Dominant Australia hailed as best ever after sixth Women’s T20 World Cup triumph

“We want to win everything,” Ash Gardner said before the T20 World Cup final – and Australia’s women’s cricket team keep doing just that after their triumph in Cape Town underlined their status as one of the great sport teams in history.

Meg Lanning’s side’s clinically efficient 19-run victory over hosts South Africa on Sunday even had England star Tammy Beaumont wondering whether they might be simply the best of all time.

“You could argue they are the greatest cricket team of all-time. They could challenge that great Australian team of the 2000s when I was growing up,” she told Sky Sports.

This was the fourth successive World Cup white-ball triumph the team has enjoyed – three in T20 and one in the 50-over format – stretching back to 2018, with last year’s Commonwealth Games title thrown in for good measure.

They have now won 43 of their last 46 completed white-ball matches over the past two years. In their last 22 T20 internationals stretching back to March 2021, they have lost just once, and that only in a Super Over after tying with India in Mumbai in December.

In ODIs, the record is even more startling, as they have won their last 15 going back to a loss against India’s women in Mackay in September 2021. It is now just one 50-over loss in their last 42, going back nearly six years. And have not lost a Test match in nine years.

“They’re an amazing outfit and they keep out ahead by reinventing themselves, bringing in new players, young players who are performing on the crucial stage and still always the old names – Alyssa Healy, Beth Mooney, Jess Jonassen, Megan Schutt, Ellyse Perry,” said Beaumont.

Nasser Hussain, England’s former men’s team captain, said: “The key is they keep evolving. Any sporting organisation will tell you that if you stay at your level, others will eventually catch up.

“But that’s twice now they’ve done three-peats at world T20s, they keep evolving, saying, ‘we’re not going to stand still’.

“Ellyse Perry is a classic example. She missed the last world T20 because of injury and people were writing her off, so she had to take her game to the next level, which she has done.”

Driving the success has been captain Lanning, who lifted her seventh World Cup in all – five as the team’s captain – to go with her leadership of the Commonwealth Games-winning outfit.

After a break for her own well-being, the 30-year-old, who has shouldered the captaincy for nine successful years, was hailed again by her players as a “special leader” whose calmness under pressure rubs off.

“She strikes the ball like no-one else in the world, an incredible talent. No wonder she’s gone for so much [money] in the ]Indian] WPL,” said Beaumont.

Asked why Australia remained so far ahead of the pack, she added: “They play under pressure all the time – pressure to get in an under-11 side, pressure to get in a NSW under-15 side.

“You have to earn the right to get in any Australian team - and then you have to perform. They’re 10 years ahead of everyone else - everyone else is playing catch-up.”