A record-breaking crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) had the privilege of witnessing first hand another dominant Australia T20 World Cup final performance.
The final attendance figure of 86,174 is the highest recorded for a women’s cricket match and only 4,011 short of the record for the highest attendance in any women’s sporting contest, a benchmark set at the Fifa Women’s World Cup final in 1999.
On the field, Australia were setting records of their own. Their 85-run win was their fifth women’s T20 World Cup title in the last six events and they’ve now won all but two women’s T20 World Cups since the inaugural tournament in 2009. With the exception of the 2016 final defeat to West Indies, Australia haven’t lost a knockout game in a women’s T20 World Cup since their 2009 semi-final loss to England at The Oval. Their margin of victory was also the largest in a T20 World Cup final by some distance.
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Their total of 184-4 is the highest score ever hit by a team in a T20 World Cup final, across both the women’s and men’s events. The 78* and 75 hit respectively by the Australian opening pair of Beth Mooney and Alyssa Healy were the two highest individual scores hit an women’s T20 World Cup final while Mooney’s effort was the most runs scored by an opener in men’s or women’s T20 World Cup final.
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Mooney’s overall tournament run haul of 259 is also the most runs scored by a batter in a women’s T20 World Cup, while Megan Schutt’s final wicket that sealed victory for Australia took her level with Anya Shrubsole for the most wickets taken in a single women’s T20 World Cup.
With the tournament now over and done with, attention will quickly turn to next year’s World Cup in New Zealand where Australia will seek to regain the title they lost to England in 2017.
