Australian cricket great Meg Lanning retires from international game

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Cricketer Meg Lanning – the linchpin and captain of Australia’s dominant women’s team – has retired from international duty at the age of just 31.

Lanning will announce her retirement at the MCG on Thursday morning after almost 13 years at the top level. She leaves the game with seven World Cup victories, five as captain – more than any other leader in cricket history.

Meg Lanning with one of the World Cups she won.Credit: Getty Images

But she will continue to play in domestic competitions, including Australia’s Women’s Big Bash League and the Women’s National Cricket League.

A three-time Belinda Clark medallist, the Victorian scored 8352 runs from 241 international matches at the top of the Australian order, and became captain of the national team at the tender age of 21.

Her remarkable captaincy career is highlighted by the fact the Australian team won 80 per cent of the games in which she was leader, and won 26 consecutive ODIs over a three-year period from 2018.

In all, she captained her country in 182 matches of various formats, and scored 17 centuries – the first of them an undefeated one-day international ton against England at the WACA in just her third international and months before her 19th birthday.

Lanning was the skipper who led Australia to a memorable T20 World Cup victory witnessed by 86,174 fans at the MCG in 2020, and her last match for her country was the final of the corresponding tournament earlier this year at Newlands in Cape Town.

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