Pitch perfect: The unbreakable Australians
PLUS: Rossco's final bow, the brilliant Paul Coll and putting an end to the cheap-shot cannonball tackles.
We likely saw the most dominant international cricket team ever assembled in this country over the past month.
In terms of strength relative to opposition, Australia were so far ahead of the rest at the World Cup that we look at the 71-run margin of the final and think England did alright.
As an exercise I put together my Team of the Tournament. Reasons had to be invented to keep Australians out: Ellyse Perry didn’t bowl enough; Ash Gardner didn’t have enough opportunities with the bat, likewise Tahlia McGrath. Alana King just missed out to Amelia Kerr because of the latter’s superior batting and fielding; Jess Jonassen was a shade behind England star Sophie Ecclestone in the battle of left-arm orthodox spinners.
I settled on: Rachael Haynes, Alyssa Healey, Laura Wolvaardt, Meg Lanning*, Nat Sciver, Beth Mooney, Marizanne Kapp, Amelia Kerr, Shabnim Ismail, Sophie Ecclestone, Megan Schutt.
It would not have been outrageous to pick 11 Australians because they have constructed a near-perfect team, capable of winning in any conditions from any position.
They have the most consistent platform-setting opener (Haynes) and the most dynamic opener who also keeps (Healey). They have the best captain and non-opening top-order batter (Lanning) and the best finisher (Mooney). They have quicks who are brilliant batters (Perry and McGrath), an offspinner who can bat and field dynamically (Gardner), and a legspinner (King) and left-arm orthodox (Jonassen) who took 25 wickets between them at an economy rate of a tick over 4. They have a swing bowler (Schutt) who takes wickets and keeps things on a tight leash in the powerplay overs.
If you were going to be picky you’d say that Darcie Brown didn’t have the greatest month with the new ball, but she’s 18! Her time will come.
Annabel Sutherland and Amanda-Jade Wellington could not make the XI for the final - they’d be centrepiece players for many teams.
At times Australia were playing a different sport from their opposition. Just look at Healey, who’d had a bit of a so-so tournament until flicking a switch for the semifinals and scoring 129 and yesterday’s astonishing 170 when it mattered most.
She could afford to be in consistent in the round robin because at the other end she knew she had Haynes, who metronomically compiled scores of 130, 34, 30, 83*, 43, 17, 7, 85 and 68.
Behind them in Lanning and Perry they have the greatest No3-4 combination in the history of the women’s game and, oh that’s right, Mooney, who averaged 110 for the tournament at a strike rate of more than a run a ball.
The ground fielding and catching was exceptional. It was the difference in the final, where Healey and Haynes were both dropped in their 40s (the former by Sciver, though she did balance the books with a tremendous unbeaten 148).
Their batting and fielding is so much stronger and more dynamic than the rest that they can afford to pick more attacking bowlers - like Brown and King - knowing they can afford to leak a few runs in the process of picking up wickets.
They have shown what women’s cricket looks like if you put your best players into full-time high-performance programmes and back them up with a professional T20 domestic tournament that has its own window and welcomes players from all countries.
As a friend noted: they’re more than cricketers; they’re athletes.
The challenge to try to get on the same level as them is daunting. England and India have the resources. India is launching a six-team women’s IPL next year to replace its insufficient three-team challenge.
England’s The Hundred has been much mocked, but could be an important staging post for the development of the women’s game, with eight franchises aligned directly to those playing in the men’s tournament.
If you think the Big Three have advantages in men’s cricket, it will be nothing compared to what you’ll see development in women’s cricket over the next decade.
That’s a worry. New Zealand, South Africa and the rest will continue to export their best players to the WBBL, the women’s Hundred and in future the WIPL, but the ones who don’t get to play around the world will fall further behind.
There has to be a plan to bridge that gap. Quite where to start is the question.
From the sublime to Seddon Park, where Ross Taylor takes his final bow in national colours today.
A dead rubber ODI against the Netherlands is not a fitting ending to such a magnificent career but as a wise man once said: it is what it is.
I’ll be writing more fully on Taylor and his career tomorrow, including a rundown of his last day out, but for now revel in this interactive, which is a lovely trawl through Taylor’s career with plenty of graphs and charts for us anoraks to get stuck into.
The best sporting performance by a New Zealander over the past week goes to Paul Coll, who defended his British Open squash title - and world No 1 ranking - without dropping a game.
His mental dismantling of his great rival and No1-seed Ali Farag in the final was something to behold, as was his humility when asked about it afterwards.
“I played some amazing players this week,” Coll said, “and Ali, it’s such a mental battle with us two, and it’s just enjoyable squash. He’s a great champion. I have so much respect for him, with what he’s doing with his family; travelling around with their baby, he and [wife] Nour [El Tayeb] are just incredible so I’m very proud to win this title against such a great champion.”
Collwon 12-10 11-6 11-4 in less than an hour, completing an astonishing week. In the semifinal, Coll, 29, beat another Egyptian Mostafa Asal 11-9 11-9 11-9.
At just 20, Asal looks like he’ll keep Egypt at the top of the world squash chain for a while. Seven of the world’s top 10 come from the north African nation. Five of the top 10 women are Egyptian, including No 1 Nouran Gohar. Joelle King, who made the semis in Hull, rose one place to No 5.
If anyone wants to grab the top spot off Coll, they’re going to have to do it the hard way.
“My good friend Lee said to me before the event that nobody gave this spot to me easily, so don’t give it up easily,” Coll told reporters.
“Holding the No 1 spot and winning the title, there was a lot of pressure on it. I’m just extremely proud to win and keep my No 1 spot for another month and then we have to do it all again. I’m just extremely proud of myself for pulling through.”
Hull has seen plenty of good performances by Kiwis over the years, but most of them came in the colours of Hull FC (think James Leuluai, Fred Ah Kuoi, Steve Kearney, Gary Kemble) or Hull Kingston Rovers (Gary Prohm, Mark Broadhurst, Gordon Smith and Whetu Taewa), the city’s two warring league sides.
While this might seem like a cheap tactic to shoehorn an oval-ball code into Coll’s limelight, there is a tangential reason.
His uncle was Tony Coll, a West Coast second-rower who played 30 times for the Kiwis and was known as pound-for-pound one of the toughest men to ever play the game.
A West Coaster with league pedigree doing well in Hull - there’s something kind of romantic about that.
Staying with league, the Warriors did a solid, professional job on the Broncos on Saturday, rinsing much of the bad taste left by their two-point win over the rancid Tigers in week three.
What did leave a bad taste in the mouth after the 20-6 win was the inability of some players, Jazz Tevaga and Tom Flegler notably, to refrain from cannonball tackles.
Targeting the knees of players who are not going anywhere and cannot protect themselves might not be as dangerous in the long term as attacking players’ heads, but it is just as cheap and nasty.
Nobody will ever claim the Warriors are strong on the wings or in the centres, but if they can do a job defensively like they did this weekend, then that forward pack will win them some games.
No, it won’t be their year, but hey, they’re fifth equal so roll with it.
The Super Rugby weekend saved the best until last, with the Chiefs beating the Hurricanes 30-29 in sunlight, but my head was at Hagley Oval, so I haven't had a chance to catch it yet.
I did, however, catch the last half hour of the Crusaders v Highlanders and that is 30 minutes we should all charge for. Dreadful stuff, though the Crusaders will bank the points after winning 17-14.
The Blues thrashing of Moana Pasifika was a little sad but had the weekend’s biggest flashpoint, with Caleb Clarke achieving the unlucky feat of being incredibly unlucky while also being absolutely bang-to-rights sent off.
In attempting to charge down a kick chase he flew so high his knee collided with the head of Tomasi Alosio. Given that the onus is on the defender to avoid contact with the head it was a nailed-on red card, but one conceded in freakishly unlucky circumstances without a hint of malice.
THIS WEEK
The Bounce will be back first thing tomorrow with a Taylor-made newsletter, before the usual Wednesday offering for paying subscribers only and TWTW and TWTWB on Friday.
