Where do Australia women cricket team goes from here

NAVI MUMBAI: As India completed a world record chase to eliminate Australia in the semifinal of the Women’s Cricket World Cup, Australia captain Alyssa Healy, who looked visibly dejected and a pale version of herself, was asked to reflect on what was an electrifying contest that went down to the wire.

One of the first words from Healy during the conversation with the broadcasters was, “We did that to ourselves, probably a little bit. Probably the first time I felt like we had done that.” She would reiterate different versions of it — “we were not sharp enough”, “we did not hold on to our chances”, “we let ourselves down”, “disappointing to be standing here”— during that interaction and the press conference after.

It was not her way of taking credit away from India and Jemimah Rodrigues — she did a fair bit of it on Thursday night — but rather than that Healy was owning up to the mistakes she and her team had made in the semifinal. It is the same kind of attitude that brought them all the success over the last eight years and made them the juggernaut they are.

The defeat on Thursday was Australia’s seventh in the format in the last eight years. They had been on at least two record-breaking winning streaks during this period. They have dominated world cricket, first under Meg Lanning, and then under Healy, won an ODI World Cup unbeaten in 2022 and remained that way in 2025 until India came out and played the game of the tournament to beat them.

Whilst talking about Australia and semifinal defeats, it is impossible not to go back to another such loss, against India, in Derby during the 2017 World Cup. The then defending champions were taken apart by an outrageous 171 not out from Harmanpreet Kaur. It gave them a reality check when the entire group gathered at the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane a few months on. Some honest conversations were had. They decided whatever they were doing was not up to the standards they had set for themselves and decided to change up. “I guess, it just drove us to rethink our standards and the way we wanted to approach our cricket. I think for our team, it just, I guess, made us rethink what we were doing and how we could do it better. And I think we've been really successful since that point. But like I said, we keep reassessing it at different moments in time. Teams are continually not catching us, matching us at every opportunity they can. So, it's more about a discussion for us, how we keep raising the bar and be better ourselves,” Healy had reflected in Visakhapatnam a few weeks ago.

Now, Australia are at a similar point – not in their approach to cricket, but with a team in transition. There is no Lanning, or Rachael Haynes. Healy has been at the front and centre of the transition as leader, but it has not been easy with her injuries. She has already said that this was her last World Cup. “I won’t be there (for 2029 WC), Mel,” Healy said with a smile to Mel Jones during the post-match presentation. One could expect it to be the case for Ellyse Perry as well — one of the greatest players ever to have played this sport. Perry had been a part of multiple World Cup triumphs and heartbreaks, and on Thursday night, she seemed to be barely holding it all together while talking to the reporters in the mixed zone.

Head coach Shelley Nitschkhe, while acknowledging the two veterans' contributions and careers, refrained from making any comments on their future. “Yeah, they've been amazing. Midge (Healy) had an amazing World Cup with back-to-back centuries. Pez (Perry) was fantastic tonight. What the future and their World Cup future holds, I'm not sure. I'm sure we'll find out in due course. It's quite a popular question I'm getting tonight, but yeah, nothing to report on that,” she said with a smile.

Healy, meanwhile, had laid it all out earlier. While acknowledging that there will be some changes, the captain said that it is an exciting time for Australian cricket with the next generation stars like Phoebe Litchfield and Annabel Sutherland rising to the occasion. “I think that's the beauty of this next cycle. We're going to see that unfold. Obviously, there's a T20 World Cup in the middle of next year, which is going to be really exciting for our group as well. But I think one-day cricket is probably going to shift a little bit again. We'll learn from what we did wrong tonight. We'll learn from that. We'll get better. The opportunity for potentially some young players to get greater opportunities in this side is a really exciting thing for Australian Cricket,” Healy said.

Eight years ago, a World Cup semifinal loss marked a paradigm shift in Australian cricket which led to the making of a juggernaut. What impact the recent defeat will have? Only time will tell.

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