The Australian women's national cricket team (formerly also known as the Southern Stars) represent Australia in international women's cricket. Currently captained by Meg Lanning and coached by Shelley Nitschke,[8] they are the top team in all world rankings assigned by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for the women's game.[9]
In 2003, Women's Cricket Australia (WCA) and the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) merged to form a single governing body, known as Cricket Australia (CA), which remains to this day. CA has expressed a major goal of the organisation is for cricket to be Australia's leading sport for women and girls, citing the performance and exposure of the national team—which is heavily dependent on its increasingly professional domestic structures, namely the Women's National Cricket League (WNCL) and the Women's Big Bash League (WBBL)—as a key factor to achieving such an aspiration.[10]
A survey conducted by TrueNorth Research in April 2020 showed the national women's cricket team have the strongest emotional connection with Australian sports fans.[11][12]