Meg Lanning’s thoughts in advance of the World Cup
There’s no doubt that the 50-over World Cup has been on the radar for a little while, it comes around pretty rarely compared to T20 World Cups so we’re looking forward to the opportunity to go and compete.
It’s a pure World Cup in the sense that you play everybody throughout the tournament, and once you get to the end, if you can finish on top it’s a pretty amazing effort. We’re all really excited about the chance to play in a one-day World Cup and obviously we’re going there to win but it’s going to be a pretty tough tournament to play.
A lot of our players were involved in that 2017 World Cup, which didn’t quite end the way we would have liked and I think since then we’ve changed the way we approach and play our cricket and are a lot more positive and willing to take a few more risks and I think that suited our game style.
It is the trophy that we don’t have our hands on at the moment and we’re all very keen to try and change that. Being the No.1 ranked team, we go in there with a lot of confidence, but World Cups are extremely difficult to win.
There’s a lot of cricket to be played and then you need to play pretty consistently across a long period of time, which is a big challenge and there are a number of world class teams out there, who are playing really good cricket.
It’s really exciting for the young players in the squad to only know life as full-time professional cricketers and it’s great for them to have the opportunity to really try and get the best out of themselves.
We know the benefits of being full time and having access to great resources, great coaching, and being able to play a lot more cricket as well and hopefully, that continues to evolve over the next few years as well.
The Women’s Big Bash League in particular has provided a really nice platform for younger players to be exposed to different scenarios and pressure situations.
We’ve seen with our young kids coming in, Darcie Brown, Tahlia McGrath and others, they don’t look overawed by the situation, which I think the WBBL has played a really big role in that.
It is a strong domestic competition, and alongside the Women’s National Cricket League, it provides a great opportunity for players to get game time and learn the game, there’s no doubt that that certainly helps our national team to be able to perform as we do.
We want to win every game that we play, and we were very proud to reach 26 ODIs unbeaten before losing to India, but it’s probably not realistic in these times with so many good teams out there to win absolutely every game but it’s a good challenge for us.
It wasn’t a surprise to us that India played so well because they’re such a great team, if anything it reinforces the fact that we need to play our best cricket and we need to make sure we’re trying to push the game forward to make sure we stay ahead.
With thanks to the ICC
