Champion-in-transition Australia attracts confidence from success of Litchfield, Sutherland

After the second ODI towards India on the Wankhede Stadium right here, which Australia received to seal the sequence, skipper Alyssa Healy shared an outline of the Aussie means of cricket.

“Something about Australian sporting teams… we hang in there. We still believed we could win till the last ball and that’s what made us successful. We just knew that if we kept creating dot balls, kept creating pressure then chances would come and that’s exactly what this team has been really good at doing for a long period of time and we did it again,” she stated.

Healy’s triumph stemmed from a workforce effort to maintain India beneath the pump, after all, however the performances of two children – 20-year-old Phoebe Litchfield and 22-year-old Annabel Sutherland shone by.

READ | India vs Australia 2nd ODI match report

Fresh legs, previous values

When you begin off a tour as essential because the one towards India with a diamond duck, one may not blame you for letting it get to your head. Even extra so when a complete stand of followers is there to continuously remind you of being unable to even get off the mark in your first outing with the bat. However, when you’re Litchfield, all of this fades into oblivion.

Being run out with out going through a ball within the first innings after which falling for a 44-ball 18 within the second just isn’t how Litchfield thought her red-ball shift would go. She greater than compensated, nonetheless, when she swapped the Test whites for the one-day yellow. She scored an 89-ball 78 within the first ODI and a 98-ball 63 within the second – each knocks anchoring the Aussie innings to security and victory.

While her worldwide run started on Indian soil in December 2022, it really took off in 2023, culminating in an enviable pile of statistics. It started with fifties on the trot in her first ODI sequence, towards Pakistan at residence in January. She struck her maiden ODI hundred, towards Ireland in July, and adopted that up by equalling Sophie Devine’s file of the quickest half century in T20Is towards West Indies in September.

Don’t fall for the cherubic exterior. Litchfield is all enterprise as soon as the gloves come on and the bat is in hand. So a lot in order that she completed among the many high three rungetters in girls’s ODIs in 2023 with 485 runs (behind New Zealand’s Amelia Kerr who scored 541 and her compatriot Ellyse Perry who completed with 467). She went previous former Aussie skipper Meg Lanning for many ODI runs in a calendar yr. Lanning smashed 484 runs within the 2012 season. Litchfield pipped her first captain by a solitary run, all in her first yr in worldwide cricket.

READ | Perry’s Wankhede resilience brings again recollections of one-legged heroics in 2013 World Cup last

The younger opener enjoys a problem and is at all times recreation to push her personal model of cricket a notch larger every time she takes the sphere. Missing out on taking part in the T20 World Cup which Australia received earlier this yr solely spurred her on.

“The Ashes was a really good learning curve for me,” Litchfield stated after the primary ODI towards India. “To score runs in Ireland was enjoyable but Indian conditions are a whole different beast and it was as enjoyable as it was a good challenge.”

The surety and old-school high quality to her strokemaking makes her beautiful to look at with the bat. Her sweeping skills are among the many greatest within the workforce, a scoring choice she calls her ‘get out of jail’ card. Litchfield can also be an asset on the sphere. In the second ODI, she dove parallel to the bottom to take a blinder to dismiss a settling Jemimah Rodrigues.

Annabel Sutherland and Phoebe Litchfield introduced up an unbeaten 221-run partnership towards Ireland in July.
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Sutherland until we die

During Australia’s tour of Ireland, Litchfield had in a position firm in her scoring pursuits in teammate Sutherland. She has had fairly an fascinating yr herself. The Victoria participant made her worldwide debut in 2020 but it surely was in 2023 that her profession took off.

Sutherland made heads flip when she scored her maiden worldwide ton within the Ashes Test in Trent Bridge. Her unbeaten 137-run knock was the best rating in girls’s Tests for a participant coming in at quantity eight, and performed a pivotal position within the Aussies successful the four-day fixture.

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A month later, Litchfield (106*) and Sutherland (109*) stitched an unbeaten 221-run partnership at Clontarf Cricket Club serving to Australia to a 10-wicket victory towards the Irish. This was the nation’s highest opening stand within the format.

Sutherland additionally saddles bowling duties and is a key a part of the tempo arsenal, particularly in Healy’s Aussie facet. Against India, she received the Player of the Match award within the 2nd ODI which sealed the sequence in her facet’s favour. She was entrusted with the ball within the demise, with a complete India might have simply chased down. Healy handed Sutherland (who had bowled solely 4 overs till that time) the ball within the forty second over to bowl in partnership with Ashleigh Garnder and Kim Garth. India wanted 58 runs from 54 balls at that stage.

Sutherland went on to bowl 5 overs, took three key wickets of Richa Ghosh ( who regarded harmful batting on 96, with Litchfield taking the catch), Amanjot Kaur and Pooja Vastrakar, all useful batters whose explosive energy might have taken the sport away.

“I’ve learnt a lot about my game in the last year. Looking back at the start to the T20 World Cup in South Africa, I wasn’t in the team as much as I would have liked, but I certainly learned a lot on the sidelines watching. I worked really hard over the off season to crack into the team for the Ashes,” Sutherland defined.

“Part of the challenge of being in this team is that when you do get chances, you hold on to the opportunity and make an impact on the game. I tried to do that during the Ashes which was a very challenging series in tough conditions and against a tough opponent. Domestic cricket in Australia is another opportunity to put my talents on show and I could do that by playing for Melbourne and for Victoria,” she added.

Change is the one fixed

Australia’s each choice is geared in direction of turning dividends within the ICC occasions scheduled within the subcontinent over the subsequent 18 months. Their younger opener and bowling allrounder firing is one of the best observe to start out the yr on for a facet in transition, trying to discover a solution to maintain the Aussie tradition of successful unblemished.

““Another point is (that) winning is a bit of a theme that you have got to learn – know how to win and keep the belief that you can (win),” Sutherland stated concerning the tradition of the facet. A brand new captain, a studying assume tank and new challenges on the cricket area might pose daunting inquiries to a facet with a legacy to protect. However, skipper Healy is aware of that the younger blood at her disposal is raring so as to add to the fabled historical past of its nation within the recreation. Sutherland and Litchfield are excellent poster women for a similar.

The prospect fills Healy with hope as she sums up the positive factors going through her facet as such, “People forget that our team has seen a lot of change in the last 12-18 months and yet we keep producing these young players who are ready for international cricket. They’re still learning as they go but they’re still contributing to the team’s cause for which credit is due to our domestic system back home and also to the culture of the side where they believe they fit in and can play a big role in.”