Melbourne: Australia won the toss and chose to bat first in their 2020 T20 World Cup final against India at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on Sunday. This is the second meeting between the two sides in the tournament with India having beaten Australia by seven wickets in the opening match of the tournament.
This will however be only the second time that India will be chasing. Incidentally, their last match of the tournament was also a chase when they beat Sri Lanka by seven wickets in their final group stage match.
“Crowd’s exciting, looking forward to it. Every game has been close, but we need to be at our best today. Hopefully it’s a great game. We are going in with the same team tonight,” said Australia captain Meg Lanning.
Indian captain Harmanpreet Kaur, who is celebrating her 31st birthday, said that they too would have liked to bat first.
“My mom’s sitting somewhere in the stands. It’s a pressure game and we also wanted to bat first. We are quite confident while chasing, hopefully the bowlers restrict them. We did some indoor practice. We are trying to stay together, because you are not getting games it tends to affect your focus. We want to treat this like any other game and give our best shot,” she said.
India Women (Playing XI): Shafali Verma, Smriti Mandhana, Taniya Bhatia(w), Jemimah Rodrigues, Harmanpreet Kaur(c), Veda Krishnamurthy, Deepti Sharma, Shikha Pandey, Radha Yadav, Poonam Yadav, Rajeshwari Gayakwad
Australia Women (Playing XI): Alyssa Healy(w), Beth Mooney, Meg Lanning(c), Rachael Haynes, Ashleigh Gardner, Sophie Molineux, Nicola Carey, Jess Jonassen, Georgia Wareham, Delissa Kimmince, Megan Schutt
