’s a lot better than sitting on the couch at home (injured). I was very lucky to get back here.
“I couldn’t imagine getting a hundred, I couldn’t imagine holding on to that catch… but you want to help your team-mates and contribute so to do that on a big stage in front of a full house, under all that pressure, is something I’ll be able to look back on all my life.”
Home skipper Rohit, who had dreamed of delivering his country’s first global trophy in 12 years amid stifling expectation, cut a hollow figure at the close.
“It wasn’t our day, we tried everything but it wasn’t supposed to be,” he said.
“We know that we were not good enough today but I’m really proud of how we’ve played from game one.
“We kept losing wickets and couldn’t stitch up a big partnership, which is exactly what Australia did. Credit to Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne, they stitched a big partnership and put us completely out of the game.”
Tape ball programme can help England find unorthodox talent – Richard Gould
The England and Wales Cricket Board hopes to unearth a new seam of talent beyond the game’s traditional league structure with a national tape ball scheme that allows players to thrive without “whites, willow and leather”.
The practice of using a soft ball wrapped in electrical tape to aid swing and variable bounce is a common one in Asia, where it has helped produce express pace bowlers like Haris Rauf, Shaheen Afridi and spinners such as Rashid Khan and Shakib-al-Hasan, but has been slow to enter the mainstream conversation in the United Kingdom.
The Chance to Shine charity has long pioneered tape ball cricket as part of its engagement hubs and now, with the ECB keen to live up to its lofty aspiration of becoming the most inclusive team sport in the country, it is at the heart of a new core cities programme designed to engage ‘diverse communities in urban areas’.
Speaking at a launch event where games were hosted in a warehouse space in Birmingham, ECB chief executive Richard Gould was optimistic about reaching out to those with an interest in cricket but limited access to the pavilions and prepared pitches in the club setup.
“We talk about clubs with picket fences around them. In the past that has been seen as the preserve of the ECB. We’ve missed a complete trick on that,” he said.
“When we talk about the recreational game we’re not just talking about Premier League clubs and village cricket clubs now. We’re talking about all forms of cricket that take place.
“You can play the game anywhere, any time, with anybody, in any environment you want. You don’t have to have whites, willow and leather to do it. You can just pick up a bat and a ball and have some fun.”
As well as fulfilling its remit of reaching out to all comers at a grassroots level, Gould also believes there are benefits to finding cricketers with different styles who have learned the game outside the traditional, private-school heavy pathways.
“Without doubt there are,” he said. “We have to get out and try to find the talent. More to the point, we have to try and find talent in areas that we haven’t normally looked for it.
“I do think county pathways will be looking to make sure they don’t miss out on this talent. It’s just about punching through all of our normal procedures and finding ways to both get people in the game and unearthing that talent which may be unorthodox and great.”
Meg Lanning: Exercise obsession and not enough fuel led to Australia retirement
Former Australia captain Meg Lanning revealed her “obsession” with exercise and not eating enough precipitated her surprise international retirement late last year.
Lanning was at the helm of one of the most dominant eras the sport has ever seen but she missed last year’s Ashes for medical reasons and pulled the plug on her Australia career in November.
She opened up about her hidden health issues on the Howie Games podcast, explaining that running up to 90 kilometres a week coupled with eating two small meals a day led to her dropping from 64kg to 57kg.
View this post on Instagram“I was over-exercising and under-fuelling,” the 32-year-old said. “It wasn’t a physical thing. I’ve always been really physically active and liked that side of it, but it became a bit of an obsession.
“I’d maybe eat a couple of meals a day if I was lucky but they weren’t significant. Initially it didn’t start off as a deliberate thing, it just became a bit of a new normal.
“But it slowly crept into conscious decisions because essentially I felt good.
“I wasn’t getting injured like everybody was telling me I was going to do. It sort of just spiralled and I was in denial, even though everybody kept telling me something wasn’t quite right.
“I was not in a place to be able to go on tour and play cricket and give the commitment levels that were required for that Ashes series, mentally and physically.”
Lanning, who led Australia to five World Cup titles in total and Commonwealth Games glory in 2022, said her struggle was not officially diagnosed as an eating disorder.
“It wasn’t labelled as that but I was exercising a lot and I wasn’t eating enough to fuel that – it was a bit out of whack,” Lanning said.
“It was a bit of control because I felt very out of control with what my future looked like. I felt like I was in control of that and that made me feel better.”
Lanning sought help from medical professionals after also struggling with insomnia and continues to play domestically, while she has been signed for London Spirit for The Hundred this year.
“I dreaded night time because I knew I would go to bed and not be able to sleep,” she said. “That would make me so mad. I would just get more angry with myself. If you can’t sleep, you can’t do anything.
“I feel like I’m in a good spot now. Cricket is still part of what I do. But I wasn’t cut out for the international touring schedule and what came with all of that.”
Yorkshire not in ECB’s new ‘Tier 1’ revamp of women’s professional game
Yorkshire will have to wait until 2027 to take part in the England and Wales Cricket Board’s new ‘Tier 1’ revamp of the women’s professional game, after eight other counties were selected to lead the way.
Durham, Essex, Hampshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Surrey and Warwickshire have been chosen as hosts, with the governing body abolishing the existing regional structure in favour of alignment with the first-class counties.
The blow to Yorkshire, for whom this is a further setback after several turbulent years on and off the field, has been mitigated by a promise to bring them into an expanded competition in the third season.
Glamorgan have been given the same assurances and both will receive additional funding to help build their pathway.
But there will be no ‘Tier 1’ cricket at Lord’s in the foreseeable future, with MCC declining to put itself forward and Middlesex among those overlooked. Sussex have also been left on the outside looking in, despite a long and strong commitment to the women’s game.
They will be hoping to be included as the elite level continues to grow, with the ECB outlining plans to further expand to 12 teams by 2029.
ECB chief executive Richard Gould said: “I’d like to congratulate those counties who have been successful in their bids.
“I’m also delighted that in light of the support we have seen and the strength of the bids we have considered, we can accelerate our plans, including new top tier professional teams at Glamorgan and Yorkshire by 2027 with a further two being introduced by 2029.
“More professional teams means more women able to make a career out of being a cricketer, more role models to inspire future generations, and more of the country having a women’s professional team to follow nearby.
“I recognise today’s announcement will also be disappointing to those who haven’t been successful at this stage. But with the new three-tier structure we are introducing, there is still a huge opportunity for them to compete in the other tiers so together we can all realise the potential of women’s domestic cricket.”
Beth Barrett-Wild, the ECB’s director of the women’s professional game, praised the calibre of offers from around the country.
“At the start of this tender process we challenged the first-class counties to show us their vision for the women’s professional game and to demonstrate their desire and commitment to becoming one of our professional Tier 1 clubs,” she said.
“Over the last couple of months it’s been brilliant to see the time and energy that has gone into the submissions, and I’ve been hugely impressed by the quality and ambition of the bids.
“It’s clear that the game is united in wanting to take the women’s professional game forward. I’m energised about what comes next, for the counties themselves, for the players, for fans and for everyone who wants to see women’s cricket continue its accelerated trajectory.”
The ECB has put £5million per year of new funding into the women’s domestic set-up, rising to £8million when Yorkshire and Glamorgan come aboard.
It estimates a potential increase of 80 per cent in the number of professional female players.
There will be no promotion or relegation between 2025 and 2028, allowing the new three-tier system to bed in.
SportsMax is the Caribbean sports channel of choice, committed to providing sporting content of the highest quality to the Caribbean, delivered by a team of highly innovative, passionate and qualified professionals.
(876) 619-7629
digitalmedia@sportsmax.tv
