Ashleigh Gardner picked up a career-best, player-of-the-match 5-12 against New Zealand after making just three with the bat during the group-stage fixture of the ongoing T20 World Cup.
Georgia Wareham hadn’t played any international cricket in nearly 16 months but dealt Bangladesh a body blow with her match-winning 3-20 upon slotting back into Australia’s XI.
Alyssa Healy had been on the sidelines with a weeks-long calf injury but struck vital fifties in two of her first three innings after returning to the line-up.
Grace Harris’s tone-setting 3-0-7-2 – her best T20I figures – against Sri Lanka was only the second instance she had bowled for Australia since coming back into the side a year ago after a six-year hiatus.
Tahlia McGrath hadn’t considered herself any more than a “specialist fielder” through the best part of the tour until her decisive 33-ball 57 against South Africa sealed Australia’s semi-finals berth.
To understand Australia’s enviable depth, one has to understand these numbers as much as the context out of which they are born. Few teams across cricket can rival the vastness of the title favourites’ playing resources and fewer can find match-winners in the way the defending champions have.
As they gear up to take on India in the semi-final at Newlands on Thursday, the quality of their XI, as much as that of the reserves, explains why depth remains the most potent weapon in Australia’s arsenal.
“That’s absolutely our biggest strength – that we’ve got so many options,” McGrath, the player of the match in Australia’s fourth and final group-stage fixture, said. “So many players can play different roles and it seems to be someone different sticks their hand up every time. We’re all in really good form at the moment with the bat, with the ball, so we go into those semi-finals full of confidence.”
That the five-time winners have found a new hero in almost every game of the 10-team competition so far is down to the ‘D’ word. They have copped challenges varied, but dug deep to muster an appropriate, winning response every single time.
Be it the pitches – relatively slower by South African standards – the dearth of penetration in patches with both bat and ball during their unbeaten groups-stage run, or vice-captain Healy’s unavailability for the last group fixture through soreness in the left quad, Australia have shown how well prepared their XV is to counter adversity of any kind.
“I think that’s just a combination of a number of things,” Beth Mooney said. “Obviously, [there has been] a huge amount of investment from Cricket Australia over the last few years to get our domestic competition to the level that it is at the moment and also having people coming in and out of the Australian squad at any moment who can play a game and win a game for us.
“I guess that comes down to the culture that’s been created, too. We’ve got an environment here where the coaching staff, support staff and the players – we all thrive off each other’s belief and that means that anyone can go out there and contribute, be successful whether they come from the bench or outside the squad or anything like that.
“So, I guess it’s a bit of fortune but certainly a huge amount of investment not just into the game back home, but obviously into the culture and the environment here.”
No player in the public eye has fed more off this environment in the past year than their feted allrounder, Ellyse Perry. Dropped from the T20I side during the Ashes at the start of 2022 and then having sat out the entire Birmingham Commonwealth Games, where Australia clinched gold, Perry has since emerged as much a beneficiary of the team’s flexible culture as a benefactor to their depth.
Memorably, the 32-year-old’s T20I career found a second wind during Australia’s victorious five-T20I India tour in December. She finished second only to Mooney on the series’ run chart, averaging 82.50 for her 165 runs, and has been a key all-round contributor in Australia’s World Cup campaign so far in South Africa.
“Pez has done just Pez in the last few months,” Mooney said. “She’s obviously has evolved her game pretty significantly in the T20 format, and takes the game on a little bit earlier I’d say than she has done in the past. Obviously we had a couple of players missing in India and she got her opportunity back in the middle order there, and she absolutely took it with both hands.
“She probably would have had to wait a little bit of time in that she wasn’t expecting that opportunity, but when she did, she absolutely batted the house down and we’ve known for a long time that’s what she’s capable of. So it’s really nice to see that she’s been able to put that out in the park and win games for Australia with that style of play.”
With their well-rounded line-up, Australia stand head and shoulders above India, whose out-of-form high-profile batters in captain Harmanpreet Kaur and opener Shafali Verma are only one of the many concerns facing them ahead of what is a rematch of the 2020 T20 World Cup and the Commonwealth Games gold-medal deciders. Mooney, however, expects the face-off to be “a huge contest” given “they have pushed us significantly in the last few years and got a bunch of match-winners in their line-up”.
But if this World Cup has established anything beyond doubt, it is that Australia’s battled-hardened army of impact players far outnumber those in any other team. For all the anticipation of a closely fought semi-final, Australia’s inimitable depth might prove way too good for India’s dreams.
