The Athletic has launched a Cricket WhatsApp Channel. Click here to join.Australia reigned supreme in the T20 World Cup final with a crushing seven-wicket victory over England, completed with 17 balls to spare in front of a Lord’s crowd of 28,887, a record for women’s cricket.This was a one-sided final from the moment Australia captain Sophie Molineux won the toss, and turned into a deflating anti-climax for England, the hosts, who were hoping to seize their moment in the sun in front of a wider audience for women’s cricket in the United Kingdom.England could muster only 150-4, with Nat Sciver-Brunt struggling to an unbeaten 58, before Australia coasted home, opener Beth Mooney leading the charge with 64 off 49 balls.There was late controversy when what seemed like a clean catch by Sophie Ecclestone to dismiss Ellyse Perry was surprisingly overturned after the third umpire turned to technology, but it did nothing to affect the result. England’s hapless performance was summed up by the winning Australian runs coming from a wide from Ecclestone that raced to the boundary.Here, Paul Newman dissects the final’s key talking points.Australia’s victorious players charge on to the pitch after their win in the T20 World Cup final (Dan Istitene/Getty Images)The Australian juggernaut is backThis was Australia reasserting themselves as the dominant force in women’s cricket.They have been in something of a transitional period and have lost two giant figures in recent years with the retirement of Meg Lanning and then Alyssa Healy. Indeed, that has led to the highly unusual situation of Australia not being the defending champions in either women’s World Cup, with India holding the 50-over title and New Zealand the T20 crown. Until now.Normal service was resumed at Lord’s with a relentless and brutal performance by Australia under impressive new captain Sophie Molineux with ball, bat and in the field as they claimed their seventh T20 world title of the 11 staged since the first in 2009.Beth Mooney rattled along to 64 off 49 balls (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)Australia were dynamic in the field as England struggled for any fluency on what appeared, at least when the hosts batted, another unsatisfactory Lord’s pitch for a showpiece occasion following the controversy of the England men’s Test against New Zealand last month that was over in fewer than two full days’ play.This one seemed slow and turgid, and the Australian attack was parsimonious, with only the sixth bowler used, Ash Gardner, going at more than 10 runs an over in her three overs.Australia’s strength in depth was emphasised by the four wickets being shared by four bowlers, with opening bowler Kim Garth the pick of them with one for 20 from four overs.The Australia batters had no such trouble in finding their touch as they made a nonsense of England’s struggles, player-of-the-match and player-of-the-tournament Mooney adding 100 for the second wicket with Phoebe Litchfield (48) off 68 balls. From there, it was all over bar the shouting.There is an argument that the Australian women’s cricket team are consistently the best team of either gender in any sport, and it is one reinforced by the class of 2026 at Lord’s.England’s Sophie Ecclestone sinks to her knees as Australia celebrate their win (Dan Istitene/Getty Images)England freeze on the biggest stageEngland looked to have a real chance of maintaining their unbeaten run in home finals in global events that goes back to 1973, but they fell flat on the biggest stage of them all.This was an embarrassing defeat for an England side that had gone through their own tournament unbeaten ahead of the final and had looked a significantly improved side to the one thrashed 16-0 by Australia in the last women’s Ashes 18 months ago.But their traditional inferiority against the old enemy — they had lost six previous World Cup finals in 50 and T20 cricket to Australia — resurfaced and they never looked like troubling an Australian side that looked in a completely different class.England’s troubles were emphasised by captain Sciver-Brunt, who had taken to the field carrying her young son Theo to accompany her for the national anthems.Sciver-Brunt was superb on her return to the England side for the semi-final victory over South Africa at the Oval on Thursday after injury, but here she looked rusty and out of touch in taking 53 balls to make that unbeaten 58.Nat Sciver-Brunt batted less fluently against Australia as she attempted to hold England’s innings together (Dan Istitene/Getty Images)Only when Freya Kemp joined her captain in an unbeaten stand of 80 off the last 55 balls, making 44 off 28 deliveries, did England look anything like pulling off an upset.But a total of 150-4 seemed at least 20 runs below par, and it was put into proper context by the ease with which Australia raced to their target.Progress has undoubtedly been made by England under coach Charlotte Edwards, their former captain, in the last year, but this was a sobering reminder they remain a long way behind an Australian team who are again setting the highest standards.This was a reminder of how much work England still have to do to bridge the gap to Australia (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)Was the World Cup a success?Absolutely, even though it ended with defeat for the hosts, with record crowds and a final played in front of a packed Lord’s including a full pavilion of MCC members — unlike for the 2017 50-over World Cup final here.There was even a performance from pop star Rita Ora before the final when she called the pitch a “court”. She must have thought she was at Wimbledon.Rita Ora performed ahead of the start of play (Gareth Copley/Getty Images)But the jury is still out on whether it has been quite as big a success as was hoped by organisers.The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) hoped this would be England women’s ‘Lionesses or Red Roses moment’, the time women’s cricket entered the wider English sporting consciousness as their football and rugby counterparts did when winning major home events.Tournament director Beth Barrett-Wild talked before the World Cup of women’s cricket joining the “mainstream” and told The Athletic: “We don’t want it to be a niche pursuit, we want it to be normalised. We want to double the attendance of the previous highest attended women’s World Cup which was in Australia in 2020 and had about 136,000.”Clashing with the football World Cup was always going to be a major obstacle in terms of the “mainstream”, and the Ben Stokes crisis that enveloped the England men’s team hardly helped. But it is a stretch to say the wider sporting public are talking about England in the same way as they did when the Lionesses and Red Roses claimed centre stage.Yet the World Cup has come close to its attendance targets. “We’ve seen nearly 250,000 fans pack out stadiums and both JioStar in India and Sky Sports in the UK have registered record viewership for women’s cricket,” Sanjog Gupta, chief executive of governing body ICC, told The Athletic. “Global digital engagement has passed two billion.“We want cricket to be the biggest women’s sport on the planet and this tournament has been the perfect personification of that ambition. This should not be seen as a peak but as the platform for the next leap. The bar and the ambition have been set high.”The ICC’s Sanjog Gupta talks to The Athletic’s Paul Newman ahead of the tournament’s opening fixture at Edgbaston (ICC/Dayle Stancliffe)Perhaps it will take time for the legacy of this World Cup to fully emerge. Several members of this England side were in the crowd when England defeated India in the 50-over final at Lord’s nine years ago.One of them was fast bowler Lauren Bell. “If you asked eight-year-old Lauren what she wanted to do she would have said she wanted to be a footballer,” Bell told The Athletic. “I played in the Reading academy but when I was about 16 I had to choose between football and cricket. That’s why the 2017 World Cup final was so massive to me.“I went along as a spectator and I was inspired by what I saw. After that it was cricket for me.”Who knows how many young girls at Lord’s on Sunday will be inspired to take up cricket but for now this final will go down as one of the best and biggest days for women’s cricket in the UK and it will be followed on Friday by the first women’s Test at the home of cricket as England take on India.So maybe the women’s game is edging its way into the UK mainstream after all.What did England coach Charlotte Edwards say?Asked for her reaction post-match, Edwards told the BBC’s Test Match Special: “I’m gutted, really. We came here with so much belief and confidence to pull off something really special and I think we gave ourselves a really good shout, it didn’t look easy to bat on. But they are a very, very good team and we were completely outplayed there in the end..“I’m really proud of the team. Where we’ve come from, the way we’ve played through this tournament — there have been so many positives. T20 cricket is tough and we competed today, but we just weren’t quite good enough. Australia have led the way for years. They have got the depth that allows them to play that way up the top. You have to be at your best to beat them and we weren’t.”A large crowd crammed into Lord’s (Justin Tallis/ AFP via Getty Images)On the tournament as a whole: “It’s been an amazing competition to be a part of. More teams involved, some brilliant games from the likes of Scotland, Ireland and Netherlands. It’s done so much for women’s cricket, a sellout at Lord’s here. Hopefully we can build on this and use it as a platform going forward.”