The 9th edition of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup will start from 3rd of October. The tournament has already faced significant challenges as the recent political unrest in Bangladesh has forced the organizers to move T20 Women’s World Cup 2024 to United Arab Emirates from its original venue Bangladesh. Currently the warm-up games are in full swing as the ten teams are looking to get the best last moment preparations. These ten teams are divided into two groups and we will do a quick review of the five teams in Group-A.
Group A can very easily be called the ‘the group of death’ as this group includes the 6 times champion Australia along with dangerous teams like India, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, who are enjoying a great last 6 months and Pakistan to compete for two spots.
Australia
Australia not only won the last three editions of this tournament, they were in the final of seven out of the eight editions and their only loss in the final came at the Eden Gardens in 2016 when a special innings from Heyley Matthews stopped them from clinching the trophy. This year they have played 12 T20 Internationals and won 10 of those. Their overall T20 record is very impressive with 129 win out of 189 with an astonishing winning percentage of 68.25% and they will be the hot favourite to win the trophy.
They already have an easy win over England in the Warm-up game where Beth Mooney scored a fifty and Tahlia McGrath picked up three wickets.
Key players: Australia has seven world class all-rounders in their squad including Ellyse Perry, Ashleigh Gardner, Annabel Sutherlands and McGrath. They will also depend a lot on their captain Alyssa Healey and experienced fast bowler Megan Schutt.
India
India is also another strong team in this tournament and enjoying good recent form. However, the recent Asia Cup final loss to Sri Lanka was a big blow to the team which looked undisputed number one among Asian teams in recent times. They have also beaten Bangladesh 5-0 earlier this year. In the last three edition, the team went to the knock outs comfortably and had two Semifinal exit and one final appearance. But in all the three instances, they failed to get the ultimate glory and was eliminated by Australia in last two instances as they were beaten by the Aussies in 2020 final and 2023 Semi-final.
Like Australia, they also won their warm-up match of the T20 World Cup 2024 comfortably against West Indies women with Jemimah Rodrigues and Pooja Vastrakar shining with bat and ball respectively.
Key Players: Smriti Mandhana and Vastrakar are in excellent form and they will expect support from Shafali Verma, Richa Ghosh and Rodrigues with the bat and Renuka Singh, Deepti Sharma and Radha Yadav to lead with the ball.
New Zealand
New Zealand is currently ranked fourth in the Women’s T20 International ranking and another very strong team which will look to deliver a dominant performance during this tournament. The Kiwis were the Runners-up in the inaugural edition of the tournament and regular entrants to the top four. However, currently they are going through a difficult time as they won only one out o their last 13 T20I matches. But we have to remember that 10 of these matches were played against England and other three were played against Australia. The White Ferns will expect to deliver much better performance against the relatively weaker teams.
They also had a comfortable 8 wicket victory against South Africa Women’s as the South Africans were bowled out for just 92 as the spin twin of Amelia Kerr and Leigh Kasperek picked up combined 6 wickets for just 20 runs.
Key Players: The captain Sophie Devine and her experienced opening partner Suzie Bates will be their key players along with Amelia Kerr, her sister Jess Kerr and experienced bowler Lea Tahuhu.
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka has qualified for this tournament through the ICC qualifier route but some of their recent performances has made people sit up and take notice. For too long they were solely dependent on Chamari Athapaththu who is still their most important player but now they have also got other key players like Harshitha Samarawickrama and Nilakshika Silva regularly making contribution with the bat. They even drew the T20I series against Ireland in Ireland without Athapaththu. Their win over India in the Asia Cup final was another sensational victory and they would look to continue their good form and force few updates.
Key Players: Along with Athapaththu, Samarrawickrama and Silva they will also depend on Inoshi Priyadharshini to lead the bowling attack.
Pakistan
Pakistan Women’s team is currently ranked 8th in the ICC T20 International rating, which is below Sri Lanka and they also lost their two Warm-up matches against Scotland, who has qualified through the qualifier and Bangladesh. The team is missing the experienced Bismah Maroof as Fatima Sana is leading them. In Asia Cup also they could only beat Nepal and UAE and were beaten by Sri Lanka in the Semi-final. Not many fans will expect them to go beyond the group stage of the upcoming T20 Women’s World Cup 2024.
Key Players: Along with Fatima Sana, other key players will be all-rounder Nida Dar and the slow left arm spinner Nashra Sandhu.
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