Australian women’s cricket team deserves more attention amid T20 World Cup dynasty

Australia’s women’s cricketers are chasing a fourth-straight T20 World Cup win. The true extent of their dominance is extraordinary and they deserve equal attention to the Penrith Panthers, writes EMMA GREENWOOD.

The chase for the greatest dynasty in Australian sport will start this weekend – and it’s a world away from Sydney’s Accor Stadium where Penrith will try to win a fourth consecutive NRL premiership.

The criminally underrated Australian women’s cricket team will start their bid for a fourth consecutive T20 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, just over 24 hours before the Panthers take on Melbourne Storm in their own bid to create history.

The Panthers’ run of titles is certainly impressive.

Over the past four years, the Panthers have won 87 of 108 games at a percentage of 80.5 for three titles and the chance to win a fourth on Sunday. They also made the 2020 grand final.

Sunday’s NRL decider will be watched by millions around the country and the players are household names.

But there should be just as much fanfare for the all-conquering cricketers.

When the first ball is bowled in the Aussies’ campaign on Saturday, Alyssa Healy’s team will be attempting to make the T20 final – for the seventh successive time out for a tournament that has a total of eight editions.

They could become the first cricket team in history – men’s or women’s – to win four straight World Cups.

Since the second edition of the championships in 2010, they have made seven consecutive World Cup finals, their two title trebles broken only by Stefanie Taylor’s outstanding West Indies side in 2016.

In the three tournaments since, they have won 16 of their 18 fixtures, their only losses coming to India in the preliminary rounds in 2018 and 2020.

Their run culminated in Meg Lanning lifting the World Cup at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, in Antigua and Barbuda in 2018, the MCG in front of more than 86,000 fans in 2020; and South Africa’s famous Newlands Cricket Ground in 2023.

Their overall World Cup record stands at 35 wins from 44 games – along with one draw – a win percentage of 80.7%.

In their last three successful campaigns, that soars to a stellar 88.9 per cent, a mark that’s hard to match in professional sport.

The Panthers don’t hit it in a single one of their past four seasons.

Nor do the Brisbane Lions in their premiership treble and grand final appearance from 2001-2004, when their overall record was a 74.75 per cent win record from 101 games, a touch under the 80 per cent they hit in the first two premiership years of 2001 and 2002.

Meg Lanning (R) and Alyssa Healy have led an outrageously successful era of Australian women’s cricket. Picture: Matthew Lewis-ICC/ICC via Getty Images

Our women cricketers are stars in all formats of the game – they also hold the ODI World Cup, women’s Ashes and won the 2022 Commonwealth Games gold in a year where they did not lose a single game of cricket in any format.

The captain Alyssa Healy was forced to call out swimming legend Ian Thorpe when he heaped praise on Australia’s women’s 4x100m freestyle relay team, which won a fourth consecutive gold medal in Paris before postulating they were the most “dominant Australian team in any code, any sport”.

Healy believes her side should be right in that argument. Across all formats the Aussie cricketers have won 19 of 22 games in 2024, including a 13-game winning streak into the World Cup.

Like the Australian Diamonds – who have won the Netball World Cup on 12 of the 16 occasions it has been held – the cricketers are expected to win and often fly under the radar, with a shock loss creating more waves than victory.

Panthers skipper Nathan Cleary, Australian women's cricket captain Alyssa Healy, and legendary Brisbane Lions skipper Michael Voss. Healy and her team stand comfortably in such company. Picture: Getty Images, News Corp Australia

The team that will line up against Sri Lanka in Dubai on Saturday includes the player of the tournament and grand final MVP from the last three campaigns – Aussie captain Healy, world No.1 batter Beth Mooney and Ash Gardner, one of the highest-paid players in the women’s game – as well as eight members of the 2018 squad that started the run.

Among them is all-rounder Ellyse Perry, the now 33-year-old, who is playing in her ninth T20 World Cup, having debuted at the inaugural tournament in 2009.

A superstar of the most popular sport in the most populous nation on earth in India, Perry has 2.5 million followers on Instagram, more than double the combined number of Panthers NRL star Nathan Cleary and his Matildas star partner Mary Fowler.

It’s time to truly appreciate the greatness of this Australian women’s cricket team.

Originally published as Australian women’s cricket team deserves more attention amid T20 World Cup dynasty