Two matches, one venue, two incredible last-gasp finishes … Aussie stars re-live an extraordinary day of cricket that put the women's game "on the map"
The dramatic day that forever changed the WBBL
Australia players Jess Jonassen and Beth Mooney have reflected on what they believe was a game-changing day for women's cricket in a new cricket.com.au documentary, The Heat Repeat.
The two-part series, which traces the Brisbane Heat's back-to-back titles in the Rebel Women's Big Bash League, features extensive player interviews as well as unseen footage.
In it, the Heat players re-live the remarkable semi-finals day of WBBL|04 in January 2019, when both matches were decided in thrilling circumstances at Drummoyne Oval in Sydney.
Mooney, who is these days with the Perth Scorchers, described the double-header – and the thrilling climaxes to both matches – as having been "a turning point for us as a league within this country", a theory Jonassen supported.
"That day particularly put women's cricket on the map," the new Brisbane captain said on The Heat Repeat. "It allowed the product to be put out there."
For the Heat, victory over the Sydney Thunder came via a stunning boundary catch from Haidee Birkett on the final ball of the innings. Thunder batter Nicola Carey looked to have hit the six required to win the game for her side from the bowling of a momentarily floored Jonassen, who in a split-second went from "sad sack to happy as Larry" as she watched the ball land safely into the hands of her teammate, just short of the boundary rope.
Birkett's flying grab quickly became the stuff of WBBL legend, catapulting the Heat into the final for the first time – which they duly won over an all-star Sydney Sixers line-up, who were looking for a third-straight title.
The Sixers had themselves reached the final amid remarkable drama, having played their semi-final against the Melbourne Renegades immediately after the Heat-Thunder showdown.
With the Renegades requiring three runs to win from the final ball, batter Sophie Molineux slashed a delivery from Ellyse Perry over point, and again the winning runs looked to have been scored only for another incredible interception – this time from a diving Erin Burns along the ground, who parried the ball to her teammate.
Sixers wicketkeeper Alyssa Healy collected the ball and took aim at the stumps at the non-striker's end, running out Molineux to send the match into a Super Over, which the Sixers won thanks to a six from Perry's blade.
"(That day) allowed the media and the wider public to start taking the game seriously, thinking, 'OK, these girls are really athletic, they put a really good product on'," Jonassen said on the documentary.
"I guess that was proven the next weekend when the final against the Sixers was a sold-out crowd."
"It created a dialogue that was more positive around not just women's cricket, but women's sport," added Mooney. "It was a 'were you there?' moment: Were you there that day?
"In terms of trying to sell a product, whoever's running the WBBL got bang for their buck at that point because you can't get two better games of cricket, men or women.
"It was probably (then) seen as something you wanted to support and get behind, because of the nature of how we played the game and also just how tight the contests were all the time.
"In terms of the Australian public, we're all about following sports that give us that heart-pumping-out-of-your-chest (feeling), the stress on the couch or at the ground.
"To be a part of that, and to be able to create that, was something that everyone that was there that day will look back on and think they had a really positive impact on the culture around cricket in this country."
The success of the finals series prompted a decision by League organisers to move the fifth edition of the tournament to earlier in the 2019-20 summer in order to make it a standalone event; for the first time, the women's domestic game would be televised and live streamed completely independent of its men's equivalent.
"Some of my first thoughts when we were told the WBBL was going standalone was a mix between excitement and hesitancy," Jonassen said. "It was moving to a time when it was no longer school holidays and we were shifting away from what we were used to in the sense of playing curtain raisers to the men's games, and not quite knowing if it would work or not.
"There was a bigger picture in mind, which was to get that standalone audience leading into the T20 World Cup, to gauge numbers and TV ratings and those sort of things, and it ended up working really well.
"Now it feels like our own little window, which is really exciting."
The flow-on effect continued at the other end of the summer with the staging of the T20 Women's World Cup in Australia.
The 17-day event garnered unprecedented amounts of attention from the media and public for women's cricket in this country, and culminated in the final between Australia and India being played out in front of 86,174 fans at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
Five summers on from the launch of the Women's Big Bash, the sport had hit new heights in Australia, and inspired the rest of the cricket world.
Don't miss The Heat Repeat on Foxtel, coming April 7. The two-part documentary will also be shown on Kayo and cricket.com.au.