Toss Australia chose to bowl vs England
Australia‘s stand-in captain, Tahlia McGrath, won the toss and chose to bowl first in the World Cup contest against England in Indore on Wednesday.
Australia had announced on the eve of the match that Alyssa Healy would miss this game after suffering a minor calf muscle strain during training. As expected, she was replaced at the top of the order by Georgia Voll, with Beth Mooney taking over wicketkeeping duties in Healy’s absence.
They have made two further changes, bringing in left-arm spinner Sophie Molineux for legspinner Georgia Wareham and replacing Darcie Brown with fellow seamer Kim Garth.
“We’re pretty happy to chase under lights and there’s a bit of extra grass on the wicket,” McGrath said at the toss. “We’ve got some players in different roles so we’re excited to give them an opportunity.”
England have resisted the temptation to make changes to a struggling middle order, despite having the experienced Danni Wyatt-Hodge on the bench throughout the tournament.
Having gone winless through their Ashes tour at the start of the year, England managed to beat Australia in their warm-up game by four wickets, with their middle order of Sophia Dunkley, Alice Capsey and Emma Lamb all scoring half-centuries.
Nat Sciver-Brunt, the England captain who would have been keen to bowl first too with dew expected to arrive later on, said: “We want to go in with confidence into the knockout stages and feel we’ve got the right combination.”
Both teams are looking to protect an unbeaten record at this year’s tournament so far and to move back above South Africa at the top of the table.
Australia: 1 Phoebe Litchfield, 2 Georgia Voll, 3 Ellyse Perry, 4 Beth Mooney (wk), 5 Annabel Sutherland 6 Ashleigh Gardner, 7 Tahlia McGrath (capt), 8 Sophie Molineux, 9 Alana King, 10 Kim Garth, 11 Megan Schutt
England: 1 Tammy Beaumont, 2 Amy Jones (wk), 3 Heather Knight, 4 Nat Sciver-Brunt (capt), 5 Sophia Dunkley, 6 Emma Lamb, 7 Alice Capsey, 8 Charlie Dean, 9 Sophie Ecclestone, 10 Linsey Smith, 11 Lauren Bell
