The Australian women’s team are currently on cloud nine after they defeated South Africa in the final of the Women’s T20 World Cup, to lift their 6th trophy, and assert their dominance as the best ever women’s cricketing team in history. One of the key architects of the trophy win for Australia was undoubtedly fast bowler Megan Schutt who took 10 wickets in the tournament, and finished as the team’s joint top wicket-taker.
In the semi-final, the Australian team defeated India, who put up a worthy fight and lost the game by just 5 runs. Indian skipper Harmanpreet Kaur was the woman who put up the greatest fight in the game, and was on the verge of taking the game away from the eventual champions, when in a brain fade moment, she was run-out in bizarre fashion, failing to ground the bat after slowing down for the second run.
After the match, Harmanpreet Kaur said that the body language of the Australian team was down, and hence they took advantage of it during the run chase to get closer to the target. Megan Schutt blasted the Indian captain on her statement.
“They were cruising and we were under the pump. Collectively our last five overs were crucial. Getting a couple of wickets in there but also providing pressure on all aspects, whether it’s in the field, with the ball or even body language out there. Harman said our body language was down. I’ll call bullshit on that. We’re just calm. We don’t panic, we don’t take it out on each other if there’s a misfield or a dropped catch. That’s where we stand out as a team. We’re a team first and we know getting angry about that isn’t going to do about that. So it was a collective effort,” Schutt said in an interaction with Cricbuzz.
After getting out in bizarre fashin, Harmanpreet was genuinely angry as she threw her bat in frustration while screaming ludly. Schutt believes that this reaction was quite unnecessary.
Stay calm. It was wrong of Harman to follow that after (reaction after being given out). It sets the wrong precedent for those coming after. I know she was calm after that and spoke to Deepti. But the damage was done already by then. Being able to compose yourself in that situation. Of course, you’ve to go through lots to figure that out. We’ve had our own losses. Yes, we win a lot, but we’ve had our own clutch moments that we’ve lost and learned from that,” she added.
