Alyssa Healy lights up World Cup final as Australia prove they are without equal

If there was a sense of the inevitable to Australia’s coronation as Women’s World Cup champions, the manner in which they got there was still enough to make jaws drop. Alyssa Healy had form lighting up big stages, with her fast 75 at the MCG two years ago setting up a win in the T20 World Cup final. In this tournament the opening bat had 50 overs to play with, and ended up using 46 of them. The result was a monolith of 170 runs, a single innings that was bigger than some teams in the tournament managed with 11.

Granted, Natalie Sciver responded with her own special performance, a 148 not out that ended up as one of the great lone-hand innings and kept a glimmer of a chance alive for England until the 10th wicket fell. The difference was the support from other players that Healy got, carrying Australia to 356, and that Sciver didn’t, leaving England 72 runs short of their target. In the end, Sciver’s more important influence on the day may have been the catch she dropped at midwicket with Healy on 41.

It was exactly that point of the innings when England could have applied the squeeze. Healy’s 41 had come from 56 balls, well short of the scoring speed she sometimes reaches. Rachael Haynes was also dropped that over on 47 from 67. The collective start was slow enough that it could have transferred pressure onto the next batters in. Instead, Healy closed the gap to reach an even 100 from her hundredth ball. Her next 70 runs took 38. Haynes made 68, then Beth Mooney again showed her versatility by taking a promotion to number three and playing a T20 knock of 62 off 47.

Parallels between women’s and men’s cricket are often useless, but Meg Lanning’s champions of 2022 bear such a resemblance to Ricky Ponting’s class of 2003