Alyssa Healy, the captain of Australia, acknowledged that the devastating semi-final loss to India in Navi Mumbai is still bothering her, saying it "will hurt for a little while." India defeated South Africa in the final to win the ICC Women's World Cup after pulling off the greatest run chase (339) in the history of World Cup knockout stages, both men's and women's, against Australia in the semifinals.

Healy reflected on what went wrong for her side and how the loss has lingered despite Australia’s otherwise dominant run through the tournament.

“Look, I’ve been better. I won’t lie to you. But at the same time, it is what it is. At the end of the day, after seven weeks of a big, long tour, we played some really, really incredible cricket but didn’t quite get over a certain Indian hurdle, I suppose you’d say. So, disappointing in that regard, but I’m looking forward to seeing what this team can do over this next cycle because it’s really exciting,” Healy said on the Willow Talk Cricket podcast with Brad Haddin.

“(We are) playing some amazing cricket, and teams are having to keep up to knock us off, which I think is really cool. Obviously, I haven’t watched the final, but India got themselves over the line, which is really cool, and it’s great for the global game. So, from that perspective, it was an amazing experience, but obviously sitting here a little bit disappointed, and it’ll haunt me for a little while, that one, but that’s ok,” she added.

Australia had posted 338 runs thanks to a brilliant 119 by Phoebe Litchfield. But her knock was bettered by India’s Jemimah Rodrigues, who slammed 127*, and Harmanpreet Kaur, who played a captain’s knock of 89 runs.

“Actually, I thought it was under par. I thought Ash Gardner played an unbelievable knock to sort of get us back up to that total, but I actually think we left a few out there towards the end. I think at one point we would have taken 330. We lost a few wickets towards the back end, but then, probably, the way that we’d set up the game, I think when Pez and Phoebe were in there looking really good with their partnership, we were looking at 350 plus. If we could have pushed up over 350, ultimately it might have made a difference in the end,” Healy admitted.

Healy noted that the standard of cricket her team played throughout the tournament made the loss more painful.

“That’s probably why it—I know we’ll probably get to it later and you’ll probably make me cry at some point—but that’s probably what makes it hurt more is that we’re playing so well. Everyone was contributing. Everyone was playing out of their skin, which I thought was unbelievable, and we had sort of half an-off night and got done in a knockout game. One to reflect on, yeah, the team’s flying at the moment, which is pretty cool, but sad we don’t have a trophy to show for it,” she said.

Healy also talked about the circumstances surrounding India's record chase, including how the red soil at DY Patil Stadium performed differently in the presence of lighting.

“The red soil at DY Patil generally doesn’t let the dew affect it as much. I think the wicket definitely started a little slower than what we’d been used to. Played on black soil basically the whole World Cup leading into that fixture, and the red soil probably was a little bit slower off the surface early on than what we had been used to. It definitely looked like under lights towards the back end, you know, it was sliding on nicely,” Healy explained.

“I think we probably didn’t help ourselves in that regard as well. We probably weren’t quick enough to adapt to bowling as a change of pace. It did rain a little bit. Probably made it slide on a little bit more as well, but we just sort of missed a little bit with the ball at the back end, but like I said, we created opportunities throughout our fielding innings to defend that total and get key wickets along the way, but we just weren’t able to capitalize on that. And that’s what you’ve got to do in knockout fixtures in World Cups, and that’s traditionally what Australia has done really well in the past. So, yeah, a little bit disappointing in that regard,” she said.