Beth Mooney’s 109 earns Australia big victory over Pakistan
Healy (20), Phoebe Litchfield (10), Ash Gardner (one), Tahlia McGrath (five) and Georgia Wareham (zero) misunderstood the tempo of the pitch and surrendered their wickets to either half-hearted jumpers or ill-timed, hard-hitting defensive kicks amid a shocking collapse.
Nashra Sandhu (3-37) proved to be the best of the spinners by stumping Ellyse Perry for five – then brilliantly bowled by Pakistan’s superb young wicketkeeper Sidra Nawaz, who showed similar quicksilver glove work to get rid of Kim Garth – and also cleanly bowled Annabel Sutherland.
But amid the turmoil, No.4 Mooney generally kept his head down and kept the ball on the ground, using his superb back-foot technique to make plays late on.
He gradually dragged Australia towards respectability, aided by Garth’s slow but extremely dogged 11 off 47 balls, and went on to register his ton in 106 balls when he found an enterprising partner in King, who went for broke in the final few overs and hit three sixes and three fours in a 48-ball half-century.
King set another women’s ODI record for the highest score by any batsman in the 10th or 11th over.
Loading
“He was incredible. We’ve seen him do that many times in the back end of a yellow shirt pitching order,” Mooney said. “We had to work really hard for this.”
But after passing 200, the chase was already looking difficult as Garth proved his worth as a genuine all-rounder with 3-14 in six overs and Schutt took 2-25 in five overs and Pakistan only slumped to 5-31 in the ninth over.
There was no way around it with the then in-form Sidra falling for 35 to Gardner and Sutherland (2-15 from 8.3 overs) taking two catches as well as the last two wickets of skipper Fatima Sana (11) and Rameen Shamim (15).
