Australia v Netherlands: Women’s T20 World Cup 2026 – live

Key events

The teams are on the field now for the anthems – not long until the first over!

There’s a significant amount of orange in the crowd today – the Dutch will have some great support as they take on the formidable Australian team.

A couple of changes for Australia, with Ash Gardner recovering from her ankle injury to return to the side, replacing Grace Harris, and Lucy Hamilton coming in for Megan Schutt.

Netherlands XI

1. Heather Siegers

2. Phebe Molkenboer

3. Babette de Leede (c) (wk)

4. Sterre Kalis

5. Robine Rijke

6. Frederique Overdijk

7. Iris Zwilling

8. Myrthe van den Raad

9. Silver Siegers

10. Caroline de Lange

11. Isabel van der Woning

Australia XI

1. Beth Mooney (wk)

2. Georgia Voll

3. Ellyse Perry

4. Ashleigh Gardner

5. Georgia Wareham

6. Nicola Carey

7. Annabel Sutherland

8. Sophie Molineux (c)

9. Kim Garth

10. Alana King

11. Lucy Hamilton

The Netherlands win the toss and elect to field

A predictable decision from the underdogs – bowling first gives them their best opportunity to make a game out of this. Will the decision pay off for them? Let’s find out!

Today’s match is at the Rose Bowl and the weather forecast for Southamption is “light cloud and a gentle breeze”, which sounds just delightful.

If you want to refresh your memory about Australia’s last game while we’re waiting for the toss, you can read this great report from the always excellent Geoff Lemon.

Ellyse Perry will play her 5oth T20 World Cup match tonight, which is quite a milestone! She has played in all 10 T20 World Cups and has only missed two matches in that time – the semi final and final of the 2020 edition in Australia.

Don’t forget that you can let me know your thoughts during the game by sending me an email. I’d love to hear from you, whether it’s about this game, another recent game or some tournament predictions!

Preamble

Hello and welcome to another match of definitely my favourite World Cup going on right now. Today we have Australia taking on a very unfamiliar foe in the Netherlands, who are playing in their debut T20 World Cup. In fact, the two teams have never met in the T20 format before. They have played five matches in the ODI format, of which the last one was in 2000, three years before Australia’s opening batter Georgia Voll was born.

So to say the teams are unfamiliar with each other is quite the understatement. Australia is coming off the back of a nine-wicket demolition of Bangladesh, where they chased down the required total in less than 10 overs. Meanwhile, the Netherlands suffered a 95-run loss to India, though there were some bright spots with Babette de Leede scoring a well-made 28 and Caroline de Lange taking two wickets with her off spin.

I’m looking forward to seeing how all this unfolds – while Australia are the firm favourites, I have seen a fair bit of fight in this Dutch side so far and hopefully we get some of that on show today! So settle in and let’s get into the game.