“We didn’t quite find an answer [to Australia’s batting],” says England captain Heather Knight
“I think we have been extremely consistent over a long period of time, it’s been a massive build-up to this tournament,” Lanning said at the post-match presentation. “It’s been a long time coming. We felt like we have waited a hell of a long time. To come out and perform so well through the tournament, to be honest, it’s pretty amazing and I think we deserved a victory today.”
“Healy’s knock was incredible,” Lanning said. “To do it in a World Cup final, I am probably not surprised, to be fair she’s done it before as well. To be able to come out and play so well, to play those shots she was playing was ridiculous and just to put the bowlers under pressure at the back-end was really important and she set the base really nice. We’ve spoken as a batting group about being patient upfront and building a partnership to get to explode at the back-end, and that’s what happened today.”
“We came over with a squad mentality, we knew we had to have a number of different people contributing, which we’ve had throughout the tournament and it’s just been so great to see the team evolve over the tournament,” Lanning said. “We’ve had some young players come in and perform really well and make an impact straightaway which has been great for the team and for the more experienced players to keep pushing them to get better. Off the field, we’ve had great support from coaching staff to get us to this point as well.
“Tay [Tayla Vlaeminck), Wolf [Georgia Wareham] and Soph [Sophie Molineux], big shoutout to you guys,” Lanning said of the three injured players who were back home. “There’s some good depth within our squad, we’ve seen Alana King and Darcie Brown come in and dominate and really lift the team, to be honest. It’s important to have some depth there. Injuries are unfortunately part of the sport and we’ve been able to cover that this time around.”
“I was [nervous] the whole way through (laughs), especially when Nat Sciver went there,” Lanning said. “She’s an incredible player, played a really special innings today and would have been a match-winning one on any other day. We know England would come hard at us, we expected a contest today and got one.”
“I guess we didn’t quite find an answer [to Australia’s batting],” Knight said. “It was an amazing wicket, and if we had kept them to just about 300, probably par, we were in with a good chance of chasing it down.
“Remarkable, absolutely unbelievable from Nat. The skill against spin, against seam, scoring all around the ground and unfortunately we couldn’t have someone stay with her. With the runs on the board we had to take a few more risks and unfortunately we couldn’t have a big partnership, something Australia do outstandingly and we can learn from how they have that big partnership in a ruthless way and they really take the game away from the opposition.”
“Massively, super proud of the group, given how we managed to turn things around,” she said. “The fact that we’ve shown that character and resilience to turn it around and be within a shot of winning the World Cup. Unfortunately, one win was too many for us.”
Vishal Dikshit is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo