Ellyse Perry believes that Australia are simply rusty after surviving a dreadful collapse to claim a tense two-wicket victory over New Zealand in the opening Twenty20 International at North Sydney Oval.<\/p>\n
The reigning T20 World Cup champions won with seven balls to spare on Sunday night, scoring 8-165 in reply to New Zealand’s 2-162.<\/p>\n
Number 10 Kim Garth faced eight balls without scoring before hitting the winning boundary.<\/p>\n
It gave Australia a 1-0 lead in the three-match Rose Bowl series with the remaining matches at North Sydney Oval on Tuesday and Thursday.<\/p>\n
Australia were charging towards victory when star veterans Beth Mooney and Perry had taken the score to 1-86 off just 8.2 overs, but the loss of Mooney for 38 from 25 balls in a terrible run-out mix-up changed the game as wickets started to tumble.<\/p>\n
“There’s probably an element of not being clinical tonight,” said Perry, who top-scored for Australia with 52 from 30 balls.<\/p>\n
“A lot of our batters haven’t batted in the last 10 days. We went up to Brisbane and played three ODIs against Bangladesh and I think there were only about five girls who really had any significant time in the middle.<\/p>\n
“There’s an element of that, along with new conditions and a new format we haven’t played since July.”<\/p>\n
Perry raced to her equal fastest T20 half century in just 27 balls but dragged a short ball from Jess Kerr to deep backward square, where she was well caught by Issy Sharp running to her right.<\/p>\n
Georgia Wareham (10 from 7 balls) sliced a leg-spinner and Jess’s younger sister, Amelia Kerr, straight to point.<\/p>\n
Ash Gardner (23 from 17) gave Jess Kerr her third wicket, lbw on review, and Annabel Sutherland (nine from 5 balls) added a fourth pulling a short ball to deep square leg.<\/p>\n
Nicola Carey (four from 3 balls) was run out by the recalled Tahlia McGrath and when captain Sophie Molineux (11 from 5 balls) was bowled Australia had lost 7-62.<\/p>\n
The victory was Australia’s 11th T20 win in a row, with their previous triumph having brought them World Cup glory at Lord’s in July, while the White Ferns have now lost six of their past nine matches.<\/p>\n
Not even a record partnership and a record-equalling total in Australia could secure New Zealand victory.<\/p>\n
After a difficult start by the White Ferns, player-of-the-match Georgia Plimmer and Maddy Green combined for an unbeaten 127 in 80 balls. Plimmer made a career high 85 off 68 balls and Green 56 from 37 balls.<\/p>\n
It was a breakout innings for the 22-year-old Plimmer, her fourth T20 half-century in 54 matches for New Zealand. Going into the game, she had an average of 16 and a strike rate of 104.<\/p>\n
She was the beneficiary of two difficult chances, a stumping and catch from wicketkeeper Beth Mooney standing up to seamers Sutherland and Lucy Hamilton.<\/p>\n
This is a new look White Ferns side following the retirements of key veterans Sophie Devine, Suzie Bates and Lea Tahuhu following a disappointing T20 World Cup campaign in the UK last June.<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including a cyclone hits the Cook Islands, and the FlyDubai pilot speaks about being attacked. (Source: Breakfast)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ellyse Perry believes that Australia are simply rusty after surviving a dreadful collapse to claim a tense two-wicket…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,311342,4596,16558,311343,311344,5269,311345,311346,311347,10543,111,43,139,3655,69,2022,46453,213,311348,49271,16559,49118,2248,2834,187438],"class_list":["post-635119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-australia","tag-australia-women","tag-competition","tag-cricket","tag-cricket-australia","tag-cricket-australia-new-zealand-women","tag-game","tag-icc-t20-world-cup","tag-international-cricket-council","tag-intl","tag-match","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nsw","tag-nz","tag-sport","tag-sporting","tag-sports","tag-t20-international","tag-t20i","tag-tournament","tag-twenty20","tag-women","tag-womens","tag-xarc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}