With the upcoming T20 Women’s World Cup at ICC 2020, Australia, England and India will try to refine and build trust in the Tri-Nation series that starts on Friday, January 31st.
The six-game tri-series offers the perfect preparation for the main tournament, which begins on February 21. Australia, the reigning champion, has dominated in the shortest format unchallenged since the beginning of 2018 and only lost three T20Is. Their losses have been recorded against arch-rivals England and India.
Australia’s captain Meg Lanning knows that facing two high-profile opponents will be no easy task.
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“In all our games against India and England in the past, they were really great competitions with high-quality cricket and we don’t expect any difference this time,” said Lanning before the first game. “We definitely want to win, I’m sure the other two teams would say the same thing.
“It’s about finding the best shape and the right combination.”
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On the other hand, England will try to leave the demons of their last outing behind. The English team had lost the Ashes series at home in July 2019 and had only one win – in the last T20I – over seven games in the multi-format series.
“We have made a lot of changes since the ashes,” said Captain Heather Knight. “We have fundamentally changed the way we do things as a team. We have taken more responsibility as individuals and we have a clear understanding of how we want to do things in the future.”
“Now we can see how we’re doing against two of the best teams in the world.”
The third team of the tri-series, India, has its own point to prove. The women in blue began their campaign with a defeat when they suffered a five-goal defeat to Governor-General XI in Sydney on Tuesday.
However, the page managed by Harmanpreet Kaur cannot be taken lightly. They took fourth place in the MRF Tires Women’s T20I team ranking and were the semi-finalists in the previous edition.
“We have a fairly young team, only four or five players have experience in Australia,” said Kaur. “It is not easy to get used to the conditions and we were not up to date (on Tuesday) but we are looking forward to the weekend.”
England and India will play the opening game of the Tri-series against Canberra on Friday.
