NICK FRIEND: On a remarkable occasion in Melbourne, records and glass ceilings were shattered as Australia - palpably the world's best side - produced a performance befitting of a team with such a billing. Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney lit up the MCG
You held me down, but I got up
Already brushing off the dust
You hear my voice, you hear that sound
Like thunder, gonna shake the ground
You held me down, but I got up
Get ready 'cause I had enough
I see it all, I see it now
I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter
Dancing through the fire
'Cause I am a champion, and you're gonna hear me roar
Louder, louder than a lion
'Cause I am a champion, and you're gonna hear me roar!
Bravo, Australia. A party like none other, an occasion perfected, a day so long in the making carried out without flaw.
On International Women’s Day, it all came together. Katy Perry, surrounded by dancing cricket bats, dominating a magenta stage that meandered around the perimeter of the 25-yard circle; the Melbourne Cricket Ground sparkled as you’ve never seen it before.
Everything made sense, even as Perry, an American superstar and a global icon, belted out Roar, an anthem of empowerment on a landmark occasion. In the end, it didn’t quite lead to a world record, but the 86,174 in attendance were treated to a day that has forever altered the cricketing landscape. When people question the marketability and the commercial potential of the women's game, this is the image. That's all you'll need.
“A monumental day for women’s sport,” Isa Guha enthused. And some.
Katy Perry performed before and after a landmark final
One of the very greatest knocks ever played in a World Cup final: an exercise in brutality, a festival of hitting. If this had been a boxing match – Healy vs India’s pack of spinners, the referee might have waved it off seven overs in.
Alyssa Healy has developed into a force of nature; when she goes, Australia go. She lit the blue touch paper and Melbourne ignited. Her 39-ball 75 was her third fifty of the tournament – the three quickest half centuries of the competition.
Of the trio, this was the best. Perhaps, the best of her career, the best of her life – it would take an extraordinary effort to trump her 148 against Sri Lanka, but then this is the day she’ll remember. A day that Australia will remember. A day that cricket must remember.
Mitchell Starc watched on from the stands; Healy’s husband and a World Cup winner himself, his decision to return home an ODI early from Australia’s tour of South Africa needed no vindication. She is a single slice of one of Australia’s most famous cricketing families. Yet, when the history books are reflected upon in five decades’ time, she – and this day – might just be its most significant part.
Some players falter under pressure. For many, when the bright lights shine and the noise is ramped up, it all proves too much. For a select few, however, it is their making. And Healy is among the latter group – where others slipped into their shell, she waltzed to the crease with a fearless swagger and the knowledge that this was all that her cricketing existence had built towards. A date with destiny, overdue but finally here.
This is the stage, do with it what you will.
“It was unbelievable. I never thought I’d experience anything like that in my career,” she admitted shortly after her dismissal, complete with a wide smile that never left her face.
Even as she marched off the field 25 runs short of a most famous hundred, she made sure to arch her neck around and take in a remarkable acclaim. There are few arenas in the world with a capacity like this, certainly none in the southern hemisphere. This is as big as it gets, especially given the makeup of the future tours programme.
Ten years on from Healy’s first T20 World Cup final – a thrilling battle against New Zealand played out in front of 8,332 spectators in Bridgetown, this was it.
It was an innings dedicated to anyone and everyone that had come before this generation – a show for those who fought for this in a different era. When Australia won the 1997 World Cup in India, they were handed a bill on their return.
On women’s cricket’s biggest night, Healy was its star turn. There were five sixes, one of which flew over extra cover – the shot, indisputably, of the tournament.
Ellyse Perry missed the semi-final and final after injuring her hamstring in a winner-takes-all group match
The development of Australia’s wicketkeeper from useful contributor to the world’s most destructive opening batsman has been quite some ride. Her journey in T20I cricket can be split into two parts: the first eight years and everything since.
Before 2018, Healy had passed fifty just twice. She had never scored her runs at a strike-rate higher than 130. She had struck eight T20I sixes. And then everything changed. A flick was switched and the light went on. There have been 31 sixes since. What has followed has been, given what came before, unprecedented.
Even as she entered the tournament in the worst form of her international career – she had made six single-figure scores in a row – she never lost belief in her own capacity for carnage.
As she pillaged 23 off a Shikha Pandey over during her remarkable stand with Beth Mooney, the player of the tournament, the transformation was complete. It was 20 games before she struck her first maximum. Now, here she was in the biggest match of her life, doing it for fun.
“Those sixes would go for six at any ground in the world, and they’ve gone for six at the MCG,” cried Nasser Hussain.
She was dismissed in the next over, fittingly caught on the boundary as she attempted another. Nobody would say it, but the damage had been done.
Batman needed Robin, Holmes needed Watson. Healy and Mooney have needed each other. They are quite some double act.
It was only fair that if Healy were to walk away from a historic final with the player of the match award, then Mooney should take the grand prize. No woman has ever scored as many runs in a single T20 World Cup as the left-hander’s 259.
After struggling through the first two games with low scores against India and Sri Lanka, she came to the party thereafter: 81 against Bangladesh, 60 in the winner-takes-all clash with New Zealand and then this unbeaten effort in the big one.
If Healy’s is heavy metal batting, then Mooney deals in something far calmer; she is a throwback – a finder of gaps rather than a bludgeoner.
Her 78 will be lost in the narrative of this milestone occasion. It is the way of the world. Healy’s fireworks and Perry’s Firework will take precedence in the memories of the eventgoers who watched one batsman flay the Indian bowlers like a woman possessed, while the other went about her work at a silent canter.
An Indian victory would have been a remarkable story – an average age of just 22, a team carrying three teenagers, one of whom – a 16-year-old born in 2004 – is the world’s top-ranked T20I batsman. It is some tale.
But let’s take a step back and admire Meg Lanning’s Australia – quite simply, one of the all-time great teams, even without Ellyse Perry, the finest ever female player.
This was not only a triumph for an on-field juggernaut and a line of world-class players, but a wider win for ambition, organisation and equality.
The world record attendance never quite arrived, but there was little more that either Cricket Australia or the ICC could have done. Their desire to break boundaries was as much an accomplishment as any tangible figure. Even the aspiration was a sign of how far this game has come.
And frankly, who cares if that record will, for the moment, remain in Pasadena? 86,174 spectators came to watch a game of women’s cricket. Drink that in.
At the interval, a host of iconic names strolled out onto the outfield to form a guard of honour. Belinda Clark, Debbie Hockley, Ebony Rainford-Brent, Charlotte Edwards and Mithali Raj were among them. It was an opportunity for them to soak in the fruits of the foundations they put in place. And it was a chance for Australia and the women’s game to thank them for doing so.
Alyssa Healy won the player of the match award for an extraordinary assault of 75 off just 39 balls
Australia, you see, are the benchmark. Beneath Healy’s power, Perry’s all-round excellence, Lanning’s batsmanship and Meg Schutt’s hooping in-swingers, lies a structure that has been put in place with world domination in mind. Everything that happened before now happened with this in mind.
Since 2017, all Australian players have received the same base pay rate, regardless of gender, thanks to an MOU with the Australian Cricketers’ Association.
When the Women’s Big Bash was introduced as a standalone event in 2019, it was just the next logical step for Cricket Australia.
“We have had certain research done at different times during the cricket season and there were times in the last cricket season when two of the top three favourite Big Bash players were actually women,” Alistair Dobson, head of Big Bash Leagues, told The Cricketer of the popularity of the women’s game.
“When you’re putting the men’s and women’s leagues up against each other, the role that the women’s players like Ellyse Perry and Alyssa Healy have as high-profile cricketers is on a par with some of the bigger-name men’s cricketers.”
Victory today means financial reward, too. It was announced in October that Cricket Australia would top up any jackpot won by Meg Lanning’s women’s side at this T20 World Cup to ensure parity with the equivalent winnings of the men’s team. That prize will be due now.
The ICC had already increased prize money for the women’s event by 320 per cent, but that did not constitute equality.
Australia have led the way on and off the field. This was the culmination of a long road. Now, onto a new road. The job is to normalise it.
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