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Australia star Beth Mooney admitted her side will need to repel Pakistan’s spin attack if they are to win a second straight game at the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022.
The 2013 winners got their campaign in neighbouring New Zealand off to the perfect start with a 12-run win over defending champions England.
The batters fired them to 310 for three in Hamilton but will now face a different test at Bay Oval in Tauranga against a Pakistan side whose slow bowlers impressed at the same venue despite yesterday’s 107-run defeat to India.
“Their spinners did an outstanding job through that middle period when Deepti Sharma and Smriti Mandhana had that large partnership,” said Mooney who made an unbeaten 27 from 19 balls in her first hit out.
“They broke that with their spinners through the middle and looked like they had the squeeze on quite nicely against India.
“Something that we pride ourselves on as a batting group is making sure we’re always moving the game forward and accessing different areas of the ground to get the fields that we want.
“So just seeing a little bit of that in the game yesterday, will be really important for us heading into tomorrow.”
Pakistan’s spin trio of Anam Amin, Nida Dar and Nashra Sundhu took five for 124 between them against India with none going at more than 4.5 runs an over despite their opponents crossing the 300-barrier.
Mooney revealed that Australia are using their knowledge of playing at the Bay Oval last year in a bilateral series and putting some dedicated work into preparing for the challenge of facing a side they have not played since 2018.
She added: “Using that intel that we had from last year when we played will become really handy for us as a batting unit and a bowling unit.
“We expect Pakistan’s bowlers – their spinners especially – to bowl quite differently to ours in terms of pace through the air.
“So we had a session today, specifically on that as a top six and hopefully we can use that to our advantage tomorrow.”
Pakistan vice-captain Dar said her side are excited to have another crack on a pitch that is conducive to spin and is eager to use her experience from becoming the first Pakistani woman to play in an international league when she joined the WBBL’s Sydney Thunder in 2019-20 to gain an advantage.
“We were not happy with the result but we learned a lot of things from yesterday’s match [against India] and the key is not to repeat the mistakes,” said Dar, who took two for 45 from ten overs in the first game.
“Bowlers did well but at the back end we did not do well so hopefully we can learn and do well in the next matches.
“I learned a lot of things and game strategies from [the Big Bash] in Australia and the wickets are similar to New Zealand so I hope that experience is profitable for me.”