Megan Schutt dissects her match-winning display; vows Australia will get even better

Australia v Sri Lanka, scorecard and match centre

Megan Schutt spoke to the media after her Player of the Match performance in Australia’s win over Sri Lanka on Saturday.

Schutt excelled with the ball to help restrict Sri Lanka to 93/7, finishing with outstanding figures of 3/12 from her four overs.

And the 31-year-old said that her variations were the key on a slow Sharjah surface.

“I use my change-ups back home in Australia as well, it's just using them probably on a different length here,” Schutt explained.

“Towards the back end, bowling the final over, I just look to pitch it nice and full and get them playing me down the ground, which is what I'd probably do in the Big Bash as well.

“Obviously, you get punished a little bit more in Australian conditions sometimes with a faster outfield, but big boundaries and a slow outfield bring my changeups more into play.

“It'll be interesting to see how teams attack me going forward.”

Restricting Sri Lanka to just 93 in their 20 overs left Australia’s batters with a relatively simple task, and they wrapped up victory with 5.4 overs remaining.

However Schutt was not all-that-impressed with her team’s fielding effort, and says that they need to sharpen up.

“It probably could have been cleaner in the field. It was warm out there, it was tough, but it was probably not as clean as we'd like to be in the field. We probably could have made that a little easier with the bat, but it was tough out there and credit to them for getting the job done in under 15.”

Australia are looking to make it four ICC Women’s T20 World Cup titles on the bounce, but Schutt says that being defending champions is not relevant for the here and now.

“I mean it's cliche but defending champions doesn't really mean anything; in a new tournament everyone's on zero points.

“I think the slowness of the pitches brings in every single team into this tournament, it actually evens it out really nicely. So yeah, I think it'll be a close one throughout our entire pool.”

New Zealand await Australia in their next game, with the White Ferns having beaten India in their group opener.

“We were training at the time, so did miss the game, but saw the scorecard,” Schutt said about that result. “But (it’s) pretty cool, opens up the tournament completely and shows if you have a lot of intent at the start what that can do in the powerplay.

“It'll be a great match (against New Zealand). We've obviously just come off a series against them in Australian conditions so it'll be an even tougher match up here.”

Australia's beaten opponents Sri Lanka now sit bottom of the Group A table having lost their first two games.

However, captain Chamari Athapaththu is looking forward and hoping that her side can show the world what they can do in the remainder of the group campaign, with the knockout places still not mathematically out of reach.

“We have to play our positive cricket, fearless cricket, fearless cricket every time in the middle. That's the important thing.

“We don't want to take too much pressure on our shoulders, because we are coming in here with underdog tags, because we play in qualifiers and come here.

“But the thing is, we played really good cricket in the last 16 months. We beat South Africa, we beat England, we beat New Zealand, West Indies, we beat some good teams.

“Unfortunately, still we didn't do anything in this comp, but we have two games. We will bounce back. I hope we can play our best cricket in the next two games."