Beth Mooney, along with the Australian team, had a rollercoaster ride in the 2020 ICC Twenty20 World Cup. The team had a horror start to the tournament losing the opening match but had a fairytale ending by winning the coveted trophy.
Mooney, the star of the finals against India, opens up about all that happened in the course of the tournament and how she thought she’d lost Australia the cup. Australia was in deep trouble during their second group stage match against Sri Lanka. After Mooney’s dismissal, they were reduced to 10/3 in the chase of 123.
She credits skipper Meg Lanning and Rachael Haynes for digging Australia out of that hole.
“It was in Perth and I was like ‘Oh, God’, at 3-10 you’re not making your teammates’ lives very easy by putting them in that position. I really thought I’d stuffed up there. When you’ve got Meg Lanning and Rach Haynes forming a partnership, you’re in safe hands but at the moment all you’re thinking about is what an ordinary position you left your teammates in.”
“I guess that was what was most disappointing from my point of view, I had a really good opportunity to get us out of a hole but ended up making that hole even bigger.”
Being the superstar that she is, Mooney recovered from this and went on to score a record-breaking 259 runs at 64.75 runs. She was crowned the Player of the Tournament in front of a massive 86000+ fans for her part in helping Australia bag their fifth World T20 title.
Australia though had to deal with problems of injuries to key players, dwindling form, and with the eyes of the whole world firmly on them, they had to deal with a plethora of expectations. Australia almost didn’t make it to the finals but they never give up attitude inculcated in them helped them push forward and emerge victorious.
“We spoke about trying to push that outside pressure aside but we found that really hard when there were signs everywhere about March 8 and everyone was talking about Australia being there for the final.”
“Within the group, we were pretty level about it, we knew that we were in a really tough pool and our first job was trying to get out of it. Obviously, we nearly didn’t do that but we found a way like we always do and we got through that really tough part of the tournament. But there was a lot of pressure once we lost that first game and had a bit of a stumble in the second one,” concluded Mooney.
Source – Jordan McArdle for thewest.com.au
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