Ellyse Perry and Ash Gardner’s dominant century partnership has guided Australia to the biggest successful chase in women’s T20 World Cup history, defeating India by six wickets and knocking their rivals out of the tournament in the process.
Heading into Sunday’s final match of the group stage at Lord’s, the pressure was firmly on India. In front of a record crowd of 27,163, India knew that they needed to win to qualify for the knockout stages.
But it was the Aussies who looked to be feeling the pinch early, producing a couple of uncharacteristic errors as India posted an impressive total of 4-170.
Australia’s defensive bowling tactics appeared to be working until Harmanpreet Kaur exploded late in the innings. India took 36 runs from the last two overs, including three consecutive sixes off Sophie Molineux, to force the Aussies into a record chase.
It threatened to severely dent Australia’s confidence in chasing the total down, but Perry was quick to use all her experience as she called her teammates into a huddle at the innings break.
“We really recognised how great most of that bowling innings was,” Perry said.
“And the position that we were in to hopefully win a match.
“There was a really strong finish at the back end … but that gave us a good understanding that you could accelerate on that wicket.”
When Georgia Voll (4) was dismissed LBW on the second ball of the innings, the majority-Indian crowd at the famous ground went into a frenzy.
But with Perry’s words still ringing in their ears, they set about their record chase.
Phoebe Litchfield (24) and Beth Mooney (22) steadied the ship, but fell in the overs following the powerplay to ensure Australia still had a mountain to climb.
Gardner came to the crease at 3-68, with the required run rate ballooning out to nearly 11 runs per over not long after.
It looked as though Australia was staring down another tournament loss to India, but their star all-rounders have proven over the years that they should never be discounted.
The 13th over proved to be the turning point, as Gardner targeted Radha Yadav and hit the spinner for consecutive boundaries. Perry joined in with a four to make it 17 runs off the over. It set the tempo for the rest of the innings, with Perry and Gardner hitting 81 runs in a six-over stretch.
By the end of the 18th over, the pair had each brought up their second-half centuries for the tournament and had made a difficult chase look easy.
Perry (56) fell just after the pair had brought up their 100-run partnership, but with only three runs required for victory, Georgia Wareham joined Gardner (53 not out) at the crease to hit the winning runs with an over to spare.
After a lean run in tournament cricket, the Australians have openly spoken about training for the high-pressure moments. During their bowling innings, some poor fielding efforts when they were truly tested made it look as though they still had a lot of work to do.
And while Perry will get the praise yet again for another wonderful innings, she paid credit to the fact that the entire team had to contribute to get through their “biggest test so far”.
“Probably through the whole tournament, our approach has really been about the style of cricket that we want to play,” Perry said. “Walking into today’s match, we knew that it was going to be the biggest test so far.
“It wasn’t really focusing too much on what India were doing (during our partnership). It was more, ‘How are we going to take control of the game?’, which was really nice.
“To absorb a lot of the pressure that we did, and still come out and play with a bit of freedom at important times in the match when it really counted, was awesome. Today was a great test, and really nice to come through it the way we did.”
Australia will now turn their attention to Tuesday’s semi final against the West Indies at The Oval as they look to reclaim the T20 World Cup trophy.