Fearless: the defeat put Australia on a path to greatness in the words of those who felt it most
After Australia’s semi-final defeat to India in the 2017 ODI World Cup, the devastation was absolute, the emotion raw. But it was the loss they needed. Key players reflect on that day, its fallout, and how it forged a new team identity.
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The room was dark. There was no music playing, like there might usually have been.
And the team sat there, still and silent as the footage flashed up on the screen in front of them: scene after scene, the Australian women’s cricket team re-watched the game they were meant to win.
July 20, 2017. The ICC Women’s World Cup semi-final between Australia and India, played in England.
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The Australians had been clear favourites. But the Indians dominated, with their power-hitting captain Harmanpreet Kaur smashing an unbeaten 171 from 115 balls to lead her team to 4/281 from their rain-affected 42 overs (Kaur’s total is the highest-ever individual score in a knockout stage of a Women’s World Cup).
In the run chase, the Aussies were bowled out in the 41st over for 245.
It mattered not how highly favoured the green and gold had been. They had been thoroughly beaten. A response was demanded.
Coach Matthew Mott thought long and hard about how to handle it.
“In all men’s dressing rooms I’d been in, if there were hard words to be said, it would be said and it would be left there,” he says.
“Our team, we weren’t at that stage.
“There were elephants in the room and people tiptoeing around. Everyone could see there were mistakes being made, but no one was being pulled up on it.”
Batter Beth Mooney agrees the signs where there – after all, the Aussies had also lost the T20 World Cup in India in 2016 – but no one was prepared to openly talk about them.
“As athletes you sort of put on this front and you pretend like everything’s OK and that you’ve got it, you’re not feeling under pressure and you’re not feeling stressed.
“But after that World Cup loss, we all got home and talked about how disappointed we felt in ourselves and how guilty we felt and embarrassed and how we’d let out game unravel,” she says.
What Mott did next he describes as not only the team’s “crucible moment” but the thing he’s most proud of since taking over as coach in 2015.
“We agonised over (how to have) that conversation and when to do that,” he says.
“And myself and the sports psych were saying: is it a bit raw? This could really go belly up.
“We workshopped it quite a bit and what it would look like. In the end we watched the footage with no music in a dark room and then we got the players in a circle and there were tears and it was open, it was raw.
“But the way we folded back together then as well, so the vulnerability that the group showed and then the ability to snap out of it and say, ‘right we’ve ripped the bandaid off, let’s get on with playing’.
That’s probably my favourite coaching moment … it was a gamble, because it could have gone the other way.”
There are seven players from that 2017 loss who will now be attempting to win back-to-back T20 World Cups as the tournament gets underway on Friday: captain Meg Lanning, Ellyse Perry, Alyssa Healy, Ashleigh Gardner, Beth Mooney, Megan Schutt and Jess Jonassen.
The core of that 2017 team that suffered together is still there.
So under Mott’s eye, the team talked and cried and talked some more, and then came up with a one-page document outlining their culture going forward.
The most important word on that page was ‘fearless’.
Captain Lanning got out for a duck that day. Mooney made one, so did Gardner. Healy – then batting at No. 7 – hit five.
Of the current players, only Ellyse Perry made double figures, 38 off 56 balls. Re-watching the game would have been akin to torture for most of them.
“It wasn’t very nice,” Lanning admits.
“But we made a decision then as a group that we wanted to play more fearlessly and we wanted to know that the person next to us was going to do the exact same thing.
“It was going to be team first.”
Inswinging quick, Megan Schutt, who bowled nine overs that day for 1/64, says the aftermath of that post-match review has not just impacted them as players, but also as human beings.
“It’s been huge for us as people, learning to be vulnerable and open and honest with each other and after we did that, we’ve been a better team for it,” she says.
“We came together and we said, for a team that spends over six months of the year together, we don’t know each other that well.
“We need to be more open and vulnerable and honest, whether that’s on or off the field and since we’ve done that, we’ve been more accepting of each other’s personalities and realised that we’re lucky to play this game for a living and have each other.”
In the 15-player squad heading into the 2020 T20 World Cup, there are eight players who didn’t play that game: vice-captain Rachael Haynes, Nicola Carey, Delissa Kimmince (who was taking a break from cricket), Annabel Sutherland, Sophie Molineux, Molly Strano (a late inclusion to replace the injured Tayla Vlaeminck), Georgia Wareham and Erin Burns.
They may not have played in that infamous game, but they are just as invested in the fearless culture.
Lanning explains: “When each new person comes in, we introduce them to the values and let them know how we want to be as a team.
“It’s hard, if you didn’t experience the loss yourself, you can’t force it, but we do talk about it a little bit and it does make you want to be better and drive you to be better knowing that feeling of losing.”
So, is it as simply the case that 2017 delivered the loss the Aussies had to have to grow, to develop in to potentially the best women’s team ever to play the game?
Perry is philosophical about it.
“That’s the challenge for teams that want to be successful for long periods of time, is to actually not get into a position where you have to go through something like that to then get out the other side,” the star allrounder says.
“That loss made a big difference and it was a great learning curve, and it helped us tremendously. But at the same time, I kind of feel like it would be really nice that we never have one of those moments ever again and we can actually nip those things in the bud before they happen.”
Healy, who batted in the lower-to-middle order in those days, has transformed herself since those conversations into a dynamic, game-winning opener.
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“We’ve played some incredible cricket post 2017 and the honest conversations about what happened probably brought us a lot closer together,” the keeper-batter says.
“I’ve changed as a cricketer.
“Coming out of it with this fearless attitude, Motty approached me and said he wanted me to lead it, ‘You’re going to open in the Ashes series and we want you to take the game on’.
“So for me, it was the kick up the bum I needed to go: ‘Righto, I can either make this something or I could fail again and be turfed out.”
Mott is equally proud of her: “Healy, and she’s going through a bit of a trot at the moment, but her turnaround: she’d been in the system a very long time, and by her own admission had underperformed … then she had that golden run for the last 18 months, she just set the tone for our team so much and that fearlessness that we spoke about, she just lived and breathed it.
“For someone who had perennially battled with self-confidence, for her to come out and play like that, really pushed everyone else around her.”