As the champions prepared to continue their unbeaten defence of their title against Bangladesh in Visakhapatnam on Thursday, Sutherland stood atop the tournament’s wicket-taking lists with 10 scalps.<\/p>\n
Half came in the match of the tournament against hosts India on Sunday when Sutherland celebrated her 24th birthday with her first international five-for.<\/p>\n
It was a bravura performance, enabling Australia to get out of a real hole as she sparked the late collapse that kept rampant India’s total down to 330 and earned the champs the chance to pull off their world record chase.<\/p>\n
Sutherland’s 5-40 featured a bit of everything – sheer pace, hostile short balls, off-cutters, cross-seam and such slow back-of-the-hand fare that even the spinners were quicker – so no-one could settle against her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And she evidently enjoyed every minute.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a part of my game and for the last few years a ‘go-to’, particularly with the amount of T20 cricket I’ve played,” Sutherland mused on the eve of the match when quizzed on the bewildering variety of her ‘change-ups’.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I think that’s particularly when conditions are in the batter’s favour, so it’s nice that it’s coming out pretty well.<\/p>\n
“I’m feeling pretty good. I feel like I’ve got really good rhythm, coming in after the powerplay and making a bit of an impact.”<\/p>\n
Her 10 wickets have come at an average of 8.10 and she’s given up less than three runs an over as the pick of Australia’s bowlers so far.<\/p>\n
Still, Sutherland herself believes it’s the overall strength-in-depth of Australia’s attack which remains key.<\/p>\n
“That’s the beauty of our bowling line-up. We’ve got all bases covered and it’s been really cool to see Kimmy (Kim Garth) do her thing up top and then even T-Mac (Tahlia McGrath) impacting through the middle and Shooter (Megan Schutt) as well,” she shrugged.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So we feel like we’re building. Still haven’t quite had that perfect bowling performance, but we’re happy with how we’re going.”<\/p>\n
For Sutherland, though, it’s been a different story with the bat. Having begun 2025 by becoming the first Australian to score a women’s Test hundred at the MCG with her epic 163 against England, she’s subsequently endured surprisingly lean pickings in white-ball internationals.<\/p>\n
Apart from her 45 and 54no in the preparation series in India last month, she’s only scored 85 runs in 11 other ODI and T20I knocks this year, including a woeful start to this World Cup with just six runs in three innings.<\/p>\n
Australia could do with their richly gifted strokemaker finding her touch again against Bangladesh, who’ve proved no pushovers, giving both England and South Africa a scare in defeat. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’ve prepped really well. We had a really good series against them a little bit over a year ago which gave us some really good insight,” said Sutherland, who recognises the danger from teenage allrounder Shorna Akter, who scored Bangladesh’s fastest ever ODI 50 against South Africa.<\/p>\n
“They’ve done a little bit of damage throughout this tournament, so we’ve had a really thorough look at their team … we don’t take anyone lightly.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the champions prepared to continue their unbeaten defence of their title against Bangladesh in Visakhapatnam on Thursday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-216480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}