The numbers behind Australia’s domination of women’s cricket

Australia continued their dominance of women’s cricket with a 71-run win against England in Sunday’s World Cup final.

Alyssa Healy’s 170 set the platform for her side to add to the global Twenty20 title they already held, prompting BBC Radio 5 Live summariser Alex Hartley to describe them as “the best sporting team in the world”.

Here, the PA news agency looks at their record and assesses the merits of that claim.

Meg Lanning’s side won all nine of their matches at the tournament in New Zealand, most by convincing margins.

Nat Sciver’s century brought England within 12 runs in their tournament opener, while India took Australia to the final over, but their other successful chases came with 92, 118, 28 and 65 balls to spare, while they beat New Zealand by 141 runs and won their semi-final against the West Indies by 157.

That continued a run of success which has seen them win 38 of their 39 ODIs since the start of 2018, with only September’s two-wicket defeat to India breaking the perfect sequence.

South Africa and England are the only other teams with winning records in that time, while Australia’s average of 45.71 runs per wicket is almost 50 per cent higher than India’s second-ranked figure of 30.54.

Australia have won 37 and lost only seven of their 48 T20 internationals in that time, winning the World Cup in that format on International Women’s Day 2020 in front of over 86,000 fans at the Melbourne Cricket Ground as Beth Mooney (78 not out), Healy (75) and Megan Schutt (four for 18) powered them to an 85-run win over India.

Women’s Test matches are rare and Australia have drawn all three of theirs since 2018 – though one of those helped them win this winter’s Ashes with an unbeaten record across the multi-format