Australia wins the Women’s T20 World Cup after crushing England in the Lord’s final

LONDON (AP) — Australia won the Women’s Twenty20 World Cup after smashing England in the final by seven wickets at Lord’s on Sunday.

Beth Mooney and Phoebe Litchfield supercharged the chase of 151 runs from the second over to the 13th in a 100-run partnership off 67 balls.

Litchfield fell 34 runs from victory and Mooney was out 11 runs from the inevitable end after her third match-winning fifty in Australia’s last three finals.

Overseeing the winning runs in the middle with 17 balls to spare was another stalwart, Ellyse Perry, winning her seventh world T20 trophy.

Australia pulled off the highest successful chase in a final at 153-3 after restricting England to 150-4.

This was the 10th and most popular Women’s T20 World Cup and Australia extended its staggering record to seven titles from eight finals.

Without a World Cup title in the 20-over or 50-over formats for the first time since 2018, Australia’s serial champion women were back in business.

The sold-out final in front of a sun-baked crowd of 28,887 was going to break one maxim: England has won all four of the Women’s World Cups it has hosted across formats while Australia has won all six of the finals between the teams across formats.

It wasn’t a contest in the end.

Put in, England openers Amy Jones and Danni Wyatt-Hodge were dismissed in the powerplay. Wyatt-Hodge became the first player to pass 300 runs in a single T20 World Cup but she was gone for 8. Alice Capsey was bowled in the 10th over at 67-3 and England was struggling to rouse its home crowd.

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AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket

Foster Niumata, The Associated Press