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Australia's fiercest traditional sporting rivals, England and
New Zealand, loom as the biggest threats to the host nation and
defending champions' prospects of winning the women's cricket World
Cup starting on Saturday.
The hectic schedule begins with England playing Sri Lanka and India
taking on Pakistan, while Australia begin their defence on Sunday
against New Zealand at North Sydney Oval.
The eight teams contesting the 16-day tournament across NSW and
Canberra fall into two very separate categories.
Australia, who have won five of the eight previous tournaments,
start the favourites, but will be challenged by two-time winners
England and New Zealand, who are the only other nations to have
lifted the trophy.
That trio, together with India, who finished runners-up last time,
can all realistically aspire to winning the tournament, or at least
reaching the final.
The other four teams, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa and West
Indies are all realistically vying for one of the other two spots
in the Super Sixes second phase of the tournament.
While the Super Sixes made the last couple of men's World Cups
ponderous and long, the women will play almost every other
day.
"The workload is tight, playing every second day is quite
challenging, particularly for girls that aren't use to that
workload, that's just something we've got to manage," Australian
coach Richard McInnes said.
While Australia has only four players backing up from their 2005
victory in India, they have enormous versatility in both their
batting and bowling.
The team boasts three quality spinners in Shelley Nitschke, Lisa
Sthalekar and Erin Osborne plus new ball spearhead Emma Sampson and
emerging youngster Ellyse Perry.
"Two of our frontline bowlers also bat in the top three, that's an
advantage to us," McInnes said.
While Australia has dominated the women's game for much of the last
decade, they haven't had things all their own way over the past
year.
They drew a one-day series at home to England early in 2008 and
just last month fought back from a 2-0 deficit to force a 2-2 draw
with New Zealand.
England, who boasts both the world No 1 batter and bowler in Claire
Taylor and Isa Guha, recently had a training camp in Bangalore and
several of their players spent much of the last few months
sharpening their game in Australian club cricket.
Captain Charlotte Edwards believes her England team has the
confidence and quality to win the tournament, but still labelled
Australia the favourites.
"They are the current champions and have dominated the game for the
last 10 years," Edwards said.
"I think this is going to be probably the closest World Cup we've
been part of and I think the teams are all coming closer together
now, but I think Australia in Australia have to be favourites, but
it doesn't mean that we don't believe we can win the
tournament."
Australian captain Karen Rolton and Edwards both believe England
should probably have won the practice game earlier this week
between the two teams, although the host nation fought back to earn
pre-tournament bragging rights.
India were comprehensively beaten by Australia in a limited overs
series late last year, but Rolton still expects them to be a threat
following their practice game victory over New Zealand.
Unlike their male counterparts, women cricketers are not
professional players, though Rolton believes one day, after she has
retired, there will be fulltime female cricketers.
