Australia Women vs New Zealand Women 3rd T20I Ends in No Result — Sixteen Balls, Two Wickets, and a 2-0 Series for Australia

Some evenings the weather writes the report for you. At North Sydney Oval it rained, the outfield took its time to recover, and the scorecard records two separate rain stoppages and two wet-ground delays before a ball was bowled. By the time the players came out, the first powerplay had been trimmed to 4.1 overs, a sure sign the game had already been shortened. It got through 16 balls.

In that time Australia, having chosen to field, took two wickets. New Zealand Women 11 for 2 (2.4 overs). No result. Australia Women win the three-match T20I series 2-0 and retain the Rose Bowl.

What little cricket there was had a familiar look. Kim Garth gave away one run in 1.4 overs and ended Georgia Plimmer's stay on 2 from 12 balls by bowling her, the last ball before the covers came on for good. Melie Kerr had found the boundary once in her two balls before Sophie Molineux had her caught by Annabel Sutherland. Izzy Sharp, in at No. 3, also hit a four in her two balls and was 4 not out when the wet ground ended play. It was not enough of a game to read anything into, but it was enough for Australia to make the point once more that New Zealand's top order has had very little room to breathe.

Australia won 2-0, and they did it without ever quite playing at their best. In the first T20I they chased 163 and went from 102 for 2 to 145 for 7 before scrambling home by two wickets, with Ellyse Perry's 52 the backbone and Georgia Plimmer's unbeaten 85 for New Zealand earning the Player of the Match award in defeat. In the second, Ashleigh Gardner turned 41 for 3 into 167 for 7 with 84 from 45 balls, then took 2 for 17 as Australia won by 40 runs and sealed the Rose Bowl.

For New Zealand, in their first series without Sophie Devine, Suzie Bates and Lea Tahuhu, there was more to take away than a 2-0 scoreline suggests. Plimmer and Maddy Green showed in the first game that the batting can post a total against the world champions, and the bowling, led by Jess Kerr, Bree Illing and Nensi Patel, took 15 Australian wickets in two completed matches. What was missing was a chase, or a finish, that asked Australia a question they could not answer. Australia, for their part, will note the dropped catches and the top-order wobbles. Being good enough to win while untidy is a habit of champion sides, but it is not one they will want to rely on.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview, so there are no predictions to grade. As we noted after the second T20I, our fixture data had this series wrongly listed as Australia Women v Bangladesh Women, which is why the only preview we published, for the first T20I, carried the wrong opponent.