CHENNAI: It's that time of the year for cricket. Since 2022, the game has seen one women's ICC tournament every year and one look at the upcoming calendar would tell you that it will continue till 2026.
The 2024 T20 World Cup is just days away. It's that time when the squads get analysed. The predictions about who could potentially lift the trophy catch fire. With the increasing popularity of the game, these conversations have progressively skyrocketed.
However, something is missing from the conversations this year and it's just one person. Meg Lanning.
While the whole cricketing world was still recovering from Glenn Maxwell's heroics in the men's ODI World Cup in Mumbai against Afghanistan in November 2023, a teary-eyed Lanning announced her international retirement. Standing in front of Melbourne Cricket Ground, the colosseum that witnessed her greatest triumph just before the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the most successful captains bid adieu to the game she dominated.
Back in November, the ninth edition of the Women's T20 World Cup was still ten months away. If she was to participate in it, it would have been a full-circle moment for Lanning. Ten years after winning her first trophy as a captain in 2014, the 31-year-old would have returned to the same place, hoping to add another feather to her and the team's cap.
Alas. It wasn't meant to be.
Now, in the scorching heat of Dubai, where the World Cup is scheduled to be held due to political unrest in Bangladesh, for the first time since 2018, someone other than Lanning will lift the trophy.
Think about it a little. Lanning led the side that was expected to win every single time they took field for close to a decade and in seven ICC events.
With the exception of the 2016 T20 World Cup, where a spirited West Indies took home the trophy and the 2017 ODI World Cup, where Harmanpreet Kaur's sensational innings blew them away in the semi-final, Australia won five trophies. After the rude shock of 2017, her team became a different beast altogether. Such was their reign leading into the 2022 ODI World Cup in New Zealand, where they had only lost two matches in the World Cup cycle.
One can argue that the side Lanning led was full of superstars of the game, including the captain herself. The team had exceptional role awareness with a battle-hardened attitude. How hard can it be to lead that kind of team? With this much relentless record came the responsibility to keep winning, and even a single loss would get amplified scrutiny. And Lanning remained unshakeable for her team.
Even now, many current and former players call her the best tactician in the modern game and the numbers back that claim up.
Even with this responsibility, the right-hand batter's personal form never took any hit. Whether it was her crucial innings against Sri Lanka in 2020 or a game-changing late burst against India in the semi-final of the previous edition, Lanning's bat was never silent for a long time.
That is why for those who have followed the game for the longest time, amongst many reasons, the former Australian captain not being around anymore has opened up this tournament. Such was the influence of this athlete that her absence has potentially opened the window of opportunity for other teams to lift the trophy. Mind you, they are still the number one ranked T20I side in the world with many exceptional players in the squad, but they are not as completely invincible as they used to be. That is what Lanning meant to this sport.
So before we move on to the first global tournament in a while without her, Lanning deserves to be given her due. This ninth edition of the T20 World Cup will see many debutants trying to make their mark while the person who made the game richer by her singular impact will watch it from home as an ambassador for Amazon Prime Video Australia.
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants,” Sir Isaac Newton had said. It is time to acknowledge the giant of women's cricket. And Lanning was undoubtedly one of those.