After being 76 for 7, Australia win by 107 runs
One Day International, R. Premadasa Stadium
Australia Women – 221 – 9 (50.0 overs)
Pakistan Women – 114 all out (36.3 overs)
An incredible turnaround. Australia were absolutely cooked here, seven wickets down, except for one thing: Beth Mooney.
Pakistan were right on top. Nashra Sandhu, Sadia Iqbal, and Rameem Shamin, the three spinners, bowled so well, and the fielding was magnificent, led by wicketkeeper Sidra Nawaz. Her magnificent stumping off Ellyse Perry was the moment when Pakistan really seemed like they were in this contest, backing up the wickets of the openers. Then it was all Pakistan for a while, some fine catches inside the circle.
But Mooney wasn’t one of those seven wickets, and she has saved the day so often. She got together with Kim Garth first, who barely scored but batted long, and then with Alana King who did the same until the last four overs, then exploded as Mooney flagged with exhaustion having neared a century. King made sure she was there late enough in the innings that her big hitting had its right time to come out, and so it did, ransacking 36 off the last two overs of seam, with Pakistan’s spin quotient exhausted.
That left 222 looking far too many for a deflated Pakistan, and so it proved, with some pretty tame dismissals to standard seam bowling in the opening overs. Australia get away with one, and Pakistan stay bottom of the table.