Before this, Australia ladies won six out of seven tournaments and finished first in group A while the New Zealand team slumped to the third position.
Australia swept to a seventh title in the Women’s T20 World Cup and progress to their super six stage with a huge 60-run victory over New Zealand in a group A match in Sharjah today.
Making the highest score in the tournament, they reached 148-8 after 20 overs thanks to Beth Mooney’s 40 in Australia’s innings while the Eastern women were subdued for a paltry 88 runs after 19.2 overs.
Best bowler of the kangaroos was Megan Schutt who served 3.2 overs and returned with figures of 3-3 that earned her the Player of the Match award.
“We could have been smarter with the bat at the end and in the latter stages we should have done so, but quite honestly I am very happy with the way we came out with the ball,” added Australia’s designated captain Alyssa Healy.
“While Megan Schutt has been wonderful, Ifelly has said that the entire attack today was unbelievably awful.”
Defending Champions Australia, who obtained gold medals in the last six of the eight competitions, Leads group A. New Zealand has now gone back into the third rank behind Pakistan though ahead of India on net run rate.
Having won the toss and opting the bat first, Healy made sure her team got up to the even at the beginning themselves distributing four boundaries for an even 20-ball score, and then went for 26 runs before gailting a slower from Rosemary Mair to the cover.
Ellyse Perry was out first class long_pull chasing Gordon and got his four runs before Cooper from long on and shared 45 runs from the fads with Mooney who eventually went for 40 out to Amelia Kerr and held this time Green mid-off.
Australia were in trouble with the returns per orders but Amelia Kerr was getting Perry (30) and Grace Harris (0) of the orders online with her googly in two consecutive moves.
Kerr then caught the ball way back in the mid_inner where Phoebe Litchfield (18) was out caught for the second time.
Australia ended up losing a whole heap of wickets, but in the end, they set a big score which the White Ferns couldn’t chase.
New Zealand, who were the other winners in the first round, suffered a slow start and, once Kerr was dismissed for 29, the lower order collapsed with the whole team losing 9 wickets for only 29 more runs.
Schutt ended the tournament with six wickets in hand while Annabel Sutherland also stood up to take 3 for 21.
“Getting off to a good start was important and we allowed too much of a chase run rate,” said Kiwi captain Sophie Devine. “We still have another two games left to play.”
Pakistan will play against Australia in Dubai on Sunday while fun against Sri Lanka is scheduled for the New Zealand team in Sharjah on Saturday.