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AAP
AAP
Sport
Ben McKay

Healy, Lanning call to foster competition

Australia's World Cup champions want more help given to developing teams. (AAP)

Australia's World Cup champions are keen to share the game's wealth, encouraging cricket's governing body to send more money and matches to emerging women's teams.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has been roundly criticised for its prizemoney at the 2022 World Cup, with the women receiving about one third of the amount paid to the men's winners.

England received $US4 million for winning the 2019 men's tournament, but Meg Lanning's team won $US1.3 million for triumphing three years later.

The ICC has pledged to take greater strides towards gender equality, but Alyssa Healy believes it's not such a simple question in the women's game.

"The irony about prize money is you're rewarding the teams that are already really well supported," Healy told AAP.

"It's great that it's continuing to increase but it's rewarding the teams that are already fully professional."

Healy wants to see overall prize pools increase, but to "share the love" and see a broader base with prize money distribution.

Lanning said she'd "absolutely support that".

"You've got to get a really good base and platform first before you can start lifting the top up even more," the captain told AAP.

"There's a lot of room for investment and putting resources into developing those smaller nations and allowing them to keep getting better."

In contrast to the men's game, women's cricket has been historically dominated by two nations: 2022 finalists Australia and England.

In 12 editions of the 50-over Women's World Cup, Australia have won seven, England five and New Zealand one.

Double the number of teams have won the 12 men's World Cups: Australia (five), West Indies (two), India (two), Pakistan (one), Sri Lanka (one) and England (one).

Both Healy and Lanning agreed the second part of the puzzle was playing the emerging nations more often.

"(At the World Cup), Bangladesh got an opportunity to play 50-over cricket against us and England who they've never played before. That is the next step," Healy said.

"We need to play bilateral series against them more. Schedule them in the calendar."

England captain Heather Knight said the "brilliant" World Cup showcased rich talent in all regions.

"To keep that happening we need more countries playing more cricket," she said.

"To keep the games in a healthy state there needs to be support throughout different nations."

Lanning said Bangladesh and Pakistan showed great ability with their competitiveness in New Zealand.

"You've also got the teams who didn't qualify. Sri Lanka comes to mind who, again are very skillful," she said.

"We need to have as many opportunities for them to play cricket because it needs to be strong around the world. You don't want one or two countries pulling away from the others.

"Hopefully that's on the cards for the ICC to look after and make sure that's developing."

On this front, Australia are talking the talk and walking the walk.

The world champions' next outing will be a pre-Commonwealth Games hit-out against Pakistan and hosts Ireland, supported by coach Matthew Mott.

"The more that we can do to help build that, whether that's playing games, against different teams, that's really important," he said.

"Those sort of opportunities help grow the game and and the ICC has been really good in this area as well. Hopefully they can continue to try and develop the associate nations."

The next ODI World Cup is scheduled for 2025, with a T20 edition in South Africa next March.

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