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‘I really thought I’d stuffed up there’: Australian cricketer Beth Mooney reflects T20 World Cup rollercoaster

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Jordan McArdleThe West Australian
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Beth Mooney was player of the tournament in last year’s T20 World Cup.
Camera IconBeth Mooney was player of the tournament in last year’s T20 World Cup. Credit: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

Beth Mooney recalled the moment she thought she’d lost Australia the Women’s T20 World Cup last year at the WACA Ground.

Staring down the barrel of back-to-back losses to start the tournament against Sri Lanka, Australia were in all sorts of trouble in their run chase.

The Perth Scorchers star’s dismissal for six left the hosts 3-10, chasing 123 in the must-win clash.

Mooney, the world's top-ranked T20 batter, recovered to score a record-breaking 259 runs at 64.75 on her way to player-of-the-tournament honours.

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But the recently-crowned Belinda Clark medallist said she had captain Meg Lanning and Rachael Haynes to thank for getting Australia out of a massive hole on that gloomy day in Perth.

“It was in Perth and I was like ‘oh, god’, at 3-10 you’re not making your teammates’ lives very easy but putting them in that position,” Mooney said.

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“I really thought I’d stuffed up there.

“When you’ve got Meg Lanning and Rach Haynes forming a partnership, you’re in safe hands but in the moment all you’re thinking about is what an ordinary position you left your teammates in.

“I guess that was what was most disappointing from my point of view, I had a really good opportunity to get us out of a hole but ended up making that hole even bigger.”

Mooney re-lived Australia’s rollercoaster T20 World Cup campaign ahead of Friday’s release of Amazon Prime’s docu-series The Record, in which she had a starring role.

The two-part series follows the journey of the team’s tournament, battling injuries, form and the weight of the nation to be crowned T20 world champions for the fifth time in front of a record crowd of 86,174 fans at the MCG.

There was the ‘fill the MCG’ campaign for the final on International Women’s Day (March 8), with superstar pop singer Katy Perry locked in to perform.

But the Aussies nearly never made it there themselves after dropping their first game against India.

“We spoke about trying to push that outside pressure aside but we found that really hard when there were signs everywhere about March 8 and everyone was talking about Australia being there for the final,” Mooney said.

“Within the group we were pretty level about it, we knew that we were in a really tough pool and our first job was trying to get out of it.

“Obviously we nearly didn’t do that but we found a way like we always do and we got through that really tough part of the tournament.

“But there was a lot of pressure once we lost that first game (to India) and had a bit of a stumble in the second one.”

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