Lanning argued that Australia v Australia A, where the best 22 cricketers in the country are pitted against one another ahead of a multi-format international series, would be the best compromise between improved preparation and not stretching existing talent too thinly.
“That’s something that is possible over the next couple of years,” she said. “Maybe down the track it might be different, but this is my personal view. I think if we focus on getting some more WNCL games and keeping the WBBL strong, that’s going to give us good foundations and potentially the Australia v Australia A games will give us some more exposure to the red-ball format which we need.”
Reflecting on the frantic finish in Canberra, where Australia’s leaders thought they had set England a steep chase but then found themselves scrambling to rein the tourists back in as they charged towards the target, Lanning said there was no doubt more exposure to fourth-innings scenarios would help how she handled them.
Loading
“It was pretty stressful I must admit, and I’ll be the first to admit that not every decision I made through the Test was the right one,” Lanning said. “But it is difficult when we don’t find ourselves in those situations very often.
“It was certainly a very eventful Test match and coming out of it, it’s just a really great learning opportunity for me and the team as well. We found ourselves in a pretty unique situation on that last day and it probably wasn’t how we thought it might have panned out.
“But just to be able to fight back and show some really good resilience in that time was something that stood out for me.
“The more we play the longer format the better we’ll get at understanding how that format flows and what sort of scores you need to declare with, how much time you need to bowl teams out, all that sort of stuff is something we’re pretty unfamiliar with.
“So I certainly would look forward to being in another situation where we have to think on our feet and come up with something a little bit different.”
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
Lanning doubts women’s game ready for domestic long-form expansion
Source: Philippines Alive
