Edwards not concerned with revenge

By Dominic Farrell

Charlotte Edwards insists her England side do not have revenge on their minds ahead of the highly-anticipated Women’s World Twenty20 final against Australia.

The Ashes rivals will square off in Dhaka tomorrow, in a repeat of the 2012 showpiece that Australiawon by four runs.

Meg Lanning’s Southern Stars are chasing a third successive Women’s World T20 title and Edwards believes the prospect of halting that run should be England’s primary focus.

“Obviously we want to go better this time than we did in Sri Lanka but we’re not focusing too much on revenge,” she said.

“It’s about us putting in a really big performance tomorrow to hopefully win this trophy, which would mean a lot to us as a group of players.

“We know we’re two evenly matched teams and who deals (best) with the big occasion tomorrow is going to come out winners.”

England accomplished back-to-back Ashes victories over the past eight months, going a long way towards offsetting the disappointment of two years ago.

But Edwards feels those results from the home and away series will have little influence on a meeting in sub-continental conditions.

“I don’t think the two Ashes series will have much bearing on tomorrow,” she said. “The series were very close. We did fantastically in Australia.

“We’re in completely different conditions out here. Both teams are playing well and, no doubt, it’s going to be a fantastic final.”

Australia have demonstrated flexibility in their batting order throughout the tournament, steadily improving on the back of a surprise opening loss to New Zealand, and Edwards knows England must be ready to face a variety of approaches.

“They’ve changed their order the whole trip,” she said. “We’ll prepare for every eventuality tomorrow.

“The teams know each other quite well now – we’ve played a lot against each other over the past six months.

“We’ll have plans for everyone, whether they bat one or seven.

Seamer Anya Shrubsole has been England’s star performer in the tournament – a pair of sensational in-swingers that castled Lizelle Lee and Trisha Chetty securing the match award in the nine-wicket semi-final triumph over South Africa.

Shrubsole tops the tournament’s wicket chart with 12 victims and Edwards thinks an insatiable appetite for the game lies at the root of her success

“For someone so young she’s got a fantastic cricket brain,” the skipper added. “We spend a lot of time together talking cricket – she’s a sports geek!

“She loves her cricket and it’s been great to have her on the pitch for a period of time. She’s had problems with injuries in the past but I think over the past year she’s played some of her best cricket.

“She’s going to have a huge future ahead of her. It’s mainly about her cricket awareness; she knows what to do, when to do it and her skills back up that.”

You can follow England Women’s progress in tomorrow's final with ecb.co.uk’s live blog, as well as via Twitter @ECB_cricket.