On this day in 2014: Australia Women complete hat-trick of T20 World Cups

The ICC Women’s World Cup 2014 ended with a bang when Australia defeated England in the finals by six wickets, and won the title for the third time in the history of the event. They secured a hat-trick of the World T20I title when they won the championship in Bangladesh.

In the final game, Meg Lanning won the toss and elected to chase. Lanning’s strategies worked for the team when the Aussies restricted the English players to 105 and picked up eight wickets in the duration. They didn’t allow a single England batter to score more than 30, and six players ended their inning with a single-digit score.

It was Sarah Coyte who gave her team the breakthrough as she successfully dismissed the opening batters Sarah Taylor and skipper Charlotte Edwards. Coyte ended up with three wickets, followed by Rene Farrell and Ellyse Perry, who shared two wickets each.

The two teams had a very different scoring game in the powerplay, as England, on one hand, could manage mere 24 for one, whereas Australia’s top-order managed to score 43 at the loss of one wicket. Australia had the fear of English pacer Anya Shrubsole, but because the score wasn’t that big, they did not worry.

Shrubsole did get the first breakthrough when she dismissed Jess Jonassen in the third over, but it was skipper Meg Lanning and their star batter Ellyse Perry who anchored the game for the team in the middle and sailed past England to win the final with 29 balls to spare.

Coyte was declared the Player of the Match, while Shrubsole was declared as the Player of the Series for picking up the highest number of wickets in the tournament.

Australia were the winners of the 2010 and 2012 editions of the T20I world cup, and with the 2014 title, they won their third title in a row to score a hat-trick. Australia is now a five-time champion of the T20I World Cup as they added two more titles in the years 2018 and 2020.