WBBL title run shows 'there's a lot of quality' around - Kirby Short

"Oh my god! What actually just happened!" Well, what happened was that Kirby Short had just led Brisbane Heat to the Women's Big Bash League 2018-19 title. An outstanding achievement in itself, equally significant because it was the first instance of a team without "Sydney" in its name holding the trophy aloft.

Sydney Sixers pushed hard, almost till the end, but the Heat rode on a heroic half-century from an indisposed Beth Mooney to pull off a three-wicket win with four balls in hand. For them, it was a matter of having a plan and sticking to it. On the day, it worked well enough.

"Quality batters can choose which parts of the ground to hit it to, so our job as a bowling group was to take those areas away. Giving width to a lot of those girls hurts you. We were able to bowl more tight lines, more in to the wicket rather than full," Short explained - that prevented the likes of Alyssa Healy and Ellyse Perry from getting under the ball and hitting it high and long.

That kept the Sixers to 7 for 131, Grace Harris doing the most damage with 3 for 23. Then it was over to Mooney. Two wickets fell early, but Mooney and Short added 84 for the third wicket. And when Mooney was dismissed for 65, after having done her duty with the help of ice, water, an inhaler and anti-nausea meds - "It could have got a bit messy," Short joked later - the Heat were within striking distance, and got to the mark despite a clutch of wickets.

"I plonked myself in the ice bath and was a bit nervous towards the end, I couldn't really watch," Mooney said afterwards. "They were pretty oppressive conditions out there and I haven't been well the last couple of weeks, but I had a job to do.

"I was pretty hot and pretty cooked and the outfield wasn't conducive to hitting boundaries, which wasn't ideal, but even when the run rate got to 7.9 I thought really good cricket shots were going to win this game."

Mooney and Short kept the chase going, and even with Mooney down on her haunches a lot of time, they kept their focus on the job at hand.

"The calm (Short) brings to the group and to help with my batting, we complement each other nicely," Mooney said. "We talked about getting the run rate down as quick as we could, so that took my mind off how I was feeling... we managed to sneak a few twos towards the end there without my legs giving way."

For Short - "a person of words" by her own admission - the result left her at a bit of a loss, a little overwhelmed.

"I needed a couple of minutes to compose myself, because it's a feeling of so much happening around you but not feeling sure of what actually just happened," she said.

As for the bigger picture, Short said, "It's really healthy for a competition when there are multiple franchises winning because it means there's a lot of quality in a lot of places."

On the subject of the WBBL, and women's cricket on the whole, being in better health now than before, Ellyse Perry, the losing captain, said, "Looking at that hill all day, the number of people that came, the interest in it, the way that it was covered throughout the week in the lead up, the fact that I am standing here in front of a pretty big group of people talking about it, shows how far we have come."

But on the field, Perry was left "bitterly disappointed".

"We just came up short with the bat, unfortunately, by about 15-20 runs. But the way we stayed in it till the end was superb and I'm glad we were able to give the crowd something to cheer about. I can't take anything away from the way Brisbane played. They bowled really well, and then Beth's innings, coupled with the partnerships she had, were just too good for us.

"They had really clear plans and they executed them. We didn't get a lot of bad balls to put away and we hit a lot to the field as well. There were a lot of overs where we got the ones but missed out on the boundaries. That cost us momentum. When we tried to put the hammer down - me particularly, I didn't take a whole lot of responsibility today - I couldn't pick it up when I needed to."

Perry had a fantastic tournament with the bat, hitting a tournament record 777 runs in 16 innings at an average of 86.33 and a strike rate of 121.21. In the final, though, she could only score 33 from 37, which meant she couldn't "have one of those champion hats and the trophy again this year". "We've got used to winning, so it sucks when you don't," she said.

They are national team colleagues, and Perry was quick to laud Mooney for her innings on the big stage, calling it a blueprint for what her own batting unit required.

"Her innings was a blueprint of what we needed to do, someone to strike it around 120 and being there for a long period of time. When we got her out, I felt we gave ourselves a bit of a chance. But at that point we were probably too far gone," Perry said.

"She's incredibly good at finding pockets in the field, better than anyone else in the world at that, and she did that really well on a ground that had some shorter angles and boundaries."