Follow UsWhat do you do when a 50-over game gets converted into a 29-over game because of a prolonged rain delay? Do you still treat it as an ODI? Or you treat it like a T20 game with an extra nine overs to impact the result?
The Indian batting order seemed to have had the same dilemma in the second ODI against England at Lord’s, as an uncharacteristic batting display saw them lose six wickets for just 98 runs. While England bowled really well, especially Sophie Ecclestone, most of the Indian batters were guilty of not adapting to the situation and lacked match awareness, reflecting in their fidgety and frantic shot selection and feet movement.
Some of the problems seen at Lord’s in India’s batting are already exposed, and the slowness of India’s top three, barring Smriti Mandhana, is one of them. Pratika Rawal has had a splendid run in her ODI career so far, with an average of 61.27 at the moment. However, she generally gets stuck on the crease while finding fielders in the infield regularly, despite playing some solid shots.
The same issue led to her dismissal today, as she had already faced the first nine deliveries of India’s innings and failed to gain a boundary or rotate the strike. That’s why she tried to eke out a single out of a really good inswinging yorker by Lauren Bell, and lost her stumps.
The other batter who looked out of her depth the most was skipper Harmanpreet Kaur. She had had a poor tour of England coming into the second ODI at the iconic ground, with scores of 1, 23, 26, and 15 in the T20I series, and a 17 in the first ODI. She looked frantic ever since arriving at the crease at Lord’s, trying to clear the infield with her lofted shots.
She even got a boundary on her first delivery and that should have calmed her nerves. However, the Indian skipper looked to keep up the ante against the tight bowling of Sophie Ecclestone and paid the price on the last ball of the 12th over, getting bowled by Ecclestone while trying to cut a ball on the stumps.
Meanwhile, Harleen Deol, Jemimah Rodrigues, and Richa Ghosh all looked to be in a lot of hurry, as if they were actually playing a 20-over game, not a 29-over one. Deol and Rodrigues tried to run down the bowlers and ended up giving return catches to Ecclestone and Charlie Dean, respectively. Not only were those shots unnecessary, it also showed a lack of game awareness as the pitch was slightly tacky for the tweakers, and they ran down the pitch in an attempt to hit it on the leg side for a single.
However, it was Ghosh’s dismissal where she missed a ball that came in with the angle from Ecclestone, that should ring the alarm bells. The wicketkeeper batter has had a really poor tour so far.
At the end, India could score only 143 in their 29 overs and lost the game by eight wickets.
All these mistakes could have been avoided had the batters come in with a plan more attuned to the playing conditions. However, even when skipper Kaur came to talk about what went wrong in the post-match conversation, she didn’t mention the failure of her batting lineup and just praised the English bowlers for doing their job well.
Rectification is a function of acknowledgement, and the Indian women’s team need to accept the fact that it’s not the first time when the batting order has shown a sincere lack of execution. No one can question the skill levels of each of these top and middle-order batters; however, it’s the approach that should be brought under scrutiny.
The women’s ODI World Cup would be played in India in around two months and 10 days from this game at Lord’s, and India would do really well to learn from this.