Australia haven't played at a home for a long while, but when they faced Sri Lanka on Sunday (September 29) in the first T20I it didn't look like they had been away for quite so long. They kicked off the big Australian summer with a bang by scoring the highest ever team total (216 for 4) in Australia, at North Sydney Oval. Beth Mooney smashed a scintillating 113 off just 61 balls, shrugging off the slump in form with some style as she dished out a wide range of shots to take Australia to a mammoth total. "The coaches joked with me when I walked off and said, 'How'd you feel out there?'," Mooney said after the match. "I said, 'Some good, some bad', that's my general response.""You'll take a hundred at the start of the day and a win for the team."Mooney had passed fifty just once in 18 T20Is in the past 12 months, until breaking that run in spectacular fashion with Sunday's century."I'm pretty happy with how I've been hitting the ball, probably just hasn't come off as I would've liked in the previous few games but it's nice to be out there scoring runs again today."To put things simply, Mooney was the one to signal her intent with her attacking shots right from the word go. She was not afraid to use her feet to the spinners and not once did she look like getting out. In between the boundaries, Mooney ran the singles and twos on offer in what were hot and humid conditions at the ground. "Generally the wicket here plays pretty true. There's not a lot of turn out there and they don't have many pace bowlers so we knew going into it that would probably be the case. It was nice knowing that we had to face a lot of spin with not a lot of turn."Australia maintained a clean record of not losing a match at North Sydney Ground Oval. They have now won a record seven matches at this ground after their win against Sri Lanka"We always get a good crowd out here, the wicket is always pretty good and high scoring," said Mooney. "Fun, explosive cricket is played here. It was probably a bit closer than we would've liked but couldn't ask for a better start."
Australia's bowlers suffered a rare failure in stopping the flow of runs from the bat of Chamari Atapattu. The Sri Lanka skipper almost took the match away from the hosts by scoring 113 runs off just 66 balls. The crowd got their money's worth as 2631 people turned up to see the match live in the stadium.Traveling to Australia as underdogs, the captain's knock signaled that Sri Lanka are going to throw everything they have at the powerhouse home side in search of a first-ever win against Australia.
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