Follow UsIndia's World Cup encounter against South Africa ebbed and flowed, and two absolutely remarkable ODI knocks were scored, one from Richa Ghosh (who scored a record-breaking 94 off 77) and the other from Nadine de Klerk. Her knock also came at number eight, like Ghosh's, but the difference was that she scored 84 off 54 to take the Proteas home in a closely fought game.
India needed Ghosh to come and play an almost miraculous knock as they had lost six wickets for just 102 runs in the 26th over. From there, she had a 51-run partnership with Amanjot Kaur first and then an 88-run stand with number nine batter Sneh Rana, who also scored a quick-fire 33 off 24. The stand between the two was the highest partnership for the eighth wicket of lower for India in WODIs.
Ghosh’s knock was so special that records fell right and left. Her knock is now the highest score for a number eight batter or lower in the history of women ODIs, and the fourth highest for a keeper in World Cups.
However, all that fell apart when de Klerk came in 36th over and from there, played 54 balls and scored 84 runs. So good was her hitting that despite needing more than 10 runs/over in the last four overs, she smashed Kranti Goud, Deepti Sharma and Amanjot Kaur so hard that South Africa won the game by three wickets and seven deliveries remaining. No wonder she was also the Player of the match for that match-winning effort that included five sixes.
With such brilliant lower-order efforts from both sides, today’s game was so special that it had 322 runs scored by both sides after the fall of the fifth wicket. This not only reflects the pattern of lower-order scoring in this tournament, but also reveals how the Indian side will now need to think about their bowling combination, which has just five bowlers at the moment.
They’ll be up against Australia now on October 12, and they would hope to learn from the mistakes they made in this game.