How do you solve a problem like the Australian women’s cricket team?

The all-conquering Australian women’s cricket team have several answers for every question asked of them – and it was the White Ferns' misfortune to meet them at a delicate moment in their own trajectory, having just lost three of their own biggest stars to retirement.

Playing the Australian women’s cricket team must feel like being trapped in a game of whack-a-mole – but instead of a subterranean mammal poking its muzzle into the air, you are forever trying to hold back a rising tide of great cricketers. Beat one back into the dugout – let’s call her Georgia Voll, whose vulnerable front pad was brilliantly targeted by the impressive Bree Illing throughout the series – and another, an Ellyse Perry, a Beth Mooney, an Annabel Sutherland et al, materialises in their place at the batting crease.

Over the T20I series played this week at the North Sydney Oval, Australia responded to any adversity by drawing another deadly arrow from its seemingly inexhaustible quiver. Eight wickets down and under genuine pressure in the first match, the experience of Kim Garth, scorer of three international half centuries, was there to flash a drive to the point boundary from number 10 in the order. In the second, Australia were in trouble after losing three early wickets, before player of the series Ashleigh Gardner nervelessly counterpunched her way to a muscular 84 off 45 balls, including four big leg-side sixes, which effectively took the game out of the White Ferns’ reach. The 2.4 overs possible in the washed-out third game were characterised by the stultifying pressure of Australia’s opening bowlers, and the resulting loss of two White Ferns wickets.

As with the in-game micro, the structural macro. The recent-ish retirements of all-time greats Meg Lanning and Alyssa Healy – both scored over 3000 T20I runs, the latter doing so while also serving as wicketkeeper – have caused barely a ripple on the surface of Australian dominance. Alana King, the legspinner currently ranked the best ODI bowler in the world, couldn’t find her way into the XI over the course of the T20 series; ditto Megan Schutt, with more than 150 wickets in the shortest format, who missed out on the first two games before being banned from the third for the improper use of a prescription medicine. Since Australia’s shock semi-final loss to South Africa in the 2024 T20I World Cup – a result that cleared the way for the White Ferns to lift that trophy without meeting the Aussies in the knockouts, after being thrashed by them in pool play – Australia have now lost only two games of the last 22 T20s they have taken the field for, a run that included lifting the World Cup earlier this year to atone for the 2024 tournament.

This series was the first time the Rose Bowl, the historic trophy fought over between the two teams since 1985, has been decided in the Twenty20 format. But the change has done nothing to alter New Zealand fortunes, with the White Ferns last holding the trophy outright in 1999, a year before new White Ferns captain Melie Kerr was born. Indeed, the White Ferns have not beaten Australia in any game of cricket since early 2021, when they squeaked to a last-ball victory in a T20I in Napier. But no shame in that: such has been the Australian dominance of women’s cricket, there is a strong case to be made that no international team has ever shown such sustained and complete supremacy over a sport.

The depth behind that dominance throws into stark relief the situation facing the White Ferns. This series was the team’s first assignment following the retirement of Suzie Bates, Sophie Devine and Lea Tahuhu – who all ended their international careers this year following the last game of an underwhelming World Cup campaign in England. Between them, that trio scored 8822 T20I runs and took 292 wickets over the course of their careers; going into this series, the entirety of the New Zealand squad had managed 5580 runs and 287 wickets, with Kerr responsible for well over a third of both.

Has more responsibility ever fallen on the shoulders of a single New Zealand cricketer? Best batter, best bowler, and now the full-time captain. This series didn’t fall her way on the level of personal performance – two wickets at an economy rate just shy of 11, 45 runs at well under a run a ball – and one hopes that added responsibility isn’t to blame, for the White Ferns will need all of her significant skills if they are ever to compete seriously with Australia. But Kerr has overcome sterner challenges than anything to be found on a cricket field, and one senses a fiery determination to mould this young team in her own image of excellence. To do it, she’ll need to inject some Australia-like power of the kind Devine used to provide into the batting lineup – Georgia Plimmer, who scored a fantastic 85 not out in the first game, and Izzy Sharp seem most likely to supply it – while encouraging   Maddy Green’s remarkable late-career run-scoring form to continue in the middle order, and enabling the promising fast-bowling group, led by her big sister Jess Kerr, to prosper.

The White Ferns’ next assignment is against the inbound Bangladesh team, a team ranked well below them. This series – three T20s, three ODIs – might provide a better launching pad for the Kerr era, giving the team space to grow into itself and players the chance to execute their roles away from the unrelenting pressure of the best team in the world. But the Aussies, as ever, await: the Rose Bowl is back up for grabs in March next year when the White Ferns head back across the Tasman.

That ODI series will tell us how far they have come over the course of the summer.

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