Out of the Ashes to a World Cup, it’s tough at the top

The Women’s Ashes are won. The blokes can retain the urn this week. The Matildas are about to play their opening World Cup match.

The Australian women’s cricket team celebrate retaining the Ashes. Picture: Bradley Collyer / PA Wire

A huge week for Australian sport is off to a flyer.

The Women’s Ashes were retained in a final-ball thriller because Alyssa Healy’s team played tough. Pat Cummins and the blokes on Wednesday will roll up their sleeves and attempt to play equally tough in the fourth Test of a men’s Ashes series that’s as rousing as the invention of rock ’n’ roll. The Matildas need to be the toughest of the lot when they begin their World Cup campaign against Ireland on Thursday.

Talent doesn’t go far enough at the extreme and supreme levels of professional sport. You may be good enough in your Australian kit but the examination goes deeper. It pokes and prods at the size of your ticker and asks, are you tough enough?

Healy’s side answered with an emphatic yes. The rough-and-tumble of a proper battle was rare territory for a side accustomed to winning everything, everywhere, every time. The ending was so tense it was tough to watch.

England’s century-maker Nat Sciver-Brunt could win the match with a six from Jess Jonassen’s last delivery. She swung for the fences … but didn’t reach them. Tough luck? Tough to swallow. Australia won by three runs, tough cheddar, and then came a classic moment of sportsmanship.

Superstar Ellyse Perry – a former Matilda, no less – having top-scored with an elegant yet tough-as-teak 91 runs, delayed her celebrations to run to the devastated Sciver-Brunt, place a hand on her shoulder and console her. Right there was the best of Australian sport. The epitome of hard but fair. Tough with a touch of old-fashioned class and tenderness.

“Heart’s pounding,” Healy said. “We back ourselves to get out of any corner. We had to work hard for that. The grit and the determination … we don’t mind a scrap, and we won it.”

Healy’s husband Mitchell Starc will likely be in the Australian XI toughing it out and attempting to mirror the women by retaining the Ashes at Manchester’s Old Trafford.

Sam Kerr at training in Brisbane on Monday. Picture: Getty Images

Australia leads 2-1 in a breathlessly tough and entertaining series. A win or draw will be a nice littler earner: the little urn, er, or at least the replica we get to keep. After a last-start defeat, Cummins and his players are good enough to fight back. But are they tough enough? “Every Test, you start fresh,” Cummins says.

The Matildas are talking tough. They’ve released a video highlighting a lack of full-time opportunities in the A-League Women and the fact FIFA is giving the Women’s World Cup only a quarter of the prize money allocated to the men’s tournament in Qatar last year.

“Those who came before us showed us that being a Matilda means something,” captain Sam Kerr says in the clip.

“They showed us how to fight for recognition, validation and respect.”

Equality in pay and professionalism are tough and important matters. They can be debated on other pages. The heart of sport is game day, and it ain’t far away. Ireland isn’t expected to be too tough and yet to be sure, to be sure, they may be calling our bluff. As the World Cup goes on, the Matildas will need to be tougher than a T-bone steak.

Alanna Kennedy, right, at Matildas training in Brisbane on Monday. Picture: Getty Images

They’ll need to be mentally tough enough to handle the hometown hysteria and hype and hope. They’ll need to be physically tough enough when foes come at their shoulders and shins. Defender Alanna Kennedy’s tough enough. She’s been in the thick of achingly tough Matildas losses. She’s recovered from painfully tough injuries. She’s reached her third World Cup, which is a tough thing to do, and believes her team has enough of the good stuff. The right stuff. The powerful stuff. The stuff that won Australia the Women’s Ashes. The tough stuff.

“Thursday will be go time,” she says.