How Australia defied the critics to win the T20 World Cup

Ahead of this year’s

Ahead of this year’s T20 World Cup, few people gave Australia
any chance of lifting the trophy, said Mike Atherton in The Times^[1]. The country has never
really taken to sport’s shortest format. But on Sunday at the Dubai
International Stadium, Aaron Finch’s team produced an “intimidating
display” to crush New Zealand in the final and win their first ever
T20 World Cup. Put into bat, New Zealand set a challenging total of
172-4 – largely thanks to their captain, Kane Williamson, who
scored 85 in 48 balls. But in reply, Australia made light work of
the target, romping to victory with seven balls to spare. 

This win was a sharp rejoinder to those who’d mocked Australia^[2] for rolling up to this
tournament with “what looked suspiciously like a Test team wearing
a false moustache”, said Geoff Lemon in The Guardian^[3]. It has recently been
orthodoxy to maintain that the best T20 teams should be full of
players who specialise in this format. But Australia not only
relied on “Test-hardened” pace men like Josh Hazlewood (who took
three wickets), but also on several batsmen who feature in their
Test line-up. 

For the Kiwis, meanwhile, this was another painful loss to add
to their defeats in the finals of both the 2015 and 2019 50-over^[4] World Cups, said Simon
Burnton in The Guardian^[5]. Williamson’s team may
be one of the best in world cricket – but it seems to be their fate
to “still be in the ballroom at the 11th hour before turning into
pumpkins when the clock strikes 12”.