WTC Final 2025: Tom Moody explains how ‘winning mentality’ gives THIS team an edge in Australia-South Africa face-off

Winning is a habit, and former Australia all-rounder and World Cup winner Tom Moody feels only one of the two teams (Australia and South Africa) playing the WTC Final 2025 has a pedigree to do well on a grand stage, giving them an edge over the other. While Australia are the defending WTC champions, having won the last time against India, South Africa reached their maiden WTC final this time, chasing their first ICC trophy since 1998.

Moody has backed his home team, Australia, to hit the winning punch in their successive WTC final and claim their second trophy to become the first team to win it back-to-back. Explaining his reasons behind going all out for Australia, Moody said it’s only because of the winning mentality that is ingrained in them that they stand out in every ICC event.

The lanky all-rounder further said that because most of the selected players have themselves won ICC titles and grew up watching their heroes do the same, the hunger to win is injected into them, making them the favourites.

“Historically, many of their players have won multiple ICC tournaments, and they’ve grown up watching previous generations achieve the same success. That winning mentality is ingrained in them,” Moody said while speaking to Star Sports.

“The Australians have built that reputation through consistent success in major tournaments. When it comes to ICC events, Australia somehow elevates its game to another level as a team. They genuinely embrace the challenges of tournament cricket and thrive under the pressure of these high-stakes matches,” he added.

While both teams are gearing up for this showpiece event scheduled to start June 11 at the Lord’s in London, Moody feels that both are coming into the red-ball cricket mode after a long time could make it challenging for them to adapt and deploy the best form.

“It can be difficult, but it’s like any big occasion, it’s like any final, it’s bringing the best version of yourself to the stage at that very moment. So, you need to trust your instincts and make sure that you sort of cut out the negativity of the fact that you haven’t played Test cricket for several months, or you’re suddenly turning up in England and you’ve got completely different conditions,” Moody continued.

He, however, concluded by saying that the beauty of Test cricket is to adapt, evolve and march forward, with both teams being aware of it. He added that because Australia has played more big matches than their opponents, they stand a better chance of coming on top.

“That’s the nature of Test cricket, and that’s the beauty of Test cricket, being able to adapt and evolve on the move to be able to respond when you need to. So, I think both teams will be very aware of that. I think Australia has got a slight advantage purely because they’ve played more big matches than South Africa have over recent years,” he concluded.