Australia opt to bat in trans-Tasman clash; NZ bring in Fran Jonas

Toss: Australia opt to bat vs New Zealand

Australia won the toss and elected to bat in their Group A tie against New Zealand in Sharjah. Both teams come in on the back of impressive opening game wins, so another two points here would set the victor up quite nicely to progress through the group stages.

Alyssa Healy said the previous games had played a role in her decision to bat first, with tournament having shown that it’s been hard to chase. Sophie Devine said they would have batted as well, but was looking forward to “doing the dirty on the Australians.”

This is the same pitch as the one used in last night’s game between England and South Africa, and with the former having chased down a target of 125 quite comfortably, there are expected to be more runs on offer tonight as well.

That said, spin will continue to play a major role. Sharjah has seen 44 wickets fall to spin across this tournament as opposed to 21 wickets in Dubai. Unsurprisingly then both teams have made one change apiece in a bid to bolster their spin stocks, with spin-bowling all-rounder Grace Harris coming in for seamer Darcie Brown for Australia, while New Zealand have swapped in left-arm spinner Fran Jonas for seamer Jess Kerr.

Australia: 1. Beth Mooney, 2 Alyssa Healey (wk)(capt.), 3 Georgia Wareham, 4 Ellyse Perry, 5 Ashleigh Gardner, 6 Phoebe Litchfield, 7 Grace Harris, 8 Tahlia McGrath, 9 Annabel Sutherland, 10 Sophie Molineux, 11 Megan Schutt

New Zealand: 1 Suzie Bates, 2 Georgia Plimmer, 3 Amelia Kerr, 4 Sophie Devine (capt.), 5 Brooke Halliday, 6 Maddy Green, 7 Isabella Gaze, 8 Fran Jonas, 9 Rosemary Mair, 10 Lea Tahuhu, 11 Edan Carson

AUS-WNZ-W

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Current Over 13 • NZ-W 58/3

NZ-W needed 91 runs from 47 balls