North Sound: India’s dreams of winning a maiden global title lay in tatters after a questionable omission and an inexplicable batting collapse saw them crash to an eight-wicket defeat against England in the semi-finals of the ICC Women’s World T20.
Reigning ODI World World Champions England will now meet Australia in the summit clash after the Southern Stars beat defending champions West Indies by 72 runs.
India decided to leave their senior most player Mithali Raj, a move that will certainly be questioned, after India lost their last eight wickets for 24 runs to end up scoring a below-par 112 in 19.2 overs.
It was a walk in the park for England as seasoned campaigners Amy Jones (53 no, 47 balls) and Natalie Sciver (52 off 40 balls) added 92 runs for the unbroken third-wicket stand to finish the match in only 17.1 overs.
It was yet another story of Indian women not showing enough temperament dring big match days, having lost the 50-over World Cup final to England at Lord’s last year and the Asia Cup T20 final to Bangladesh, earlier this year.
As many as seven players failed to get double digit scores and the spin-attack was unable to adapt to a different surface at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium after playing all their matches at Providence in Guyana.
The bold decision to drop Mithali, the highest run-getter in shortest format, may haunt the Indian team for the longest time to come as coach Ramesh Powar and captain Harmanpreet Kaur will have a lot of answering to do in coming days.
“No regrets, decision was for team”
The World T20 skipper Harmanpreet Kaur said that she has no regrets over dropping Mithali Raj as it was decision taken keeping team’s interests in mind. Indian batting collapsed as they managed only 112 with eight wickets falling for 24 runs as the visibly upset veteran’s blank stare sitting in the dug-out said it all.
Harmanpreet said at the post-match presentation ceremony. Mithali’s strike-rate was always an issue but considering that Taniya Bhatia hasn’t been able to acclerate and Veda Krishnamurthy in poor form, the decision to drop a seasoned campaigner boomeranged on India.
“This is a learning for us because we are a young team. Sometimes you have to change your game according to the wicket. England bowled really well, read the wicket really well. It was not an easy total to chase, and our bowlers bowled really well. We stretched the match till the 18th over,” Harmanpreet explained.