Women's World Twenty20 2012-13

The third Women's World Twenty20 ended with the thriller the tournament was crying out for, as Australia beat England by four runs in Colombo to become the first team - male or female - to retain the title.

England were heavily fancied to repeat their triumph of 2009, in the first tournament, having only recently been halted on a run of 19 Twenty20 international victories (excluding abandonments). They picked the same XI throughout the competition, including four spin bowlers - Holly Colvin, Danielle Hazell, Laura Marsh and Danielle Wyatt. Australia's openers came out firing, however, and they clinched victory off the last ball of a tense final.

"I'm disappointed we lost," said England captain Charlotte Edwards. "But I'd rather play in a final which was a great spectacle for the women's game. I'm very proud of that."

For the third time, the women's event ran parallel to the men's. The group games were hosted in Galle, where crowds were small, despite the efforts of ICC marketeers to raise enthusiasm by erecting life-size cardboard cut-outs of the leading players next to their male counterparts on roundabouts across the city and in Colombo. The semi-finals and final were staged as double-headers at Colombo's Premadasa Stadium before the equivalent men's matches, and broadcast worldwide by ESPN STAR Sports.

The semi-finals were a perfect illustration of why the pace of the pitch is so important to women's cricket, which is determined more by canny deflections and careful placement than brute force. A painfully slow turner led to a turgid game between England and New Zealand, but a truer surface the next day made for far more engaging cricket, even though Australia's win over West Indies was similarly one-sided.

England had swept through Group A unbeaten, with their batsmen rarely tested. Against India, Edwards became the first woman to pass 1,500 runs in Twenty20 internationals, and she finished as the tournament's leading scorer, with 172 at 43.

India, long regarded as one of the big four of the women's game, lost every group match, prompting concerns that Australia and England were pulling away from the rest of the world - a theory strengthened by the ease of England's semi-final win over two-time runners-up New Zealand, the other member of the quartet. India's nadir was confirmed when, in an unattractive, low-scoring game, they were unable to chase down 99 in a dead rubber against Pakistan.

It was their first defeat by their arch-rivals, and the first time since 1988, when they did not even send a team, that they had failed to reach the last four of a global tournament. Their captain, the experienced and respected Mithali Raj, said the loss ought to be a jolt for the women's game in her country.

Meanwhile, Pakistan captain Sana Mir renewed her call for more fixtures against the top countries in order for them to improve.

Group B was thrown wide open by the inconsistency of West Indies and New Zealand. West Indies imploded in a rain-affected game against the hosts Sri Lanka, but bounced back with their first win over New Zealand in a competitive match. The quartet eliminated at the group stage went into playoff matches to qualify for the 2014 tournament in Bangladesh. India beat Sri Lanka to avoid the ignominy of having to go to Ireland for the qualifying competition; South Africa also secured their place, with victory over Pakistan off the penultimate ball.

Before the tournament, a media furore had erupted when the scale of the pay gap between the genders became apparent. The ICC granted women players a daily allowance of $60, compared to $100 for the men; the women had flown economy class, the men in business; most glaringly of all, prize money of $60,000 for the victorious Australian women was dwarfed by the $1m picked up by Darren Sammy's West Indians. Despite all that, and a smaller overall budget for the women's game, an ICC spokesman said it was aiming for "equal everything".

Women's cricket falls under the development arm of the ICC, so staging international events is not a profit-making venture, and it may never reach economic parity with the men's game. But the ICC must ensure the cricket remains attractive. The standards displayed by Australia and England need to be more frequently matched by the countries behind them. Quicker pitches would help too.